TED NUMBER TWO
I was dating at that time, although not steadily. I decided that a night out on occasion would help me keep my sanity. All work and no play is not a good thing.
In July I received a call from a man wanting to play poker at Foxwoods Casino. He requested a room for Saturday night. I was enchanted by his voice, so deep and soothing. I said nothing to him about that, feeling a little foolish on the phone. When he arrived I checked him into his room. He touched my face and then backed away. I didn’t back away but just stood there and smiled, a strange reaction for me. He was different somehow. Trustworthy maybe.
Well, he (his name was also Ted, but I am going to call him by his given name, Tadashi—my children came to call him “Ted number two”) came every weekend and then in August asked me to go to the casino with him. I had put $20 in a slot machine on two occasions in the past but otherwise knew nothing of casinos and gambling. Tadashi had been playing poker during the day and was down $300. While just making conversation, he asked me if I could win it back for him at the blackjack table. I explained to him that I had never played blackjack. That did not seem to matter. He handed me $100 and off to a $5 table we went. I was given a couple of lessons and then we started to play. I just kept winning and within a half hour had won back all of Tadashi’s money. We had dinner and then he drove me back to Captain Grant’s. I had to get up early to make breakfast for my guests in the morning.
The following weekend Tadashi came back to stay and again asked me out. I had the same luck at the blackjack table again, winning about $300. The gambling was making me quite nervous. I loved penny ante poker, but $5 bets were way above my comfort level. It didn’t seem to matter to Tadashi.
The following weekend Tadashi left on vacation with someone else he had been seeing. He said he would call me when he got back, but that didn’t happen. Instead he waited two weeks and then called. He wasn’t certain that he wanted to see me again. I thought, “Then why are you calling me? Of course you want to see me.”
At the end of the conversation he told me that he had business in Hartford in two weeks and would come to Captain Grant’s after the business was completed. “Do you have a room?” he asked. Of course I had a room. This man was so infuriating, but I liked him too much to say no.
On Sunday after breakfast he asked me to spend the afternoon in Mystic with him. I agreed. We stepped into a small restaurant on Main Street that had a tiny bay window with a table for two. We sat for hours, just talking. It had been years since I had met anyone who was so easy to be around. It was after that meeting that I remembered the script from my earlier meeting with the psychic: You will marry Ted. “Hmm,” I thought. “What should I make of this?”
My birthday was coming up the following week and Tadashi asked me to come and stay at his home for the night. He lived in Monroe, on the other side of the state. I said yes and made my plans for my fiftieth birthday.
My children took me to the Lighthouse Inn in New London for dinner. It was luxurious. I told them, at dinner, that I was driving to Tadashi’s home in Monroe after we left the restaurant. They weren’t a bit keen on the idea. Glen was especially aghast. I told him that I was now fifty and was going to do what pleased me. Actually, I had done what pleased me for most of my life. I certainly wasn’t going to change that on my fiftieth birthday.
Tadashi had given me directions that were incorrect and I got lost. Needless to say, I found my way, arriving about an hour later than expected. He greeted me with two lovely gifts and made my day end on a wonderful note. Well, it was more than that actually.
Tadashi had started to come to Preston to help me install new electrical lines in the basement. He was an electrical engineer and knew a bit about installing electricity. Ted number one was still working, and I decided that I better introduce them. It went well. Thank God!
Ted was wrapping up work on the two new front bathrooms. It wouldn’t take long, and he would be returning to Minnesota. The fixtures were in and the tile work was just about complete. That is when he told me that there was no way he could get the Buick Roadmaster back home. He also told me that he was going to give the car to a person he had met at the restaurant down the street. I was furious but kept my feelings to myself. He still couldn’t quite get it that he had a son who might like to have the car.
That week the man he was going to give the car to told him he didn’t want it, so Ted gave it back to me and asked for $1,600 in place of the car for the work he had done. It was all the cash I had, but he had given me so much more. I was astounded that he had asked for so little. I withdrew all of my money from the bank and gave it to him. This was to be the first of several times that I sold my Buick Roadmaster.
Before Ted left for Minnesota, he went to see our daughter, Holly, nearby in Waterford, Connecticut. On his way back to Captain Grant’s, he had his truck radio tuned to his favorite Norwich station. As he turned off Interstate 395 onto Route 2A, he saw a rather large delegation of people by the off ramp. The radio station was live at the goings-on. They announced that Congressman Gejdenson had just dedicated the Last Green Valley Corridor. They also talked about federal grants that were being given to small businesses that were historic and run by the owners who had done a restoration of the property. These grants were matching grants. The federal government would pay half and the recipient would pay the other half.
The front lawn of Captain Grant’s was a mess. The original front stone wall was covered completely with dirt, and the dirt was covered with weeds. It was not a good presentation for a bed and breakfast. If we were successful, the grant would be used for restoration of the front of the property.
Ted said that Tadashi and I should try for the grant. We talked about it on the weekend, and on Monday morning Tadashi called me from work. He had spoken with Gejdenson’s office. Yes, there was a matching grant. However, the grant application window was due to close that Thursday. “Oh God,” I said. “Can we get this done?” Ted said that he would handle all of the paperwork. I would do everything else. I had to get two bids from contractors. I called Stonecroft, another bed and breakfast, and asked them if they would let their landscaper give us a bid. I then went to our local greenhouse and got a price on plants and grass seed.
Tadashi sent me the proposal, and on Thursday morning I was ready to go to the Last Green Valley office. It was thirty miles away and only 10:00 a.m., so I had plenty of time. My daughter was with me, and we thought we would make it an adventure. We could have lunch together and do a bit of antique shopping.
It was an adventure all right—we got lost! Neither of us ever got lost. The deadline for the proposal was 4:00 p.m. I was beginning to panic. It was after 3:00 and we still couldn’t find the place. We stopped at a gas station and they had no idea where this place was. Street signs didn’t help. We took a turn on an unlikely street and there it was. I entered the Last Green Valley building at 3:45 p.m. There were three women there. One of them said, “Sorry, but you are too late.” Then they all laughed.
On Friday we got the call that we had won the grant. With the extra money from the grant we were able to sculpt the front yard, reseed the lawn, and plant almost a hundred feet of rose bushes. In the front of the original stone wall, the debris and weeds were removed and pea rock was added in their place. The once sad-looking front landscape was nearing beautiful.
In October 1996, Ted returned to Minnesota. Our relationship had changed. I had respect for him and all of the personal changes that he had made in his life. I wished him well.
The Buick Roadmaster remained on my front lawn and the sign was again put on the car. After a couple of days, a woman stopped by and wanted to buy the car on payments of $100 a week. It was to be a birthday surprise for her husband. We signed a contract and she gave me a $100 down payment. If she stopped making payments, the car would remain in my name. After eight payments I stopped getting money. About a month later I received a letter from San Diego. Her husband had been transferred from the New London submarine base in Connecticut and she wouldn’t be getting the car. The $800 was mine to keep. I was no longer receiving unemployment and was existing on the small bit of rental income that I was taking in.
I had to sell the car, so I ran an ad in the local newspaper. I guess it was time to let the car go. I finally sold it to a man who I thought would give it tender loving care. He was disabled and would work on the car at his leisure. So now I had two more complete bedrooms, $800 from the car’s first buyer, and another $2,400 from the final sale of the Buick. What a car! Thank you!
That winter Tadashi asked me if I needed him to make anything for the bed and breakfast. I thought about what I needed most, and two four-poster canopy beds came to mind. I was shocked at myself for mentioning something so grand, but I was even more stunned when he agreed to make them. For an electrical engineer, woodworking was just a hobby. He had to buy equipment and then there was the wood. It was cherry and came to an astounding $1,500 for just two queen-size beds. Throughout the winter we worked on the beds together in Tadashi’s Monroe home. Our relationship was getting stronger as we were getting to know each other.
Spring was almost here. One Sunday I drove to Monroe to be with Tadashi. I had no guests and thought this would be a good time to get away from the business. I pulled into his driveway, got out of the car, and gasped. The house across the street on the left-hand side was being painted green. My mouth dropped open. The psychic had been right. It had been many months since I had visited the psychic and was told about Ted and the green house across the street. When I returned home, I pulled out my notes from that session to see what else she had told me. I was amazed. Tadashi was the one.
I had planned to open two more rooms in May. That meant going in front of the Preston zoning board once again. I was surprised to discover that they were not at all interested in having more than two bedrooms in a bed and breakfast. There were now two other bed and breakfasts in town, and they were also owned by women. I contacted the owners to see if they were interested in enlarging their available space. They both said yes. It would benefit all three of us if we could have access to more income from our businesses.
I decided that, given the reluctance of the board to let us have four rooms, we should go for eight instead. The meeting was a typical zoning board meeting. Nobody chuckled or laughed. They asked a lot of questions. One board member said, “We just don’t need these cheap little hotels all over town.” It was obvious that we were not getting any support.
Then one member put his thumbs in his suspenders, stood up, and said, “Let’s not have the little women work so hard. Let’s give them four rooms.” It passed and now the three little women at the meeting could go to their homes and enlarge their businesses. The zoning regulations had just changed. We could now all have four rooms.
April arrived, and Easter Sunday was not far off. I got a call from a prospective guest and filled my current two bedrooms for the holy weekend. The next day, my son called and said that he had also filled the two rooms. I phoned Tadashi at work and told him that I had to set up the two new rooms right away. We were going to have four couples and we had only two rooms. We loaded the four-poster beds into my Acura hatchback and headed back across the state to Preston. The beds come totally apart and are just a pile of lumber until you set them up.
After trying the beds out in different rooms, I finally made my mind up and chose the Elizabeth and Amy rooms for the four posters. As I write this twenty years later, Tadashi still remembers the bed fiasco: assemble, disassemble, set up in another room, and so on.
Later that year, the weekend before Memorial weekend, I had only two rooms rented. At 8:30 in the morning, a half hour before breakfast, my guests came down to the kitchen. Their heads were wrapped in towels and they didn’t look at all happy. “We have run out of water,” one of them said. Sure enough, when I turned on the kitchen tap, nothing happened. I was out of water. I informed the guests that the well was probably slow and that I wouldn’t use any water until the reserve tank was full. We decided to have breakfast, which would give the well about an hour to catch up. The guests would be able to finish showering after that.
Besides feeling downright humiliated, I was very concerned about the water situation. The following weekend I would have all four rooms full and not enough water to service my guests. Where was my help from the universe?
After breakfast Tadashi and I talked about what we would do. Option one: we could get a tanker to come in and backfill the well. Option two: we could get a tanker to come in and stay in the driveway while supplying water directly to our tank in the basement. Option three: we could tell the guests that they had nowhere to stay. We had to do something. Foxwoods Casino was open and the area was being overwhelmed with travelers every weekend. Memorial weekend would be even worse. There would be nowhere to send our guests.
The next morning Tadashi drove to the other side of the state and returned to his job. At 11:00 a.m. he called me and said, “What are you going to do?”
I said, “I’m going to pray to St. Anthony to help me find water.” With my next breath, my jaw dropped open. I was standing in the kitchen doorway looking out the dining room window when a well rig came up my driveway. I said to Tadashi, “You won’t believe what just came up the driveway: a well rig.”
“What is it doing there?” he asked.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to go find out. I’ll call you back.”
“Don’t let it get away,” he responded.
I went to the driver’s side of the rig. The driver rolled down the window. He said hi and informed me that they were there to put in the well. I said, “How much is this going to cost?”
“Whatever is on your contract,” he said.
“Could you please call the office and find out what the contract says?”
The driver answered, “Don’t you want a well? We have the permit and moving this rig is very hard to do.”
“Yes, I want a well. I just don’t remember signing a contract with anyone.”
I told them that I would wait for them inside the house until they finished their phone call. I paced back and forth in the dining room, looking out the window at the rig every minute or two. It took a grueling fifteen minutes for them to come into the house. I had the men sit at the dining room table and tell me what they found out.
“Well, there seems to be a problem. The office can’t find a contract and they don’t know how this mistake was made. Do you need a well?”
I answered in the affirmative but told them I had to work out a price with the office. The last thing they wanted to do was move the well rig. The last thing I wanted was for them to move the well rig.
For the next hour I negotiated a price with the main office for the new well. I decided to pay per foot for the digging instead of a set fee. I hoped they would find water not too far into the ground. Oh yes, I was still praying harder than ever. I couldn’t believe what was happening. They had a drawing of my property from city hall and they had pulled a permit. Then the well bit broke. They got a new bit from wherever headquarters was and began digging again the following day.
My backyard was a muddy mess. There was no longer any grass from the well to the driveway, only mud. On Tuesday they reached bedrock, and by Wednesday I had a 24-gallon-a-minute well gushing out of the ground. I was ecstatic. They only had to go down 110 feet. Then they had the water tested by a lab. It was pure artesian well water.
It took me a long time to stop saying thank you to St. Anthony. All of my prayers were being answered. I made certain that I didn’t ask for anything frivolous. Some will call this a coincidence, but I call it a downright miracle.