Someone once told me that stories are told one of two ways; one is to begin with the end and tell the story of how it came to that end. The other way is to start at the beginning to tell the story as it happened. This story starts at the beginning. It has to be told as it unfolded to understand its ending. It begins with the town called Candlelight.
Candlelight is an old town that lies in the middle of the state of Missouri in Boone County between Columbia and Jefferson City, the state capital. It was founded in the late 1800s and was originally called Farm Town because that is what it was, a farm town. As one entered Farm Town from Columbia, south, off state highway 63, the road is a two-lane road, originally dirt then to gravel and finally, to asphalt. It is tree lined that provides plenty of shade in the spring and summer, beautiful colorful leaves in the fall and some road protection from falling snow in the winter. When one arrived in Farm Town in the early days, the only buildings on this road were a stable and a small building that offered everything else. It was a small town.
In the year 1940, Robert Fuller, Sr., built a candle factory. It was successful, and many people benefited from its existence. People were employed and a few new businesses began to line its once meager main street. The stable became a gas station and expanded to include the everything else store – a gas station and mini-mart, with a parking lot beside it. On the other side of the street, the City Hall, a bakery, and a barber shop with parking spots in front of them. These establishments, too, were successful. The candle factory, called The Candlelight Candle Factory, stood at the far end of town where the road passes on its way to Jefferson City. A neighborhood soon grew around these fine establishments, including Catholic and Methodist churches, a fire house near the factory, an elementary school, a high school, a grocery store and a hardware store. Farm Town was bordered by several small farms that extended from the town.
The owners of some of these businesses were great friends; the aforementioned Candlelight Candle Factory owner Robert Fuller, Sr. and his beautiful but plump wife, Bethany, John Kerls and his wispy wife, Marie, owned Kerls’ Gas Station and Mini-Mart, and Louis and Lucy Barber were the bakers at Barber’s Bakery. These couples, of course, had children. The Fuller’s had three, Robert, Jr., Bobbie, and Bertha. The Kerls’ also had three children, all boys, William (called Billy), Michael and Matthew. The Barber’s had only one child, Andrew. These three families were the best of the best of friends. Together they held a fund raiser to line the streets with lampposts that held candles made at the factory to brighten their little town. There is actually a salaried city job to light the lamps nightly. In the year 1952, by unanimous vote of the city council, the town legally registered and changed the name of their town from Farm Town to Candlelight. The same year the town name was changed, a tradition began. It was a Thanksgiving Day Celebration that was held in the Candlelight Factory’s Main Hall where breakfast was provided to everyone in town to celebrate and be thankful together. The people of Candlelight were elated with its small-town look and feel and were incredibly happy.
However, as with all things, time moves forward, and so did the town. Homes and streets were added, as well as the City Park that included the two high school baseball fields and a soccer field. Across the street from the high school, a track surrounding a football field was built on land behind the bakery. Robert Fuller, Sr. retired and his oldest child, Robert, Jr., took over the reins of the factory. Junior was married by then to Anne and together they had two girls, Samantha, and Renee. Robert, Sr. died in 1962 from a heart attack, the day after the country’s loss of President Kennedy. Bethany, they say, died of a broken heart one year later.
The Kerls managed the Gas Station and Mini-Mart into a lucrative business and they finally retired and moved to Florida leaving the business to their children. Billy and Matthew wanted nothing to do with it and sold their interests to Michael. Michael married Samantha Fuller and they had one child, a son, Michael, Jr., whom they called Mike.
Louis and Lucy Barber loved their bakery so much they were running it until they died, and it was left it to their only child, Andrew. Andrew had married his college sweetheart, Mary, and took over managing the bakery as his parents had done for many, many years. They had one child, Louise. They called her Lou and she was the apple of Andrew’s eye and named for his favorite St. Louis Cardinal of all time, Lou Brock. Lou was born in an ambulance in front the Boone County hospital in Columbia as they did not quite make it there in time.
November 21, 1990, Michael Sr. died in his Gas Station and Mini-Mart. That same year, two months earlier, Andrew and Mary Barber were killed in an automobile accident on that two-lane road as they headed to Columbia to see his daughter who was attending the University of Missouri.
Anne Fuller had a stroke in 1987 and was disabled. Robert, Jr. devoted himself totally to her care and neglected the business. She died May 1, 1990 and he took out his pain and suffering on his family. His daughters Bobbie and Renee left town, simply leaving him alone. He, in turn, clamped down on the factory becoming unapproachable and sour to all around him. Many of his employees only stayed on because they needed a job, not because they loved it, and constantly talked about the good old days. The Candlelight Factory had changed. The town of Candlelight had changed. It had lost its light. No one lit the lampposts anymore.
Here the history lesson ends and the story begins…
My First Stories 