Chapter 06

The Prom Night

In the lead up to the prom Pat found Marsha, Jasmine, and Robert suitable period clothing for the prom without telling them why they’re to wear the fancy dress. The girls think the old style gowns are nice and are happy to have them so Rob just accepts his fancy period clothes to fit in with the rest of the group.

On the day of the prom Eve is letting everyone know they should see the couples off so the main lounge room is full with all of the tenants in it when Pat walks in to collect Marsha. Pat hands over the corsage he has then he helps Marsha to pin it on while Rob does the same with Jasmine. The only other young couple from the Manor is being driven to the prom by the boy’s father and they are there as well, but they aren’t leaving for another ten minutes as Pat’s group is leaving a little early.

All are ready when Dean walks in dressed as a groom from the same period as the two couples are. He bows to Pat and Marsha while saying, “My Lord, My Lady, your carriage awaits.” Which gets a lot of attention from all of the people in the room.

They all follow the two young couples outside and are stunned by what they see. Marsha can’t believe her eyes on seeing a pair of chestnut horses pulling a beautiful mahogany coach sitting at the bottom of the front ramp. Dean left as soon as he made his announcement. He’s now standing beside the open coach door. When Marsha arrives he holds out his hand for her to use to steady herself while she climbs the three steps of the little step-stool he has beside the coach. Marsha enters the coach, and is again stunned by the interior woodwork with the leather covered padded seating. Jasmine follows her, then Robert, and Pat is last.

All of the other tenants are crowding the ramp and the area beside it while they look over the coach and horses. They watch Dean shut the door and he makes sure it’s shut. He picks up the stool, carries it to the back of the coach, slips it into the holder there, sits in his seat, puts on his seatbelt, and calls out, “Ready, Driver,” while waving to the crowd.

All during the fifteen minute drive to the Rivers Council Hall where the three local high schools are having their joint Senior Prom Night Dean is watching the occupants of the cars that pass them and he’s waving at them while they stare at the coach. He has a huge grin, which grows even bigger when he sees the startled looks of some of his schoolmates when they recognise him and tell their families who he is.

Eve also let a few friends at the local newspaper and television crew know something special is going to happen at the Council Hall tonight so the media people in attendance are expecting something unusual, but they’re blown away by the elegant coach pulling up. They’re busy taking notes of the people arriving in the fancy hire cars and the nice family cars, but all movement in front of the hall stops when one young man at work directing traffic at the drop off zone in front of the hall spots the taller vehicle arriving a few spots back so he looks up. His exclamation of, “Holy hell! Look at that,” gets a lot of attention. Everyone turns to look at him and then they turn to see what he’s looking at.

The TV news reporter says, “Jim, get on that coach. Make sure you get a good view of it and the people in it. This is incredible.” The young man on the camera nods agreement while he focusses on the coach. Camera flashes are going off all over while people take photos. A moment later the sound man nods at the reporter and she speaks into the microphone in her hand, “Tonight the traffic outside the Rivers Council Hall came to a stop while one vehicle approached the entrance to drop off passengers attending the Rivers High Schools’ Prom. The beautiful mahogany coach brings back thoughts of a time when things were much slower as it adds a vision of timeless elegance to tonight’s event. The driver is in an outfit from that period as well.” She goes quiet when the coach stops.

In the silence Alice’s loud, but not shouting, “We’re here,” is heard.

The reporter softly says, “Oh, my,” when she sees Dean walking around the coach with the step-stool in his hand while also in period dress. “The coach even has a young groom to help the passengers get in and out.” Dean sets the stool, opens the door, and stands there ready to help. Pat is first out then he helps Marsha down. “First out is Patrick Murphy-Michaels, currently the most eligible bachelor in the region. The head of the Michaels Clan and recently in the news due to the rebuilding of his home, Michaels Manor, after it was all but destroyed by fire. Pat and his three friends are also in proper period dress.” She then gets busy as she describes the clothes.

While the two couples walk toward the building Dean closes the door, picks up the stool, and returns to his seat. A moment later his, “Ready, Driver,” can just be heard, and the coach moves off. The cameraman is good when he keeps the coach focussed while turning to record it going, and to get footage of where the young groom is sitting.

The photographer for the newspaper has been very busy as well, so both media outlets have lots of good images to include with their reports. The late night news covers the coach’s arrival in both of the local news segments, and the national news networks carry it too.

Both Marsha and Jasmine had expected the social elite of the city’s seniors to pick on them about their period dress, but they find themselves being viewed as the social elite tonight. They eat up the attention because they know it won’t last long. The prom is a great success, especially for two young couples who arrived by a vintage coach.

When it’s time for them to go Pat makes a phone call, and fifteen minutes later they leave just when their coach is arriving to pick them up. Just about everyone at the prom comes out to see what sort of car will pick them up, so they’re surprised to see the coach is back for them just as they walk out the door. Only the newspaper reporter is still on hand so her photographer gets photos of their departure.

The next day Pat hosts a visit from a Murphy cousin doing some background on the coach to expand on her report from last night so she can have an extra in the main weekly newspaper as well as the one in the daily paper today. As well as showing her the stables and telling her all about the work to refurbish the coach Pat has lots of photos of it before he started fixing it, plus all of the work he did on it and on the stables.

That week the weekly regional paper includes a four page spread on the coach and its refurbishment. It also includes the details on hire costs and how to go about hiring the coach for events.

Re-arranging The Stables

One of the good things to come out of the renovation work is the need to go through everything in storage. During this process Pat finds many things he never knew were there, and he also learns more about the way The Stables was originally set out. When Pat set up the old Tack Room as a coach room and stables for the Morgan horses it’s the first time horses have been in the building in nearly a hundred years due to the last of the work horses being sold off in the early 1920s when diesel tractors were bought to work the farmland.

Pat knew the horse population on the farm started to be reduced in the late 1800s, along with the size of the work force due to the lease size being reduced by a part of the lease being resumed by the government to make a new pastoral lease area as well as land for settlement as small farms. One thing Pat did notice in the journals, and he checked with the government records, was all of the land resumed for small farms from the two leases of Rivers and Michaels Station were immediately taken up by people who used to work on the two large properties. The southern half of Michaels Station became Murphy’s Farm when the family of one of the senior Michaels foremen left to set up their own operation, and a similar deal was done with the new lease cut from Rivers being taken up by the Dunn family. The growth of the village of Rivers into a town and its later expansion also cut into the viable farm area of Michaels Station. The development of more efficient horse drawn farm equipment and then mechanised equipment saw the horse population shrinking very fast until the last horse was sold in the 1920s. When the space needed for the horses and their care reduced the gear was moved about and more areas were opened up for use as storage areas for other things.

By the time Pat is involved in the management of Michaels Manor three of the original rooms in The Stables are full of gear while the main stable and coach area is split in two with a simple wall to make a garage for cars at the front with more storage in the bulk of the area. It’s in this area Pat found the materials removed in the 1950s refit and the coach he restored. Until he did his inspection and found the coach he had no idea they still owned any horse-drawn vehicles, but he found the coach and a buggy at the back of the original coach area. He thinks they were blocked in by the stored gear and forgotten about. He also finds two doorways in the back area, one into the Grooms’ Room and one into the Feed Store.

Months earlier Pat inspected all the storage areas as best as he could at the time, but he felt he hadn’t been able to see it all properly. What really worries him is finding the door into the Feed Store from the stables area since he didn’t find it on the other side, so he’s now thinking there may be a fifth room. In his spare time since completing the restoration of the Mansion he’s been carefully going through everything removed from the basement he didn’t know he had and reading the journals. In one of the old journals he finds a reference he’d forgotten about as it mentions the condition of the bins in the Grain Store, thus he now knows what he thought was the Feed Store is really the Grain Store. Armed with that knowledge, a long tape measure, and Dean’s help he measures the size of the rooms as best as he can so he can work out how big the Feed Store is. He also decides to rename the rooms to be more appropriate to their current usage, but that can wait until he’s finished making the changes.

After a very difficult day of measuring internal and external areas of The Stables Pat draws up a plan of the building from the outside sizes, the wall widths, and the internal dimensions of four of the rooms. The original building walls are all sandstone and the building was made in three long strips with one cross strip in the back two strips. The building is rectangular running toward the wood and the back section is a strip with the left two thirds as the Grain Store and the right third as the Tack Room; the next section is the same depth with the Feed Store on the left and the Grooms’ Room to the right; the rest of it was originally an open stables area for coaches and the horses with only low interior fencing as required, and there’s a wide drain down the centre of this area with a steel grate over it now. All but the Feed Store have an exterior access with it and the Grooms’ Room having interior access to the stables.

During the renovation a large part of the storage at the back of the garage was emptied out when the original room material was taken out and used in the rebuilding. Part of the Grain Store was cleared out when the old interior doors were removed, cleaned up, and fitted. This gave Pat the room to put away the things stored in the Tack Room and the car area of the garage while also giving him room to work on the coach where he could do so unobserved. Now is the time to get serious about sorting out what’s in storage, so he does.

The door to the new stables is left open so the horses can wander in and out to graze or take shelter from the weather as they wish. At the front of the hay and grain storage area is where Pat puts in a small bin for the storage of the feed for the fish and birds as it’s out of the way while it’s still easy to get at.

Pat’s next task is to empty and clean up the Grooms’ Room properly. Eve, Alice, and Dean help him with this task. They clear enough away from both sides of the interior door to carry everything through the door and put it in the back of the garage. They clean the entire interior before installing insulation and wood sheeting on the underside of the roof, just as he did in the new stables area. This improves insulation while leaving the hardwood rafters visible and available for use. All of the holes in the sandstone walls and floor are filled with the resin mix and the lot is sealed with the polymer coating the same way he did in the other room, and he’ll do it in the rest of the building when he works on the rooms. For now that’s all of the building work here until they decide what the long term use of the room will be. They start to carry materials back into the room from the garage area and stacking them according to what they bring in. All of the personal property like the trunks and similar stuff from both the basements goes along the side wall between the doors and the rest is stacked in neat piles of like gear against the other walls. It isn’t long before the room is stacked shoulder high with gear with only a few narrow aisles to walk down. Pat shuts and locks the outside door now they’ve easy interior access, then they’re attaching contents lists to the piles of gear to make later searching much easier.

All of the work in the old Grooms’ Room takes them a few weeks, but it also compacts down the space used by the gear now stacked there and the bulk of the garage area is now empty enough to really work in.

They next tackle the garage area by clearing out the side nearest to the Grooms’ Room as soon as they remove the wooden wall erected in 1923. With that side emptied they go to work cleaning it up, filling holes, and sealing it all. They plan to replace the windows to match the Mansion. Cleaning the drain trench is a lot of work to clean properly because of some ancient stains in it, but they get it clean in the end. Then it’s a case of shift everything across the room and do the other side: since the bulk of the space is taken up with cars, lifts, and trailers it’s easy. Installing the insulation and wood sheeting is easy, thanks to the lifts.

Pat has to wait for the new windows to be delivered. However, only the Stables, Grooms’ Room, and Tack Room have windows in them. When they’re stacking things in a room with windows they make sure to have the windows easy to get at to do the work when the new windows arrive. The windows finally arrive while they’re working on the main garage area so they do all of the windows in the building at once.

When Pat opens the door into the Feed Store he’s stunned because it’s stuffed to the ceiling with wood. He recognizes about a third of it as Oak, Cedar, Maple, and Mahogany, but he doesn’t recognise the type of wood the bulk of it is because it’s a very rich redwood unlike anything he’s seen before. The back half of the room is stacked with huge rough cut slabs with piles of long boards and planks stacked in front of them. It’s clear someone had a lot of trouble stuffing it all in because the last of the planks are stuck on top as if shoved in from the door. No way is he going to move all this wood anywhere today, or very soon. He shuts the door while thinking about what to do with it.

They move onto the Grain Store to empty it out. This is a harder task because everything has to come out of the store to be carried around the building and into the garage, for now. Most of it can go through the Grooms’ Room since it fits through the doors. However, the larger items have to go right around the building, out through the gates, and in via the garage doors while Dean and Alice take care of the horses to see they don’t get loose. After that it’s a simple job to do the room up with a good clean, insulation, and sealing. They decide to call this the Storeroom. The next task is to sit down and talk about what will be stored where in the building in the long term.

While they work on the Grain Store Mr Dove comes for a visit as Pat asked him to. Mr Dove is able to identify the wood as Sequoiadendron giganteum, which is the largest of the California Redwoods. Robin is very surprised at the size of the larger sheets because the wood is very brittle so most of it was lost or deemed not worth the trouble to take to the mill after the trees were felled. For such large sheets to be cut it means someone went to a lot of trouble and took great care to cut the tree down in sections then to cut the slabs to the sizes they are. It also shows care was taken in shipping them to Australia because that’s a long way by sailing ship then overland to be here in a room not opened since the late 1800s. Mr Dove cuts a bit off of the end of a small piece to take away to run some tests on it to see how good the wood is and what it can be used for. In the past much of the better Sequoia wood was used for ornaments and similar uses due to it not being good for general construction work in house frames and similar construction work because of how easily it breaks under stress. Mr Dove thinks it may be good for decorative panel work and for ornaments.

Toward the end of the year all of the rooms except the Feed Store are emptied, cleaned, insulated, sealed, and prepared for a more reasoned usage by the family. They stop work on the building so Pat can study for his finals and the ladies can work with the residents to plan the annual Christmas party because this year it will be a lot bigger than usual with all of the residents from the Trust properties joining in the family party on the grounds of Michaels Manor.

Things are left as they are for now. This gives them all, especially Pat, time to think about how to best use the space and materials they have. To help with this they have a huge list of what’s in the various storage areas. None of them can believe the varied items and quantities they have in the storerooms, or the good condition of some of the older items.

Other Construction

When Serge was building the barbecue area he removed the cement on that side of the building to replace it with cement like the stuff in the driveway. He also used some of the sandstone blocks in the work and he roofed it over to match the Mansion’s roof. While he’s not working on the garage Pat has Serge send crews out to replace the cement at the back and other side of the garage to match the work done as well as replace the old rusty tin roof with new material to match the Mansion. Just after they start work Pat decides to make the area at the back larger and have it roofed over like a lean-to. He also has them put up a water tank stand at the corner nearest to the new stables and to have the gutters run their water into it. Some of the sandstone blocks are used to create a nice looking outside water trough there for the horses.

While on-site getting the crews started Serge suggests to Pat to put in a medium sized open barn to store the remaining wood from the clearing done for the development. Pat agrees and it’s put in behind the garage, ten metres back and two metres in from the fence between the Mansion and The Cottage with ends to match the fencing and roofing like the carport. Although only eight by ten metres it’s large enough to house the remaining uncut wood and it’s protected from most of the weather on three sides. Done that way most people don’t see what it is or what’s in it. Serge gives it a strong sandstone like cement floor as well.