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  We eventually made it to US1 and I looked up and down the highway to see all the small mom and pop motels that dominated this highway in the 50s. There were also several diners that I remembered.

  By now our group had started splitting off into small groups and going in all different directions and there were only, Joe, Rory, Marion and me left in our group.

  So far I hadn’t commented on when and where we were and I wanted to make sure before I said anything.

  “Let’s go in this diner and get something to drink,” I said and then remembered we had no money.

  I looked around and realized they had already gone in. I needed to catch up with them before they ordered something.

  They had been led to a booth by a waitress with blond hair and buck teeth. She was handing them a menu, “I’ll be back to take your order,” she said and winked at Rory.

  “I think she had something in her eye,” Marion said and I couldn’t tell if she was joking so I let it go.

  I took the menus from them, “You can’t order anything. We don’t have any money.”

  “You mean you have to have money to get something to drink too?” Joe asked.

  “You have to have money for everything.” As I was saying this I glanced at the next table and noticed a man reading a newspaper. It was the St. Augustine Record and I cocked my head trying to make out the date.

  He looked up and smiled and he would have been good looking except he was overweight. It struck me then that I hadn’t seen any overweight people since I had left earth.

  He closed the paper and handed it to me, “I’m done with it if you want it,” he said and I thanked him. The date was July 23, 1954.

  “Wow!” I said and the other three looked at me. “We are in St. Augustine, Florida, United States of America, on earth, in the year 1954.”

  “That’s before the time you left here,” Joe said. “You would have been what, around 18?”

  “I would have been 18 and just graduated from high school last month. Also, Joe, I would have married Dean next month. He is still 18 now and I’m 36. This is really messing up my brain. Look at me, Joe. Do I still look 36 or have I gone back to age 18?”

  “You’re still the woman I love and look like you’ve always looked to me.”

  The waitress came over then and asked what we would like. “I forgot, we have no money,” I said, “so we’ll just be on our way.”

  She stood there shaking her head as we left. “We’ve got to find a way to get some money,” I told them. “Also, I’m worried about the others. They could end up in jail if they get something and don’t pay for it. They could end up being arrested for shop lifting.”

  “For lifting a shop? I don’t think anyone’s strong enough.” Rory said.

  I laughed, “No, for stealing something out of a shop. We need to have a meeting as soon as we get back so I can explain about money.”

  “It seems to be mighty important here,” Joe said.

  “And it gets even more important as the years go by. You wouldn’t believe it.”

  “How can we get jobs and earn money so that we can buy some stuff?” Marion asked.

  “I don’t see how we can because you have to have a social security card.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a card issued by the government so they can keep track of who’s working etc. so they can tax them.”

  I realized this could get complicated to explain to them so I finally said, “Don’t worry about it. We’ll sort it out later. But we need to find the others so they won’t get into trouble.”

  We were only a few feet from the diner when I heard a familiar voice and looked back. There was Dean, the boy I had married in my other life. He looked so young and so cute.

  He had a girl on his arm and they were laughing and talking as they went into the diner. He looked a lot like Fabian who was a famous heartthrob who came along a few years later.

  The girl had blond hair with freckles across her nose. Her hair was in a ponytail. I watched as they took a booth and started kissing.

  I was smiling as I turned around to say something to Joe but realized they had left me as they made their way down the street. I ran to catch up with them.

  We finally found everyone. Some of them were just sitting on park benches watching people go by. Some were wandering around like they were in a daze.

  We had a meeting as soon as we got back to the cave entrance. Everyone was trying to talk at once and it was obvious that everyone wanted to live here and work, earn money, and buy things. The men and Irene especially wanted to buy a car.

  I think Joe was more excited about the schools than about anything else. I was just excited to be home even though it was out of my time.

  Just as the meeting was breaking up, Pud came running in, “What are these for?”

  She was holding in her hands a stack of social security cards, one for each of the adults. The cave had once again provided us with what we needed to live here. But it didn’t just give us money. If we wanted something we needed to work for it.

  Now that everyone had a social security card I tried to educate them of what they needed to do to get a job.

  “You need to concentrate on something you like to do and find something related. For example, Joe and his band could perhaps perform in a nightclub.

  “Ginger, you enjoy sewing. You could work in the sewing factory or you and I could open our own business. I could design clothes and you make them. When we earn enough money, maybe we could open our own store.”

  They had thousands of questions and everyone wanted theirs answered first. I had never seen everyone so excited.

  We spent the rest of the day in Cave City but I could tell everyone wanted to be down the hill.

  CHAPTER 33

  The next day we all went down the hill. No one stayed behind and even the children went.

  Joe and I went off on our own. I took him downtown to a nightclub I knew about called Joe’s. He got a kick out of that.

  The club had a live band and when we went in they were playing Blueberry Hill and the man sitting at the piano and singing looked just like Fats Domino.

  Joe took his guitar out of the case and started playing along. The band stopped and the man at the piano said, “Hey you, with the guitar. Did we invite you to sit in?”

  Joe looked embarrassed and I felt bad that I hadn’t stopped him when he got the guitar out.

  But when we started out the door the man at the piano called, “Hey, come on back here and get up on this stage. I think you may have a gift but I want to hear more.”

  He gave Joe a sheet of music but Joe just stared at it. “He doesn’t read music,” I said. “But he has written some of his own songs.”

  “Great, daddy-o, lead on and we’ll follow.”

  Later, the rest of Joe’s band found us and were invited on stage. The Fats Domino look-alike, whose name was Jonh, took a break and our piano player took his place.

  They played many of the songs they had written. The nightclub became crowded.

  We spent the rest of the day there and Joe looked like he enjoyed himself. More and more people drifted in as the afternoon wore on and the waitress served us all snacks and beer.

  I hadn’t had anything alcoholic in a long time except for the occasional glass of wine in the cave and it went straight to my head. Joe got pretty drunk and really played better than ever.

  When one of the band members found out we didn’t have a car, he offered to take us home in his van. His name was Fred.

  Fred asked us if we had any money and we told him no, nor did we have a job. “They need cocktail waitresses really bad there at the club, Ashley. And you guys maybe could play on our night off. It wouldn’t pay that much but I can ask Ross, the manager about it if you want.”

  We thanked him and soon arrived at the cave, “This is where you live? Do you need a place to live? I’m sure some of my band can put you up.”

  “No, that’s okay,” J
oe said, “We like it here. We have everything we need. You want to come in and look?”

  “Thank you, but I need to get back. I’m going to be playing somewhere else tonight.”

  We had another meeting later that night and found out that several of the others had gotten jobs.

  Ginger, the seamstress, said, “It was amazing. I was looking in a shop window and saw the brief outfits, called shorts and halter tops, and decided to go in and see how they were made.

  “The lady inside asked if she could help me and I said I would like to learn how to make clothes like that. She asked if I sewed and I said yes, that I had made what I was wearing.

  “She looked at the hem of my skirt, and at the seams, and told me to follow her in the back. There were two girls in the back working.

  There were three sewing machines and she asked me if I wanted to try one. She was so nice and spent time showing me how to use it. It was more complicated than ours, Ashley.

  “She told me to try making some of the clothes like I had seen in the window. I had so much material in my skirt I decided to use it to make one of those outfits and make one for myself.

  “May was her name, and she came back later and saw what I had done. I was wearing the one I made for myself.”

  She got up and walked around the room. She had made a pair of shorts and a halter top out of the fine silk material that Sandra, our weaver had made.

  Ginger had strawberry blond hair and green eyes. She was tall and thin and looked like a model. She was beautiful.

  She continued, “May told me that I could work there. I showed her my card and told her I wanted very much to make clothes in her shop. I will start tomorrow.”

  “How much are you going to make?” I asked.

  “I will make thirty five dollars a week. I told her about you, Sandra, and she wants to buy some of your material. I start tomorrow and you can come with me and bring some of your material to show her.

  “She said she is also looking for a model. It’s a lady who wears the clothes in a show at the country club. And all the ladies there buy them.

  “Marion, do you want to go see if she will take you as a model?”

  Marion looked at Rory and he said, “It’s up to you, honey. It will give us more money.”

  “I want to try this,” Marion said. “I’ll go with you and Sandra. I’m so excited.”

  “Wow, three jobs in one shop,” I said. “I am going down tomorrow to see about a waitress job in the night club we went to today and our band might be able to play there on the regular band’s night off. Who else has jobs or the prospect of a job?”

  It was surprising how many of us had jobs after just one try. Some of the jobs were low pay like dishwashers in restaurants and maids in some of the hotels.

  “You know, if we can put our salaries together, we could get a car to share, maybe a van. Some of us will need to get a driver’s license. I could get a license first then teach all of you to drive.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Three months later we all had jobs and were looking at used vans. We had put our money in a container made by Pud. It was a square basket with a lid that she had woven out of straw she and the other children had picked and dried.

  We had so little living expenses that we were able to save most of our salaries. Joe and his band were getting more and more gigs as more people heard of them.

  Their songs were so different from anything anyone had heard and word had gotten around and one night while they were entertaining, a record company executive had come to hear them, without their knowledge.

  His name was Mr. Miser and he wanted to sign them with his company, Miser Records, right away. They would have to fly to Nashville to make some records but they would make good money.

  Joe was so excited, “will you come with me, Ashley?”

  “No, I can’t, Joe, I have to work. It’s not like before. I can’t just go and do anything I want to do with you whenever I want.”

  “Oh, I never thought about that. I’m a little scared though.”

  “You’ll do fine, Joe. You’re going to have a good time. Maybe you’ll even get to meet Elvis Presley.”

  Joe’s band was called Joe’s Band and they were almost an overnight success. They made a lot of money and we soon had several cars to share among us folks from Cave City.

  I held several meetings and warned everyone about the pitfalls of getting too materialistic. We agreed among ourselves to keep things simple and to use any excess to help others.

  I soon joined Sandy, Marion, and Ginger in the garment business and we eventually opened our own shop.

  As the months went by it became time for school to start and the cave provided us with past records for the children and we were able to enroll them in school.

  We still lived a very simple lifestyle and it didn’t look like that was going to change. We were each happy within ourselves and had everything we needed.

  During the fifties in Florida, the stores closed on Sundays. We were all home and for some reason I had the urge to go down the hill.

  I asked Joe if he wanted to go with me and he said no. It surprised me. He had always wanted to go wherever I did. I couldn’t shake the feeling to go down the hill.

  I decided to go on down the hill by myself and that was when I found out why there was a dark passage between the entrance of the cave and the city.

  When I got to the center of the passage, I stopped and listened. I thought I heard someone whisper, but when I stopped I didn’t hear it.

  I stood there with my eyes closed and suddenly I was within myself. I don’t know how else to describe it. I lost all track of who, when, or where I was.

  To say that I felt total peace would be a gross understatement. I felt almost like I was floating but it was better than floating until suddenly it felt like I was dropped onto the floor of the passageway.

  I opened my eyes and saw a light similar to the one I had seen when I died before. My thoughts were moving very fast all of a sudden and I began to get bits and pieces of messages.

  I didn’t know how long I had been in the passage when I heard Joe calling me. I collapsed in his arms and he carried me back to our house.

  When I came to, our house was filled with concerned people, all trying to see me. “What happened in there,” Joe asked.

  I pulled myself up to a sitting position and realized I felt better than I had ever felt, “It was a lot of messages but I was getting them too fast and I got overwhelmed.”

  Marion knelt down beside me, “What happened to your hair?”

  I felt my head expecting to be bald or something and it felt silkier than before but that was all.

  “It’s the most beautiful gold I’ve ever seen,” she said, stroking it.

  I got up and looked in the mirror. We had gotten one when Joe got his first paycheck. My hair was a red/gold many shades lighter than it had been, as if I had been in the sun.

  CHAPTER 35

  We were eating lunch together outside, later, when all of a sudden the walls of the city started moving away from us.

  Where the walls met the ground, were then pulled loose causing the walls to become part of the ceiling. So that instead of a dome-like structure, it was a flat structure above our heads and we were outside.

  The flat surface then rose up higher and higher and I noticed the old dwellings that had been tucked underneath were hanging down from tendons all the way around the flat thing that now looked more like a thin membrane.

  It soon took on the semi-spherical shape it had before so that it resembled a jellyfish and made the same swimming motion as it had to move us from place to place.

  We watched until it was out of sight and I got a sense that it was at peace, that it had brought us to where we were meant to be and somehow I felt that we were meant to make sure that mankind didn’t screw things up this time around.

  I felt like the messages I had gotten in the passageway meant that we were supposed to have learned from W
WII and that mankind didn’t learn the first time around.

  I didn’t know how one woman like me was supposed to make a difference but I was going to trust that it would come to me at each opportunity.

  When we looked at our houses, they had been made into regular houses like we were supposed to fit in with the rest of society. We now had the tools to live and I felt like our group, at least, would do what we were supposed to do.

  Our houses were still in the same place in relationship to each other and were still the same pretty colors but they contained the basics. If we wanted extras we had to earn them.

  We no longer had gardens. We would have to replant. We were on the outskirts of St. Augustine still and I wondered whose land we were on. There was a dirt road that lead to State Road 16, and that lead into St. Augustine. We now had enough cars to share.

  We had wondered why everyone’s hair had turned normal colors when we had landed here and now we knew. We were on our own. We were supposed to blend in.

  This was also why it had been so easy for us to get jobs and enroll the kids in school. This was apparently our final destination, for now anyway. Who knew after we all died again.

  Some of the children had wandered off and I warned everyone to keep up with their kids, that they would no longer be protected unless we protected them ourselves.

  As soon as the children had been found, Rory called a meeting. We looked around and someone suggested we sit on the ground under the large Live Oak trees that grew so plentiful in St. Augustine.

  “I’m worried about our children, now that we’re on our own,” Rory began. “Marion and I waited so long to have children and we want to make sure ours and everyone else’s are safe.

  “How can we be sure they are safe, Ashley?”

  “We can’t be completely sure they will always be safe. We have been protected before but now we have to protect them as best we can.

  “We’re going to have to also make sure our kids understand the need for us to protect them, without scaring them.