Peyton Place is a popular, best selling novel
about
the lives of families in a small American town. When reading the
book one constantly is obsessed by the thought that if such events
could
occur in Peyton Place, why couldn’t similar events be possible in
Haddonfield.
This probability was reborn when the telephone conversation is recalled
between a Haddonfield oldster and myself. She called to talk
about
“The Days of Yore.” Reminiscing about happenings back in her
girlhood
days, she told me of some things that could have been a chapter in
Payton
Place. She and her girl friend were only eighteen years old when
it happened. About sixty years ago a very beautiful girl lived
with
her mother and father in one of the big houses up on Washington
Avenue.
Here name will be Lois. My informant said that on three or more
occasions
she and her friend would see Lois and her boy friend strolling down
Lafayette
Avenue towards the railroad track with a blanket and newspapers in
their
arms. Once she asked her mother where they would be going and was
told that when she was older she would know about such things, and the
subject was dropped. In a few years she learned that the area
around
the Mountwell pool was where those two young people were headed to read
their Sunday papers. One Sunday the two girls were returning from
a trip down town in a in a snow storm. The flakes were so
thick
that the opposite sidewalk was not visible. Out of the storm
suddenly
appeared the above mentioned boy friend. He was running furiously
with wild eyes and coat unbuttoned, and went part then without even
noticing
they were there. Before they could discuss what had happened,
another
figure ran out of the storm towards them with gun in hand. His
derby
hat was askew, and his overcoat was flying wide. Lois’s father
always
wore a derby. She said she never learned the finish of this tale,
but it would have been easy to keep any casualty a secret as the father
was a well know man in town. Lois finally moved to Pittsburgh,
and
she come hack to Haddonfield a few years later, divorced. The
story
was that she had a pet dog that she took to bed with her. Here
husband
objected so she got a divorce. Is it possible that the dog’s name
was Fred? How a chapter of Haddonfield Place has been
completed.
The only bad feature in that the book would be longer that Gone with
the
Wind, but it would always be condensed for the Reader’s Digest.