The Colorful Artist

For those of you who are reading our story of Rose Lake Park in improper sequence, and of course you're not reading in proper sequence because the most recent updates always appear at the very top and scroll backwards chronologically, so if anything you've reading the entire thing backwards and that would make absolutely no sense at all.  So basically for all of you reading our story of Rose Lake Park (which I'm being told is now the entirety of 5 people!) let me recapsulate where we stand today.

We still have not found a suitable replacement for our dearly departed historian Mabel Mabel Knot (by "departed" I mean she's no longer working for us, not "departed" as in "dead."  That would be morbid.)   My attempt to secure some interns from the local college did not go as planned, and there appears to be a dearth of material relevant to the 2nd decade of Rose Lake Park, on account of the rat infestation in the basement of the Historical Society.  This particular breed of vermin seems to have a strong affection for paper products from the years 1900-1909, thus leaving us to struggle with the materials needed to thoroughly showcase this marvelous tale.

But fear not -- this is the age of the internet and one particular designation, something called an "ebay", had an item of great interest.  This is a sketchbook from the very decade we are currently researching, believed to be the collective works of one of the parks more artistic founders, Prof. JP Marvel.  (He's the one always wearing the delightful hats.)  It seems hats were not the only thing the professor was known to sketch, often known for positioning himself with his tablet at various points of interest about the land he shared with the other six founders.

All of this sketching of his would allegedly have taken place between visits to Little Edna's Big Pie Hole, a local business that we haven't even begun to thoroughly explore here as yet.  Perhaps some more searching of the ebay will produce some similar research materials.  We're still continuing to gather research on the founders and Prof Marvel has been somewhat elusive, but we do know that he seemed to have an infatuation with fancy hats and well, pie.  And he liked to draw pictures.  Let's see what he came up with.

"The Rose Lake Sketches" -- Julius Pierport Marvel, 1909

Why, those drawings are so remarkable it's almost as though the professor took existing photos and colored over them in crayon (or somehow had access to some sort of high tech-software that would do the same!)  And all in the year 1909!  Simply amazing.