Awakening before sunrise I pulled on my clothes to go out for a stroll around town. This was a new place for me, as all of the places I’ve been to lately have been, so I decided to just walk on Main Street which is where my hotel was located.
I walked out past the desk clerk and said hello and got a cheery “Have a great day” in reply, which was just a little too cheery to me for this time of day but I smiled anyway. She said don’t miss the Franklin House two blocks down Main Street and then left for three blocks on Kite Avenue. I replied with another smile and a “Thank you” and went on outside where I proceeded to walk down Main Street. I was moving pretty slow this morning at this hour and it took my mind some time to process what she said but by the time I had walked a couple of blocks I remembered that she had said to turn left on Kite Avenue so I did.
Wondering what the Franklin House might be but thinking it might be a tavern that served breakfast I thought I might as well check it out. I wasn’t up for the donuts and coffee that my hotel had ready at this hour and didn’t feel like waiting until they had the real breakfast ready.
As I got to the third block of Kite Avenue I saw this old-looking house which seemed to be in very good condition for its age and it had an old kind of marker sign that said Franklin House in front of it. It had an illegible date on it that must have weathered off years ago but the sign still said Franklin House even though that was wearing down also.
I opened the gate and walked up to the house and tried to open the front door but it was locked. There was a very old knocker on the door but I didn’t think I should use it at that time of the morning just in case someone lived here and might be sleeping.
As I was stepping back off the porch to walk back to the sidewalk I heard the front door open. An old man peered out at me and I said “sorry to bother you” as I kept walking for the street. He asked if I was looking for the Franklin House so I turned back around and said yes. He responded by laughing a little, asking me to sit and talk a spell, and then went on to tell me an interesting tale as we sat on his porch and sipped tea.
Years ago, he said, long before he bought this house, that marker sign had been put up on the property by some town resident that had long since died or moved away. By then Main Street was unofficially called Main Street even though it was pretty much the only good road through town and the side streets were mostly unnamed as houses were built on them. One street, this one, had gotten the name Kite Street and some locals assumed it was because it had been a good long one with fields beside it where children would run and fly kites. It was the best place around the area and the wind was perfect for lifting kites into the air and people would come from miles around to fly their kites there.
One day a sign just seemed to appear in front of one particular house. It was more of a marker than a sign and it just said Franklin House and had a date on it. Nobody thought much of it at the time because they had better things to think about and people didn’t remember anyone by that name ever living there.
As time went on though, people began to tell visitors that a long time before a man named Ben used to visit their town sometimes. He was quite a nice man and always had the best parties for everyone around and told stories of his adventures all over the country and even in faraway places like France. People didn’t know whether to believe them or not but it didn’t seem to matter because Ben’s parties and stories were the best around so everyone was just happy when he came to visit.
Then things got a little strange because the inn that he stayed in when he came to town was struck by lightning one night during a terrible storm and though the place kind of lit up for miles around it didn’t burn down. After that, the stories started up from people who lived in that part of town that they had seen Ben running down that street towards Main Street with a kite and then turned around and flew his kite back towards the inn. They knew he was a playful kind of guy but this was a little odd for even him to be flying a kite in an electrical storm. One person said that they saw Ben running back towards the inn and that just when he ran up on the porch, still flying the kite, that lightning hit the kite and then the whole inn lit up with the brightest light they had ever seen.
No one knew what to make of it but the next day when the storm had stopped many people walked out to the inn and it looked normal except for a black streak on the side of the building running down to the ground across the porch. A kite was caught around the chimney of the place and looked like it had caught on fire.
After that Ben left and the town never saw him again. Sometime later electric lights were installed in town and lit up Main Street and down just the one road, Kite Street, out to the inn. It was several more years before electricity was put into the rest of the town.
Then about a dozen years after that people noticed that there was a marker in the front yard of the inn. Nobody knew exactly when it was put up they just realized that it was there and would sometimes wonder when it showed up and what it was about. Nobody named Franklin had ever lived there, it was just an old inn.
Time passed and somebody bought it and then later someone else and now this kindly old man who was telling the story to me. He smiled as he told me and I could tell that he believed the story and wanted me to pass it on to others as he and others had been for a couple of hundred years.
The guy seemed trustworthy, the marker definitely was real and looked old, and Kite Street ran right past it. You can visit it anytime. Just go two blocks on Main Street from the Hotel and then turn left on Kite Avenue and go three blocks. When you go there you can still see the lightning mark from the chimney to the porch. The Franklin House. You can’t miss it. And you shouldn’t.
