Story-A-Day #90: Founder's Folly

FOUNDER'S FOLLY

It had been one of my favourite urban legends growing up, a mystery unlike any other in our small town. There were others, like the creepy mental patient who had escaped from the psychiatric hospital and lived in the woods on the escarpment. Rumour had it that he had dug a network of tunnels underground and would snatch unsuspecting children down into the darkness through strategically placed, and all but invisible, hatches. There was the old Boogeyman who lived in the mayor’s mansion, a withered old ghoul who was only ever seen on the nights surrounding Halloween. There were others too, the monster in the lake who would often tip the boats of (drunken) fishermen, the beautiful nymph who danced naked in the swamp, her perfect body gleaming in the gloom.

My personal favourite though had always been the lost treasure of our town’s founding father, a man who was as visionary as he was careless. The legend said that he had made a fortune forging a path into the northern wilds and exploiting the lands for their forests and minerals. He had used his wealth to build a city, and just like Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, he built it and they came.

The town quickly flourished and there was a constant influx of people for the first decade. Miners, loggers, fur traders, and women of loose virtue flooded the region with the promise of easy money and a good life. The Founding Father ensured that his presence and position was known and often built shrines to himself. One of the last completed was a fountain in the heart of the city; a construct that he described as a metaphor for the life and prosperity that he flowed into the region. It was bombastic and it made perfect sense.

The story goes that the Founding Father became enamored with the casinos that had sprung up along the riverbanks and on one particular night of heavy drinking, he lost it all. He had gambled away everything, but when the man he lost to arrived to collect, the Founder’s mansion, an edifice widely regaled for its splendor, was devoid of all treasures and refinements.

By the following morning, it had been razed to the ground. The Founding Father was never seen again – except in legends that told of a familiar old man who arrived in the city years later and spent his days feeding pigeons by the fountain, until the day he was found floating face down in the splashing waters or prosperity.

Of all our myths, I was sure that the one relating to the missing treasures of the Founding Father was the one that most likely germinated from truth, and now I had proof. Through the Lands and Registry Department, I had ascertained the former location of the great razed mansion and I was now the proud occupant one of the half dozen homes that now exist on the plot.

And this is where it gets interesting. After some careful surveying of my yard, I detected an underground pocket, and under the guise of digging a hole for a fountain (appropriately ironic, I thought), I uncovered an old network of wooden tunnels. Unfortunately, the tunnel came to a quick end, but with further research of the Public Records, I am confident that the destination of those tunnels lies directly beneath that fountain.

It’s covered for the winter now. I suppose I could be wrong about all of this, but it only makes sense to me that the Founding Father’s wealth and riches had to disappear somewhere. In the bowels of that fountain makes perfect sense and all that remains for me to do now is figure out an easy way in, or do it the hard way and excavate my tunnels.

Either way, this adventure has only just begun.