The Ghost of Robb Sagendorph

Monday, May 21, 2007 at 11:31 pm

Peter Rukavina

It’s 10:00 p.m. and I’m borrowing a desk here at [[Yankee]] to work a second work day. My first work day was concerned with travel databases and the moon’s place in the astrological zodiac; tonight’s work day involves a little fine-tuning of the system we’ll use to present results of the provincial general election next Monday.

I’m on the second floor of the Sagendorph Building, named after Robb Sagendorph founder of Yankee magazine. The building, began in 1805 and evolving ever since, is an architectural rabbit warren.

Around one corner you might find an old 128K Mac that used to run the company library. Around another the many mysteries of “Jud’s Museum,” the office of Editor-in-Chief Jud Hale, where you’re as likely to find Lee Harvey Oswald’s chicken’s head as anything else. Somewhere hidden in here is the Black Box that holds the secret formulas the underpin The Old Farmer’s Almanac.

In the library just down the hall from where I write you can find a copy of The Save-U-Money Book and The Pilgrim Way. Looking for the washroom just a minute ago I mistakenly walked into a room containing a nut meat grinder, a pair of tin candles sticks, a pair of eyeglasses and a manila folder labeled “Churchill, Sir Winston.”

In other words, if any walls can talk it’s these ones.

Once I finish up here in 30 minutes or so — and I’ve been putting this off — I will have to exit the building, turning the lights off behind me. The last leg of my trip to the car, after the last light gets switched off, involves a fumble in the dark through the mail room, past the cache of canned pop, through the lunch room, and out the front door.

The path will also take me past the door to the basement. I have never been to the basement. But last fall, on a night just like this night, as I walked by I saw an unearthly glow emanating from the deeps. Thoughts of Robb Sagendorph immediately flooded my mind, and I high-tailed it out down the hall and out the door.

As long as I keep writing this post, I can avoid a similar encounter.