Thursday, September 26, 2013

LaDell Allen

     On a windy day, have you ever seen what happens to the bottle that is empty? The wind can just take it anywhere. It's funny how people are the same way. When we're empty, we'll go with anything, adapt to anyone, go anywhere. It's kind of sad, really. So when LaDell Allen blew away with the wind, go figure she blew all the way to Hell.
     Have you heard that story? If not, a great book to read would be A Haunted Love Story by Mark Spencer. He lives in the same house haunted by LaDell Allen's ghost. Even though it sounds creepy, her story is actually the most touching I've ever read. Maybe because it combines paranormal activity and forbidden love - two of my most favorite things. Or maybe my Mom is right and I am screwed up in the head.
     One day when Mr. Spencer was exploring his castle of a house, he reached the attic. Everyone knows the attics of old houses are where all the coolest things are found. Mark found the written love letters between LaDell and her secret lover, Prentiss Hemingway. These two love birds lived way back in the 1920s (also the same era of The Notebook) which is when the biggest business was oil. I guess you could say Prentiss was the Bill Gates of that time, only younger and way better looking because women practically fainted when he walked past them, or so that's how LaDell made him out to sound. She absolutely loved the man from her hair follicles to her toenails... which is why it sucked that he wasn't married to her.
     The Allen House, as it has become famous as, is located in Monticello, AK. Google up some pictures, you know you want to. It looks absolutely huge and my boyfriend said it looks haunted. It's my dream place to live. That's where all of the forbidden love took place, ya see?
     Prentiss grew up in Monticello but moved away with his mother to the bigger cities when she got into fashion (This also the same time period as Coco Chanel!). Though LaDell and Prentiss hadn't officially met before he moved away, they met when he returned to Monticello to cure a bad case of nostalgia. I think it was on a train where they first exchanged glances and then ended up exchanging saliva. He was in town for the better part of the summer and they began to court. Real old-fashioned, romantic stuff. He took her out on the town, sat on the front porch talking with her until the late hours of the night, and he kissed her with tender lips every time he had to leave. The problems arose when he had to head back to the big city and leave LaDell behind. They lost touch, like majorly. She married a Bonner and he married some floozy who was only in touch with the numbers in his bank account. The real tragedy begins when Prentiss heads back to Monticello for some business and runs into LaDell again - whose husband had recently passed and son had moved away. She was alone and empty and I guess she saw Prentiss and was reminded of the almost teenaged relationship they'd had before. Of course he was able to sweep her away again. She knew he was married, don't try to think she didn't. And, back then, carrying on with a married man was Social Suicide. She did her best to keep it a secret - even from her own mother. Prentiss and LaDell exchanged love letters through the snail mail and visited secretly sometimes. She would go to the big cities on shopping sprees and he would come to Monticello for 'business' aka pleasure.
     On Christmas Eve, after two years of her being the mashed potatoes on the side, LaDell had finally had enough. She wrote her final letter to Prentiss and sent it through the mail. At her mother's Christmas party, she stole an entire tray of cheese and a glass of wine. She washed her last meal down with cyanide. She didn't leave a note to her mother. They just found her rotted body the next morning and time moved on. Who knows how the letters got hidden under floor boards in the attic?
     Ladies, take this as a lesson. If you're the mashed potatoes, don't think he's gonna leave the chicken for you. Get out before he kicks you out because, to him, you are only temporary.