Back to My Story, One Year Later

It turned out that the person who sold Seidel's grocery store to us also owned the "mysterious building". One day, he asked us if we would be interested in purchasing it.

Oh, my, I was going to have a chance to see it, finally!

So he opened the door, we went in, looked around, and it all was a terrible mess. Let me put it this way: that place had seen better days. But what did it have? What was the only sure thing that building had? Potential. Lots of it. A dream was inside those brick walls, just waiting to be released.

That dream had been pushed far down for a long time in that place, and only a dreamer's eye could still glimpse it. As luck as we had, we counted four dreamer's eyes, my husband's and mine.

The deal was done. The mysterious building was ours.

That Mysterious Building

Right next to the house where Jerry grew up, there was this beautiful old brick building. Nobody lived there. I was very curious about it and tried to see the interior through the windows, but they had shades and the door glass was painted. The door, of course, was locked.

On the doorstep, there was a plate that read "US Coast and Geodetic Survey Benchmark. Elev. 2333.178 Feet Above Mean. Sea Level. $250 Fine or Imprisonment for Disturbing This Mark. 1925"

The building started being the Bank of Belvidere, and later was a Post Office and a grocery store at some point. Jerry's family had owned the grocery store for a while many years ago.

The more I knew about it, the bigger was my curiosity.

Would I ever see what those walls so zealously kept?