Sorry, I was trying to edit my previous post, but I messed it up. Patrickm’s examples of extremely unfortunate timing on DS had me laughing out loud!
Yes, talking about when “bad things happen to good people,” both Ezra Braithwaite and Tom Jennings are perfect examples of that.
Ezra had to have been Collinsport’s oldest and most venerated citizen. His family must have run the Braithwaite Jewelry Store in Collinsport dating all the way back to the Revolutionary War. (Maybe John Adams bought his wife, Abigail, an extra special silver-filigreed brooch or pen at the Braithwaite Jewelry Store as a wedding anniversary gift?)
And, I have to admire the fact that Ezra, now in his nineties, was still driving himself around town, even driving
out to Collinwood on his last day on Earth. However, you have to wonder if Sheriff George Patterson was
becoming very concerned about the venerable Mr. Braithwaite still getting behind the wheel of a car at his
advanced age?
I could see Sheriff Paterson stopping by Ezra’s shop and saying to him, “Now, Ezra, I know how you still love to drive, but at age 90, I think it may be too risky for you to continue to drive around town, but, especially up that
steep and winding road on that hill leading up to Collinwood. Remember how Roger Collins, a much younger
man than you, almost bought it, driving on that dangerous road? Maybe you should arrange for one of your
great-grandchildren to drive you around from now on?”
And, local handyman Tom Jennings, who must have been sort of like Goober Pyle on “The Andy Griffith Show,”
was probably another popular fellow in Collinsport. While Tom’s brother Chris, who was likely the valedictorian
of his graduating class at Collinsport High school, and was studying on a full scholarship to be an
architect at Georgia Tech University, Tom was like George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” remaining in his
hometown and content to toil at his earnest trade.
Whenever someone in Collinsport needed a quick repair job: to fix a hole in their roof, to install a new radiator
or to unplug a clog in the kitchen sink, they’d call good, old Tom Jennings to do the job. Tragically, the unfailingly helpful and good-natured Tom Jennings was just helping out Nicholas Blair, a newcomer to town,
with some much needed repairs in that isolated House-by-the-Sea on the Collinwood estate when Tom made that unfortunate and, ultimately, deadly decision to check out that room in the basement of that eerie house.
Requiem aeternam, Messrs. Braithwaite and Jennings.