Dreams of Mr. Reynolds

Dreams are such strange instruments of the mind. Indeed, last night I dreamt of a childhood neighbor, a Mr. Reynolds, of whom I have almost no remembrance.

I do not have a given name for Mr. Reynolds for " Mr. Reynolds" is all I ever knew him by. In fact, his surname and his profession -- he was a printer -- is all that I can now recall of him.

Mr. Reynolds lived next door to us in a small, wooden building with unpainted German siding that served both as house and printing shop. One corner of the building was close by the road, the single step to the front door no more than a few feet from a curve in the pavement as a result of a rerouting of the road (then known as Doub's Chapel Road) long after the building was constructed. A large maple tree stood to the left of the door, nearby the road. I do not recall much, if any, industry in his printing business.

How Mr. Reynolds came to live where he did was always something of a mystery to me. The sliver of land, narrow and deep, was in the center of a tract of several hundreds of acres of land own by my grandfather, his brothers and sisters, and their offspring, including my father and all his cousins. Mr. Reynolds was the only landowner outside that grouping. But there he was on that sliver of land between the properties inherited by my grandfather and my great-uncle from my great-grandfather. I have a glimmer in my brain (no brighter than a distant firefly at night) that perhaps Mrs. Reynolds, of whom I have no recollection at all) was perhaps somehow related by marriage to some distant relative.

The dwelling, as best I can recall, had neither electricity nor running water. And, it certainly had no telephone.

I can remember no encounters with Mr. Reynolds as a child. He had no children of his own and perhaps he didn't want them underfoot in his shop. I do recall an admonition by my parents to stay away from Mr. Reynolds and his shop. At any rate, I was always of the impression that Mr. Reynolds had an unsavory side.

In old age, Mr. Reynolds was moved to the County Nursing Home and I have a memory of visiting him there. More accurately stated, I have a memory of my parents visiting him there for children were not permitted inside and I only saw him through the window.

Before he died, one of Mr. Reynold's relative (perhaps a niece) who kept an eye on the building allowed me inside once to search for old postage stamps. It seems he was a pack rat and had every piece of mail he had ever received. I was allowed to cut stamps off the envelopes but could not take the envelopes they were on. This was, to the best of my recollection, the only time I was ever in the building and I retain, to this day, a vivid mental image of his manual platen jobbing printing press and and the cases upon cases of movable type he set by hand.

Upon his death, the county inherited his property and it was sold at auction to the present owner who moved the little building to a location behind the new house he built as a playhouse for his children. It, and the maple tree, still stand.

Why, of why, would all this come to me in a dream about a man of whom I have no visual image and who died well over fifty years ago?

Help, Sis! What do you remember about this man? He seems to be haunting me.