The Hale Road House
From James Donahue’s Journal
Doris was working at Marlette Community Hospital after losing her Sandusky job. One of the women she worked with, Sandy Sims and her husband Charles were active in Christian circles and Charles sold real estate. So when we started looking for a larger house for our expanding family, we chose him to help us find what we needed.
Our choice was a brick house with some acreage on Hale Road, a short strip of a road about a half mile off the main highway and five miles south of Sandusky. The place supposedly came with five acres of land, a large barn, fruit trees and a large yard. The property had been part of a farm that was purchased by a big farming operation owned by the Mezzo family. What we did not know was that part of the five acres we bought was cordoned off as part of the Mezzo farm and we never knew the difference. We also didn’t know was that our neighbor to the south, Dan Hale, had used heavy doses of weed killer on a field adjacent to the place where I planned a large garden plot, and it had an effect on my gardening for the first year or two. Also the house was haunted. But I will get into that in another chapter.
This was not going to be a happy home for us, although Doris and Jennifer both survived her birth while we lived there, and I did succeed in growing one of the finest and largest gardens in my life. I bought a large rototiller to work it and that garden became the primary hobby of that time in my life. The soil there was rich and there was almost nothing I could not produce. The fruit trees were abundant with cherries, plums, applies and various other fruits. Our barn was so massive it was almost scary. It had a second floor in one part of it. We gave Mr. Hale permission to store his self-propelled combine and straw crop in the main part of the barn. We got a horse for Susie, a small Shetland pony named Pepper that she kept in the barn. She also kept rabbits there.
The house had an attached garage, a full basement, kitchen, bath, large living room and a bedroom on the main floor, and two finished bedrooms on the second floor. There also was an unfinished attic room on the second floor that could have been finished as a bedroom. It never was finished, however, for reasons that I will explain later.
We bought the house “as-is” and it had not been lived in for several years. We found part of the plaster ceiling over an entrance way to the living room had fallen from rain damage so we knew we had a roof leak to repair. The large living room had a big picture window looking out to the road. I don’t remember if the terrible yellow carpet with orange flecks in the weave was already on the floor, or if we had it installed. I think it came with the house.
It was while we were living in this house that at least six major horrors befell us. We were hit by a terrible ice storm that knocked out power for two weeks. Our basement flooded and we were forced to move out of the house until the power came back on. The barn burned and the fire killed many of the fruit trees and almost took the house. Hale’s combine and hay crop burned up in the blaze. We were besieged by no-see-ums one season that drove us nuts until we found out what was attacking us. And we were all hit with one of the most virile bouts of influenza ever to strike our family. After the ice storm, I decided to install a wood burning furnace, bought a used pickup and chain saw, and Aaron and I began cutting wood on my father’s farm. It was while involved in wood cutting that I had a tree fall back on me, cracking my left leg at the knee cap. Also Aaron and I got ourselves exposed to some poison oak. Doris got exposed when she washed our clothes. My reaction was so bad I had to be hospitalized.
There will be detailed accounts later of all six events. They are all stories worth telling.
Aaron began showing his amazing genius for repairing mechanical things while living in this house. While his schooling still was going poorly, we had a sense that Aaron was not a dull boy. In fact, none of our children were. We learned that Susan scored at a genius level when given an IQ test in the Third Grade. That shocked her teacher who admitted to me during teacher-parent conference that Susan had previously been put in a slow-learner group because she had bad penmanship.
I discovered that Aaron could fix my power lawnmower and rototiller every time I had problems, which seemed to happen a lot. One day he said a friend of his had an old Bridgestone motorcycle in the barn at his home that could be bought for $50. Aaron asked if he could have the machine as a Christmas gift that year. The machine was all in parts and I thought it would be a safe thing to purchase, that Aaron would probably never get it back together and operating. How wrong I was. I bought the bike and it came home with us on the back of the pickup in all its pieces. We put the parts in a pile in the garage.
Aaron tinkered with that bike all winter and into the next spring. It gave him so much pleasure I was glad I agreed to buy it for him. Then one day, when Doris and I were sharing a cup of coffee in the kitchen, we heard a roar in the garage. When we looked, Aaron had the bike not only put back together, but he had it running!. I was extremely pleased and surprised at his accomplishment. A few days later, when making my morning rounds, the State Police had news for me. They announced that they had stopped Aaron on that bike. He had been riding it on the dirt roads a few miles from the house. He broke a string of laws. He was underage, he had no driver’s license, was not wearing a helmet, the bike was unlicensed, it lacked brake lights, a headlight, and there may have been a few other violations. Since he was my son, the troopers got a laugh out of it. They said they would let him go if he walked the bike home and never took it on the road again until he was old enough to drive and had it licensed and lighted.
Aaron also got interested in karate during that time. He signed up for a karate class in Sandusky and faithfully attended the course. I supported this because it seemed to give him a lot of personal self confidence. He eventually earned a black belt in this art of self-defense.
Strangely I do not remember much about what Ayn was doing in those days. She was doing very well in school and seemed to be the only one of our children who was getting good grades. She took a job at the Dairy Queen and we all began frequenting the place for a while because she was working there. But she was fired after the owner discovered that Ayn was dipping larger cones than she was supposed to. Ayn said she thought the size of the cones was too small for the amount people were being charged. After that she got a job washing dishes at the Harvest Haus Restaurant, located across the street from my office. She worked there for quite a while, until she graduated from high school.
In the meantime, Susan was really getting into horses. One day Dan Hale talked her into swapping Pepper for a young full-size Arabian horse from his stock. Susie loved that little pony and only agreed to the swap after Hale promised she could come over and see Pepper any time she wanted. It turned out that Hale sold Pepper to another party that could not handle the spirited little creature, and it was sold to a horse dealer in Peck. The pony ended up being sent to Canada for slaughter. Canadians eat horse meat. Suzie was sick about that. Also the horse she got from Hale turned up lame in one foot and never could be used as a show horse. Susie worked with that horse, however, broke it, and took it to the 4-H Fair at least one year and tried to show with it.
Somehow we did not feel that badly after Hale lost his straw and his combine in our barn fire. Later his daughter went insane and committed suicide by setting herself on fire. It was a cruel justice.
There was something very wrong about the Hale Road property. We even had a severe brew-ha-ha over the sale of the house to a man and his wife from Hamtramck. That was when we discovered that Chuck Sims and the Mezzo’s had cheated us out of land we supposedly had bought with the house.
From James Donahue’s Journal
Doris was working at Marlette Community Hospital after losing her Sandusky job. One of the women she worked with, Sandy Sims and her husband Charles were active in Christian circles and Charles sold real estate. So when we started looking for a larger house for our expanding family, we chose him to help us find what we needed.
Our choice was a brick house with some acreage on Hale Road, a short strip of a road about a half mile off the main highway and five miles south of Sandusky. The place supposedly came with five acres of land, a large barn, fruit trees and a large yard. The property had been part of a farm that was purchased by a big farming operation owned by the Mezzo family. What we did not know was that part of the five acres we bought was cordoned off as part of the Mezzo farm and we never knew the difference. We also didn’t know was that our neighbor to the south, Dan Hale, had used heavy doses of weed killer on a field adjacent to the place where I planned a large garden plot, and it had an effect on my gardening for the first year or two. Also the house was haunted. But I will get into that in another chapter.
This was not going to be a happy home for us, although Doris and Jennifer both survived her birth while we lived there, and I did succeed in growing one of the finest and largest gardens in my life. I bought a large rototiller to work it and that garden became the primary hobby of that time in my life. The soil there was rich and there was almost nothing I could not produce. The fruit trees were abundant with cherries, plums, applies and various other fruits. Our barn was so massive it was almost scary. It had a second floor in one part of it. We gave Mr. Hale permission to store his self-propelled combine and straw crop in the main part of the barn. We got a horse for Susie, a small Shetland pony named Pepper that she kept in the barn. She also kept rabbits there.
The house had an attached garage, a full basement, kitchen, bath, large living room and a bedroom on the main floor, and two finished bedrooms on the second floor. There also was an unfinished attic room on the second floor that could have been finished as a bedroom. It never was finished, however, for reasons that I will explain later.
We bought the house “as-is” and it had not been lived in for several years. We found part of the plaster ceiling over an entrance way to the living room had fallen from rain damage so we knew we had a roof leak to repair. The large living room had a big picture window looking out to the road. I don’t remember if the terrible yellow carpet with orange flecks in the weave was already on the floor, or if we had it installed. I think it came with the house.
It was while we were living in this house that at least six major horrors befell us. We were hit by a terrible ice storm that knocked out power for two weeks. Our basement flooded and we were forced to move out of the house until the power came back on. The barn burned and the fire killed many of the fruit trees and almost took the house. Hale’s combine and hay crop burned up in the blaze. We were besieged by no-see-ums one season that drove us nuts until we found out what was attacking us. And we were all hit with one of the most virile bouts of influenza ever to strike our family. After the ice storm, I decided to install a wood burning furnace, bought a used pickup and chain saw, and Aaron and I began cutting wood on my father’s farm. It was while involved in wood cutting that I had a tree fall back on me, cracking my left leg at the knee cap. Also Aaron and I got ourselves exposed to some poison oak. Doris got exposed when she washed our clothes. My reaction was so bad I had to be hospitalized.
There will be detailed accounts later of all six events. They are all stories worth telling.
Aaron began showing his amazing genius for repairing mechanical things while living in this house. While his schooling still was going poorly, we had a sense that Aaron was not a dull boy. In fact, none of our children were. We learned that Susan scored at a genius level when given an IQ test in the Third Grade. That shocked her teacher who admitted to me during teacher-parent conference that Susan had previously been put in a slow-learner group because she had bad penmanship.
I discovered that Aaron could fix my power lawnmower and rototiller every time I had problems, which seemed to happen a lot. One day he said a friend of his had an old Bridgestone motorcycle in the barn at his home that could be bought for $50. Aaron asked if he could have the machine as a Christmas gift that year. The machine was all in parts and I thought it would be a safe thing to purchase, that Aaron would probably never get it back together and operating. How wrong I was. I bought the bike and it came home with us on the back of the pickup in all its pieces. We put the parts in a pile in the garage.
Aaron tinkered with that bike all winter and into the next spring. It gave him so much pleasure I was glad I agreed to buy it for him. Then one day, when Doris and I were sharing a cup of coffee in the kitchen, we heard a roar in the garage. When we looked, Aaron had the bike not only put back together, but he had it running!. I was extremely pleased and surprised at his accomplishment. A few days later, when making my morning rounds, the State Police had news for me. They announced that they had stopped Aaron on that bike. He had been riding it on the dirt roads a few miles from the house. He broke a string of laws. He was underage, he had no driver’s license, was not wearing a helmet, the bike was unlicensed, it lacked brake lights, a headlight, and there may have been a few other violations. Since he was my son, the troopers got a laugh out of it. They said they would let him go if he walked the bike home and never took it on the road again until he was old enough to drive and had it licensed and lighted.
Aaron also got interested in karate during that time. He signed up for a karate class in Sandusky and faithfully attended the course. I supported this because it seemed to give him a lot of personal self confidence. He eventually earned a black belt in this art of self-defense.
Strangely I do not remember much about what Ayn was doing in those days. She was doing very well in school and seemed to be the only one of our children who was getting good grades. She took a job at the Dairy Queen and we all began frequenting the place for a while because she was working there. But she was fired after the owner discovered that Ayn was dipping larger cones than she was supposed to. Ayn said she thought the size of the cones was too small for the amount people were being charged. After that she got a job washing dishes at the Harvest Haus Restaurant, located across the street from my office. She worked there for quite a while, until she graduated from high school.
In the meantime, Susan was really getting into horses. One day Dan Hale talked her into swapping Pepper for a young full-size Arabian horse from his stock. Susie loved that little pony and only agreed to the swap after Hale promised she could come over and see Pepper any time she wanted. It turned out that Hale sold Pepper to another party that could not handle the spirited little creature, and it was sold to a horse dealer in Peck. The pony ended up being sent to Canada for slaughter. Canadians eat horse meat. Suzie was sick about that. Also the horse she got from Hale turned up lame in one foot and never could be used as a show horse. Susie worked with that horse, however, broke it, and took it to the 4-H Fair at least one year and tried to show with it.
Somehow we did not feel that badly after Hale lost his straw and his combine in our barn fire. Later his daughter went insane and committed suicide by setting herself on fire. It was a cruel justice.
There was something very wrong about the Hale Road property. We even had a severe brew-ha-ha over the sale of the house to a man and his wife from Hamtramck. That was when we discovered that Chuck Sims and the Mezzo’s had cheated us out of land we supposedly had bought with the house.