When I told the secretary Eds name and the year 1991, she put me on hold, and a man picked up and said, Mrs. Kowalski, my father handled your husbands mineral case, and I have been keeping that file my whole career waiting for somebody to try this again.
The gas company landman had eaten two of my cinnamon rolls and then told me the minerals under my land were sold off by Eds grandfather in 1921, that the company owned them, that a well pad was going right where the red barn sits, and the barn was coming down.
He did not know what Ed did about that in 1991.
My husband learned decades ago about that 1921 mineral sale, and in 1991 he hired a Scranton firm and fought it, and they found the sale was never properly recorded and the rights had legally reverted, so Ed bought and re-recorded the mineral rights under our farm, which means the gas the landman swore was his has belonged to us since 1991.
Ed never bragged about it, but he was no fool about what lay under his ground. When the gas boom first stirred in the early nineties, Ed dug into the old 1921 paper, found it was defective, and with the Scranton firms help cleared our title to the minerals and recorded it properly. Then he put the envelope at the bottom of the cedar chest, under his mothers wedding quilt, and left one line telling me to call the lawyers son if the gas men ever came.
The son had taken over his fathers practice, and he had kept Eds file, because, he told me, his father always said the gas company would be back, and when they came they would count on the widow not knowing.
The minerals are ours, recorded since 1991. The landmans 1921 deed was the void one, not ours. There is no well pad going where Eds barn stands, because the company does not own what is under it.
When the landman came back on Friday, I did not argue. I handed him a copy of Eds 1991 recorded mineral title and the Scranton firms letter and I said, my husband cleared these rights in 1991 and they are ours. The 1921 sale you are standing on was never valid. Call the lawyer whose name is on this letter. He has been waiting thirty years to talk to your company.
The landman took his business card back off my windowsill and left. The company checked, and their lawyers met Eds lawyers son, and there is no well pad on my hundred and sixty acres.
That barn is coming down one way or another, he had said. Ed rebuilt that barn board by board with his brothers after the fire in 1988, and he protected the ground under it in 1991, and it still stands red at the top of the valley. I paint it every other summer, because that barn is what this valley remembers about Ed, and now it always will.