Beckham Hotel Update

What a good week, and a great ending already in the works for this week. It was fairly quiet ghost-wise, but I did have one notable experience. I was in the car, getting ready to pull out of the driveway, when the side door on the house opened. A man wearing a blue shirt came out, and I assumed it was my son, Kelly, wanting me to bring something home. But I rolled down the window and waited … and no Kelly ever came up to talk to me. I turned around and looked all over the yard and on the porch. No man in a blue shirt.

Then it dawned on me who it looked like more than Kelly. Last July, I started noticing a man in a blue shirt here in the house. I saw him often, and so did Aunt Belle. At one point, he said his names was Jace. I hadn't seen him in a while, and I assumed he crossed over in one of the periodic crossing overs I do for my paranormal residents. Guess not, since that had to be Jace who came out the door and then disappeared into thin air. I shrugged and drove off on my errand.

The first wonderful part of the ending to the week happened on Friday. Hub and I drove out to Mineola to have lunch with Connie Meissner, the owner of the Beckham Hotel. 

Connie's such a really nice person, and she's done an awful lot of work on the hotel. She welcomed us with open arms, and after we had lunch, she and I toured the hotel to see what she had accomplished so far. There is still much to do, and if I hadn't seen the place before she started, I might wonder what she had been having done. However, the lobby is really coming around, and lots of the walls and doors have been restored on both the first and second floors. You always could see glimmers of what a grand old lady the Beckham had been. Now, those glimmers are becoming more real.

Connie cares very much for this historic hotel. This restoration job is major, not just touch-up, and she's the perfect person to be handling things. She told me a really cool story about the restoration of the Ballroom:

Connie said she knew she had to put air conditioning in the Ballroom. After all, this is Texas, and on top of that, East Texas. With the tall ceilings, she decided to run the duct-work across there, since hardly anyone looks up and that's the way a lot of the older historical buildings install air-conditioning in places it has never been done.

But Connie said after the job was completed, she could tell She (the hotel) was terribly unhappy about what had been done to her. The atmosphere in the Ballroom was very different, rather dark and sad. Connie knew immediately what was wrong. She said it was like there was a tree in the Ballroom, with branches extended out every which way. Despite the extra expense, she called the contractors back and had them move the duct-work to the sides of the walls and enclose it with sheetrock. It looks really nice and hardly noticeable now, and I can verify the ghosts and the hotel herself are happy with the new design. I was in the Ballroom twice today, and walked over nearly all of the hotel. Not once did I detect any sadness.

On top of having such a wonderful visit with Connie, she and I talked about Halloween. Yep, this upcoming Halloween. Guess who's going to be planning some activities for Halloween at the Beckham! I'm very excited. Everything is preliminary now, but as soon as we get an idea of what we want to do, I'll update y'all here and on my Facebook page. I do know we will have Tarot and Psychic readings. Floyd, my SRT teammate, has already marked the date on his Triskelion band's schedule, so we'll have great Celtic music. Who knows what else I'll come up with, because I know lots of people who love that holiday as much as I do. Stay tuned!

Speaking of Facebook pages, the Beckham has a Facebook page now. Let's all go over and like them at: https://www.facebook.com/TheBeckhamHotel. There's a short video there right now, done by one of the local stations, which gives you a further update. You'll also meet Darlena, who owns the Taste Buds Candy and Coffee Shop in Mineola and who is Connie's manager. Taste Buds will be moving down to the Beckham in June, and I can vouch for their food being fantastic. They've got a Facebook page, also, at: https://www.facebook.com/tastebudsccc/

The rest of the weekend also is going to be great. Aunt Belle comes in Friday evening, then on Saturday hub and I will attend a play that my grandson Bryan is in. Sunday the SRT team is coming over to watch Dave Juliano's Psychic Protection Class at my house, before we have our critique meeting. Busy, busy, but fun busy.

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Witch Angel is finally showing up with the new cover. The best way to find it is to go to my romance web site and use the links there: http://www.tranamaesimmons.com.

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Hope all of you are enjoying what's going on in your lives as much as I am. I got so busy, I didn't get this up on Saturday, and I already have another ghost story for next week's blog. I think I'll call it "Aunt Belle and the Missing Comb."

Boo!

T. M.