The Flower and Garden Club was in an uproar. Not only had Mrs. Crosby been dealing in black market ornamental trees, but it turns out she was also dealing in illegal oak trees.

The club had originally voted and raised money for maple trees. Their plan was to process the syrup and sell it as a fundraiser to continually support the club. The money for the maple trees was gone, along with Mrs. Crosby who had skipped town. There was a rumor going around that she went out west to try to make some deals on giant red oaks. As the club tried to figure things out the local Rotary club stepped up.

They made a deal that if they could plant some pine trees on Dead Man’s Curve (they wanted to use them in a Christmas scene in the winter) then they would help raise money for more maples. The ladies happily accepted their offer.

It was agreed that the pines actually looked quite stately, so the Rotary club was given permission to sprinkle a few more throughout the town.

When the new trees arrived the ladies got busy showing the landscapers where to plant them. The town was really starting to look good!

They even planted a few shrubberies near the tracks to pretty up the edges.

As trees were being installed around the town it was noticed that there was also activity at the north bend of the line.

A vacant building was now occupied with a little bit of activity happening down there in the evenings. Nobody in town seemed to know who had bought it or for what purpose. Some of the husbands of the flower and garden club insisted that they would help out by planting some shrubs down at that end of the line, just to make things pretty.

They spent as much time as they could on that little mound, but they couldn’t determine what was happening in the building.

Then cars started appearing in the parking lot. Train cars would be pulled up alongside of the building one day, and the next day they would be gone. What was going on down there?

Nobody has any idea, so the mystery continues…

As the town started to establish themselves they had to wait for power to be run to them. The coal-powered electric plant that supplied power for their part of the state just hadn’t had time to run new lines that way. As the town started to grumble, the president of the railroad stepped in and made a deal with the power company. In exchange for getting Jayville high on their priority list, they would do some extra maintenance work for the line that helped deliver the 80 car loads of coal to their plant each day. The power company agreed and started setting poles and running temporary lines.

Finally, the village felt like they were coming into the 20th century!

Then the progress stopped. Why? The power company could set the poles, but the electricians who would end up running the lines were part of the Union and it was a holiday weekend, so nothing was going to happen for a while.

The town had requested LED lighting so that it would be more energy efficient. These particular electricians had never installed these types of LED lamps, so it was an interesting process.

First they laid out a special electro-static discharging blanket so that the LED would not be accidentally damaged. Then they laid out their wire in the configuration that would be needed to hook up this LED to the power grid.

Once that group was done they called in the second group. The guys in this second group were specially certified to solder the wires to the LED.

Once they had soldered the wires and twisted them around each other, the last group was called in to actually install the LED on the street lamp. They could only do this with the supervision of the second group, however, just in case the solder joint broke and had to be redone.

When all lamps were wired they called the power company back in to re-install the posts that had been removed. Again, all three Union groups had to be available and supervise the re-installation just in case something happened and the process would have to start all over again. It was very tedious work.

But after five months, the nine poles were installed and working!

The only thing that the village lacked, now, was their church. A committee was assembled and soon had built a beautiful structure.

There had been some debate about where to set the church. After all, with a church comes the church cemetery and you would need a little bit of space. Luckily the town isn’t very large so they didn’t feel a huge lot would be necessary.

Progress has stalled on the church, however. It seems the price of wood and paint was more than anticipated so they have to wait for more money before they can purchase and install the stained glass windows.

Yes, Jayville is really coming together! Work still continues on the town buildings, but just a little walk down Main Street shows the potential of this beautiful little village.