Angel Without Wings No.4

[Zochitl]

George Mervin settled about the same time in River Falls as Allen C. Foster’s grandfather. He was a hard working young man, having made his money fur trading.   He had bought most of the land that took up the vast forest beyond the town. He would do his own cutting and take the logs close to the river nearby. Then he would go to the East coast and make contracts with the saw mills and pulp mills there. Taking the logs down the river was a very hard job and sometimes big amounts would be stuck going down the river and you needed expert loggers, which he hired to guide them.     

  Once George Mervin was established and his log company was running smoothly, he married a local girl from River Falls by the name of Merilee Sanders. Her father was a doctor at the hospital in town  and he mostly took care of all the loggers as they became sick or were in accidents. They had three children. There were two boys; Tom, Henry, and their young sister; Marilynn.

    When the Mervin  boys became old enough, and with the guidance of their father, they immediately were placed to learn the business and they all helped their father prosper and grow. His daughter Marilynn was sent to a private school on the East coast, where she learned to be a refined young lady enjoying the finer things of life.  She rarely wanted to come back to River Falls and would always have some excuse to come home.  Her brothers would tell their parents  that she had become very spoiled.  After she finished her schooling she met a young financier from a very wealthy family in New York and decided to marry him.   Her parents were disappointed knowing they would not see her often but complied with her wishes giving her one of the finest weddings in River Falls. Many of the New York society came to the wedding and were amazed that in such a backwoods country her father brought in caterers from the best restaurants in New York and gave her a lavish wedding party in their big mansion that he had built on his five acre estate. Mervin was a down-to-earth man and invited several of the townspeople including the Foster family who brought their best photographers and reporters writing a wonderful article in their paper. Marilyn was very upset about that but her father finally put his foot down and reminded her that this is where he had made his fortune and would never shun the townsfolk that had helped him through the years.

      Some years went by and everything began to change.  Mervin's log business was changing as the new generation of newspaper business was also changing.  Things had become more technical for both companies through the years.   The Sentinel had flourished from a one room plant on Maine Street where 300 newspapers were printed on a hand press to a big conglomerate that spread to neighboring towns and cities. The logging business had expanded so much  that it even had places in neighboring Canada. They had both of them become more modernized and there wasn’t time for squabbling anymore.

The Foster boys, James and Kevin, after finishing in  a private Journalism school, were now running their father’s business. Even though Allen C. still had his “fingers in the dough” in the paper, as the elder Foster would tell them. Their great-grandfather had long passed on and Allan C. Foster had run the paper until the boys finished their schooling.  Now the young Fosters had remodeled and built more extensions to the building and there were 150 reporters and 300 more personnel while also acquiring radio stations and television stations.  James married a young lady from California and had a girl naming her Beth, while Kevin married a local town girl and they had twins. A boy and a girl.  Their names were Allan and Angela.  The town had gown.

Tom Mervin and his brother Henry both worked hard in the lumber business of their father and eventually they also got married and each had one son;  They also went to the best schools and then they took over their father’s  business. Running it with modern machinery and remodeling the plant with better equipment it continued to be one of the top logging companies in the country.

The young men in both families tried to keep a distance between them but in reality they had become friends when they were growing up starting in the same schools in town together.  To keep appearances for the sake of their parents, they would not see each other very much. Only when they would go horse-back riding in the woods they would get together and enjoy each other’s company comparing notes about each other’s lives. The girls stayed further apart but were decent to each other when they met. They knew that the Foster boys would not say anything in their newspaper to hurt the business because times had changed and their ideas had also changed about the feud their great grandparents and parents still held.   Besides were so many other things more important  now to take care of. The third generation was getting over that so it seemed.