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Tuesday, Aug. 07, 2007

WAIT: Wait

SOMEWHERE NEAR WAIT ... MAYBE -- SOMEWHERE NEAR WAIT ... MAYBE -- It's right there on the map. Square D4, on Old Bethel Church Road just as the little red line curves near the yellow Wayne-Clinton County line.

Leonard Wagner, 18, leans over the car and points down at the open atlas. He can see Wait plain as day, but he's never heard of it.

"According to the map, this is it," he said as he took a break from his work at the Mennonite-run Better Built Barns. He even asked some of the elders. They hadn't heard of it either.

"I never heard anything else about Wait," Wagner said. "It's always been Alpha or Happy Top."

Back on Ky. 90, an old gas station hosts a crowd of old-timers.

Homer Pyle, 68, hasn't heard of Wait. He's heard of Stop, but not Wait. His pal, Mintford Hicks, though, thinks he might remember hearing something about a town called Wait.

It's been 50-some years ago, though. It was back before the new Ky. 90 was built and the old highway went that way, he said as he pointed.

"That's what gets you all messed up," he said. Perhaps the rerouting of county traffic killed off the town, he suggests.

Back, then, to the Old Highway 90. Right past turning on to the road is the Alpha post office. If anyone would know where Wait is, it would be the post office, right?

But Dana Isner only looks confused from behind her desk at the single-room post office. Wait? On Old Bethel Church Road?

"I live on Old Bethel Road," she said. "It's only about five-tenths of a mile from here, and it's all called Alpha."

Isner admits she's only been in town -- the town of Alpha, maybe Wait, that is -- for about six years. She moved here from California after her husband retired from the military.

She's been at the tiny country post office since then, where everything is manual, including the money order machine. Her desk looks bare without a computer or electronic equipment taking up half the surface area.

She comes over to the window to help a customer buy stamps. He hasn't heard of Wait, either. Neither has the lady who came in to pick up her mail.

But Isner does recall one bit of Old Bethel Church Road lore: there's an old school that in recent years has been turned into a house.

Talk to Porter Lowe, she said. He lives back there.

Taking a slower pace around Old Bethel Church Road this time, it's easier to come across a series of mailboxes that sit in the turn near Better Built Barns. The very first mailbox is black with white painted-on words spelling out Porter Lowe's name.

This is it.

Porter's in the field, but his wife is home. She answers the door in a red shirt, jean shorts and blue flip-flops.

Have you heard anything about this schoolhouse?

She smiles slyly and taps her finger on the tan siding of her one-story home as she stands on the front porch.

They bought the schoolhouse, well, she's not really sure how long ago, but it has been a while. It was a two-room run-down empty school when they bought it. But with a new roof, new siding and now six rooms (including the bathroom that replaced the outhouse that used to sit on the property), Joyce Lowe has made it a home.

There wasn't much to Wait, she said, just this little schoolhouse. And though it's not a school anymore, it is the only remnant of that tiny dot in square D4.