Tag: Gardening

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, June 26, 1943.

“Hosing the garden,” ruminated Jimmie Frise, as he waggled the hose this way and that, “is a pleasure at the start of summer.”

“But by August?” I suggested.

“Even by mid-July,” declared Jim, “it becomes a fag.¹“

“Here,” I said, “let me hose this part.”

Jim handed me the hose, which dribbled quite lively at the nozzle and which, about six feet in rear of you, allowed a fine spray to catch you unawares in the seat of the pants if you did not forcibly twist the hose to keep the leak pointed earthward.

“After the war,” said Jim, sitting down in the lawn chair, “among the great changes which are to come, ought to be a system whereby you install a few pipes underground, with nozzles sticking up here and there in the garden, like the nozzles of a fire prevention sprinkler system. All you would do would be to turn on a tap, and all over the garden, little sprays like fountains would spring up.”²

“It will be some time after the war,” I submitted, “before metal pipes become plentiful enough to be wasted on tricks as silly as that.”

“Silly?” cried Jim. “I tell you it is the duty of all thinking men to go silly right now, if that is silly, and start thinking up ways of consuming things. The only way we can prevent a gigantic slump right after the war is by thinking up ways of using all the things that are being produced now.”

“But not foolish things,” I protested, “like fountains in plain people’s back yards.”

“Why not?” demanded Jimmie. “Who is going to decide what is wise and what is foolish? If we let old men do the deciding, they can’t help but struggle to get us back on the mean, mingy, stingy way of life to which they have been accustomed. So, first of all, let us start agitating that nobody over 40 should have anything whatever to do with the peace negotiations, either with the enemy or here at home. Because, don’t forget, not all the peace negotiations are going to made around a table in Paris or Berlin. A lot of peace negotiations have to be made in every city and every town and every home.”

“Are you advocating?” I inquired, “that we enter upon another Bacchanalian era after the war like 1926 to 1929, after the last war?”

“I am advocating,” stated Jim, “that we all start getting used to thinking about consuming. For the past four years, we have thought so hard about producing that, when the war ends, and the excessive production of war comes to an end, we are liable to have forgotten how to consume. The minute the war ends, we have all got to start consuming just as hard as we have been producing. Otherwise, ruin.”

“Such as,” I scoffed, artistically swaying the hose over new patches of garden, “such as installing fountains in back yards?”

For a Flourishing World

“I don’t care how you consume,” said Jim, “so long as you can think up ways of using everything the stepped-up factories of Canada can produce, so that not one man or one girl has to be laid off.”

“Where would we get the money?” I inquired. “After we have spent our few paltry war bonds, what would we use?”

“I see you have no imagination,” stated Jim, “Our national savings are a few paltry hundred millions. But our national income is a great many thousand millions. At present. The trick is to keep those national earnings going. To heck with savings. For centuries, we have been taught that the big thing is to save. For centuries, the world has been in a constant mess. What we are about to learn is, that it is not savings that matter at all. It is earnings. Keep everybody earning and everybody spending, and the world will flourish like a green bay tree.”

“It sounds good,” I confessed, holding the hose a little farther out from me, because the dribble was increasing, “but if it would work, why hasn’t somebody thought of it long ago?”

“It has been thought of long ago,” declared Jimmie, “but the world was in the clutches of financiers and businessmen who found it more exciting and much more profitable to pursue the savings tradition. To them, business and finance was a game, a sort of super poker game. If everybody was busy and everybody happy, if all mankind were producing and consuming and nobody saving, how could these big shots stage their regular ten year financial collapses in which to scoop up everybody’s savings? If the world was always busy, it wouldn’t be like a poker game at all. It wouldn’t even be a game. It would just be like a world-wide dance around the maypole on the village green. And big financiers can’t get any kick out of maypole dances. They like action. They like big killings. After all, the world is the poker table for about one thousand big poker players.”

“That’s awful talk,” I exclaimed.

“It’s true,” asserted Jim. “I bet the big brains who control the world’s finances don’t number more than a thousand. And all that interests them is the game they play and who can scuttle who. They like the mass of mankind to work and save so that there are large numbers of chips available for the grand slam. If everybody had work and nobody had savings to put into the ventures of the big shots, what the Sam Hill would the big shots do for relaxation?”

“You’re cynical,” I submitted.

“Look,” said Jim, “do you remember the big stock crash of 1929? Do you recall all your friends worth twenty thousand, thirty thousand in imaginary stock winnings?”

“Ah, that was just paper,” I pointed out.

“But they all put real money in too,” explained Jim. “They borrowed on their houses. They scraped all their cash up and put it into stocks. They invested, one, two thousand dollars. And it swelled up, like a balloon, to ten, twenty thousand. Then the balloon burst. Away went the twenty, thirty thousand. But away, too, went the one, two thousand. And left them, often, another couple of thousands in the hole, to be paid off in grief and chagrin. Where did all those one and two thousands go? We are all very airy about the imaginary money that went up in smoke. But the real money, my boy, the real hard cash – where did it go?”

“Hmmm,” I admitted.

“It didn’t go up in smoke, me lad,” said Jim. “It went some place. Where do you suppose it went?”

“I see,” I muttered.

“Yes, sir,” said Jim, “there were billions of real money lost in that smash. And I think I know who got it. And it certainly wasn’t you or me or our friends.”

“I can’t think of a single solitary soul,” I confessed, “who made a cent. They all lost.”

“We suckers,” said Jim, “ought to wake up. Why should we serve, forever, as bellhops carrying chips to the big poker game on the mezzanine?”

“If only,” I sighed, “we could produce somebody to lead us who would talk as plainly about economies as Winston Churchill talks about war!”

“If you could see the seat of your pants,” said Jimmie, leaning back in the garden chair, “you wouldn’t think it a silly idea for all of us to have sprinkler fountains in our back yards.”

I felt my trousers and found them beautifully frosted with the spray from Jim’s hose. The act of feeling caused the water to seep through the fabric.

“Here,” I said, “take your hose. Let me do the surmising for a while.”

“Sit down, do,” said Jim rising and taking the hose.

But I preferred to stand.

Travel By Helicopter

“Think of the machine tools,” I proposed, “the thousands and thousands of machine tools this country has got since the war broke out four years ago. How could we ever keep them busy?”

“Making radios,” retorted Jim, “with television. Why do you suppose there has been no advance in television this past five years? Because there was nobody with money to buy them. But now, there are millions of men and women working at machine tools, at good wages, who will buy them.

“Think,” I pursued, “of the airplane industry, the tens of thousands of people working in this country on engines, wings, parts, gadgets.”

“I have heard the rumor,” announced Jim, “that an implement firm in Canada has already got the rights for the Helicopter³, and as soon as the war ends, they, like airplane factories all over the world, are going to start producing small, domestic aircraft for common use. People who will still drive cars will be like people who drove buggies in 1930; old-fashioned. There is still room for buggies. There will still be plenty of room for cars. But the world in general will be using aircraft. And you, my fine feathered friend, will be dropping down, in your Helicopter, right in this garden, every Friday evening, to take me for a week-end on the Georgian Bay.”

“Aw,” I scoffed.

“Before you are five years older,” predicted Jim, calmly, “you will own a Helicopter that can land in a garden the size of this. You will drop it down here as calmly as you back your car out of your side drive. There was a time – do you remember? – when you thought with horror of packing up a motor car. You think with horror of dropping a Helicopter into this garden. But I tell you, the answer to all tomorrow’s worries is in the production of new and known devices for the use and comfort and amusement of mankind. Television and aircraft are only two items which will do for the next 20 years what the motor car and the radio did for the past 20 years.”

“With a happier ending, I hope?” I said.

“The miracle of Radar,” said Jim, “which has enabled the British to see, by radio, enemy aircraft taking off from their airfields in France, will be as common a miracle in 10 years as the telephone was in our youth. You will be receiving air force blue summonses⁴ for breaking the air traffic laws in another five years. Radar will be checking your every move, as you fly from this garden to Go Home Bay⁵, on the Georgian Bay. Being a Helicopter, you will have to keep to the Blue Lane, northbound, which is 500 feet high, two miles wide. immediately west of Yonge St. The faster stuff, which your sons will drive, will use the Silver Lane, which is the northbound track. 5,000 feet high, four miles wide, immediately west of Yonge St. As you approach the Radar station at Barrie, they will give you your signals, just like a traffic cop, as to when to turn right or left, depending whether you are going west to the Georgian Bay, or east, over Lake Simcoe.”

“Suppose I can’t see,” I inquired. “Suppose it is raining?”

“Your orders will be spoken into your earphones,” explained Jim. “If you get off your lane, a Radar cop will call your number and warn you to get up or down to your level, or east or west, on to the lane. If anybody tries cutting in on you, you should worry. A Radar voice will hand him a radio summons to land at the next airfield and report to the local air traffic magistrate forthwith.”

“Suppose he doesn’t?” I inquired, watching the hose slowly dying in Jim’s hand.

“Then a Radar speed cop,” explained Jim, “will take off and chase the traffic offender, force him down and his flying license will be cancelled for six months, first offence.”

Life is Certainly Funny

Slowly the hose stream died, and we both turned and looked back towards the house, where the hose was attached to a good old-fashioned tap of about 1917. A new leak had sprung. A large fountain was spraying blithely over the perennial phlox, back near the steps.

Jim dropped the hose and ran back to the tap which he turned off.

“I’ll go and get the electric tape,” he said.

“What you need is a new hose,” I suggested. “One factory that needn’t worry about the war ending will be the rubber hose factory.”

Jim came back in a few minutes with the electric tape. It was a gummy and small roll and after a little while Jim succeeded in picking loose a section of it, with which he wound the leak.

“This stuff is getting scarce, too,” said Jim.

He turned on the tap again and we hurried forward to pick up the nozzle before it had, gouged a hole in the lawn.

“If the war ends,” said Jim, “before we have had time to talk and plan and dream up all the ways we are going to use the discoveries and developments of industry and science for war, we will slip back into our old ways. The same old gang will resume possession of the world. The motor car manufacturers will try to out-bluff the aircraft manufacturers. The radio makers will try to draw to a straight flush to the two pairs of the television boys. The old poker game will be resumed. What we, the people, have got to do is get busy dreaming. We’ve got to dream, of a world that is not a game.”

Again the stream from the hose began to slacken. We turned and looked back along its decrepit length.

From the leak Jim had fixed with tape, a small burble was flowing. But from another place much nearer, a beautiful little spray was curving into the evening air.

“Hold it, Jim,” I cried. “You’ve got the answer. Why worry about burying iron water pipes in your garden? Just keep your old hose and let it sprinkle all over to its heart’s desire.”

For now, three beautiful jets were playing in different parts of the yard, and by a deft twitch to the hose, we could shift the fountains to any part of the garden we liked.

“The funny part of life, Jim,” I submitted, “is that often it isn’t a new thing you need, but an old one. And in this instance, the older the better.”

“Except for the looks of it,” muttered Jimmie.

---

Editor’s Notes:

1. In this case, “fag” means a boring or wearisome task. ↩︎
2. I’m not sure when home sprinkler systems were invented, but certainly after the war. ↩︎
3. Helicopters were already invented, but the Sikorsky R-4 became the first helicopter to reach full-scale production in 1942. ↩︎
4. Blue tickets were traffic tickets. ↩︎
5. Greg’s real cottage was on Go Home Bay, a community where his father was a founding member. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, April 17, 1937.

“Every city,” said Jimmie Frise, “should be forced to have a great tract of farmland, 40,000 acres say, somewhere not far from its boundaries.”

“So what?” I asked.

“Instead of families going on relief,” explained Jim, “they would go to the farm. Instead of packing the city with unhappy and unfortunate people, you would transfer them to dwell and labor amidst the healthy country.”

“Jim,” I admired, “you’ve got something.”

“In proportion to its size,” went on Jimmie, “each city and town would have to purchase and maintain, somewhere not too far from its limits, a tract of farm land, so many acres per thousand of population. This would be a civic farm, organized as a part of the city’s interior economy.”

“With a city commission,” I suggested, “like the parks commission or the waterworks committee, managing it.”

“Precisely,” said Jim. “On the farm would be a central headquarters building with offices. Scattered strategically over the very large acreage would be the barns, implement houses, stables, greenhouses and so forth. And, in proportion to the need, a large number of beautiful little farm cottages of various sizes, each with its little sheds, hen houses and so forth.”

“How beautiful,” I agreed. “With morning glories on the south walls.”

“In addition to the individual farm cottages of various sizes,” pursued Jim, “there will be central large residences for single unemployed men and single unemployed women. With recreation rooms, libraries and so forth.”

“Like the Y.M.C.A.,” I offered.

“And the Y.W.C.A.,” agreed Jim. “Now watch what happens. A family applies for relief in the city. Instead of being given a measly handout once a week, instead of being driven from pillar to post in the brief, sure and certain decline down hill toward the slum, this family is transferred to the big farm. Baggage and all.”

“Go on,” I begged.

“On arrival,” said Jim, “they will be assigned one of the farm cottages. They will report to the headquarters offices for examinations as to their fitness and qualifications for the various jobs. A farm needs many kinds of help beside plowmen or milkmaids. It needs carpenters and roadmenders, horse- shoers and harness makers.”

“Oh, boy,” I confessed. “I see it.”

“The farm being run,” explained Jimmie, “by expert managers from the agricultural college, and the work being done by squads and platoons under farmer foremen, the man of the family will be assigned to the type of work to which he is suited. The wife will mind the house and some chickens and a small garden. The children will attend the farm’s splendid modern schools.”

“Russia couldn’t beat this,” I declared.

To Turn the Tide

“Work would not be excessive,” said Jim, “especially at the start. Each night there would be regular serial lectures going on in the headquarters’ building, lectures for beginners on the rudiments of farming, advanced lectures for those who had been on the farm some time.”

“Pretty educational,” I demurred.

“Oh, no,” said Jim. “There would be a movie theatre, a dance hall, library, churches, clubs… headquarters would be quite a large model village.”

“And they could run down to the city,” I asked, “whenever they liked?”

“Certainly,” said Jim. “They would earn wages for their work. The farm would be a straight business proposition. Its produce would be marketed in the stores the same as any other farm produce.”

“A farm with a sales manager?” I offered.

“Certainly,” said Jim. “Lots of unemployed salesmen will turn up at the farm. But the great thing about this idea is that it will turn the tide. It will start people, who are unsuited to city life, back toward the land. For years and years, people unsuited to farm life have been moving into the cities. This has been made easy for them, because there are all kinds of organizations for training country people for city life. The big stores operate training schools. We have great technical and commercial schools for teaching people, both day and night, how to do city work. But we have no organization at all for teaching city people how to live on the land.”

“This would really be a back to the land movement,” I agreed.

“That’s the whole secret of it,” said Jim. “We talk about going back to the land, but there is no way of going back to the land except by going. And darn near perishing in the attempt. The civic farm is the solution. Those unsuited to city life will be naturally selected, because having failed to make the grade in the city, they apply for relief. That is the selection. They are then sent to a managed farm, with every kind of farm work to be done, from cattle raising and dairying to market gardening and poultry raising; and all the mechanical features of farming. They are initiated into the land. They come at it as pleasantly and cheerfully as farm people come to the city.”

“Still,” I said, “I know some people on relief who wouldn’t leave the city for a million dollars.”

“As there would be no relief,” explained Jim, “they would simply have to go to the farm. Then if they hated the farm so badly, they could do the other thing: they could work up enough energy to get a city job. And keep it. But no relief.”

“But there will always be misfits,” I argued, “who can’t fit either into city or country life.”

“My scheme.” said Jim, “would identify those cases, clearly and unmistakably. Such people could then be enlisted into special battalions. Sort of labor corps. It isn’t their fault they are misfits. But it isn’t our fault either. So why should we have to carry them? If they won’t fit either into city life or country life, then we enlist them, automatically.”

“It isn’t freedom,” I protested.

“It isn’t for them, but it is for us,” said Jim. “That’s the thing we have to face sooner or later.”

“After all,” I confessed, “there really aren’t many misfits. Mostly it is because there isn’t a chance to fit.”

“The civic farm provides the chance,” declared Jim. “I bet thousands of families and single men and women will graduate out of that civic farm on to the land, successfully. As soon as a family has demonstrated its fitness to go on to the land on its own, then government back-to-the-land schemes can be invoked.”

A Complicated Problem

“It’s a swell idea, Jim,” I sighed, “but the farmers will prevent it.”

“Why?” demanded Jim.

“They don’t want the cities spreading trained farmers all over the country in competition,” I explained. “Farmers look on cities as places to send their children to make good. And besides, they find the market for farm produce bad enough as it is without great civic farms pinching the best market in every community.”

“Farmers can’t prevent cities from setting up civic farms,” retorted Jim.

“All right,” I said, “then the real estate interests, the big mortgage and loan companies and property owners will squelch the idea. They don’t want population moved out of cities. Where would rents go, if we started moving even the unemployed out of town?”

“The big property owners,” retorted Jim, “are being taxed out of existence to support the unemployed.”

“All right then,” I finally submitted, “industry itself and organized labor wouldn’t let us move the unemployed out of town, because industry likes to have a nice big batch of unemployed around, to keep wages down. And labor likes to have unemployed around as a horrible example of industry’s original sin.”

“If I ever go into politics with this idea,” cried Jimmie, “it will go through like a house on fire.”

“You were born and raised on a farm, weren’t you, Jimmie?”

“Yes, and when all is said and done,” he said tenderly, “it is the loveliest, freest, happiest life of all.”

“Look here,” I said, “what do you know about soil? I’ve got to do something about my garden. It’s nothing but sand. I’ve put in about ten loads of what they call loam, but it just looks like plain ordinary earth to me. And it seems to sink right down through the sand.”

“Why don’t you get a couple of loads of good heavy clay?” asked Jim.

“Where could I get some clay?” I asked. “I never heard of anybody offering clay for sale.”

“You can get clay anywhere,” said Jim. “Why not borrow a little truck from one of your storekeeper friends and just drive outside the city somewhere and shovel up a load of clay?”

“I’ll order it,” I said hastily, “from the man I get the loam from.”

“What the heck?” snorted Jim. “Order a load of clay? Why, how can you call yourself a gardener if you just telephone for a load of clay…I suppose somebody else will do the spreading of it around and forking it in?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “I have a man do that kind of thing. You see, Jim, my part of the garden is appreciating it. That’s my share. If I didn’t appreciate the garden, naturally, there would be no garden; and then there would be no work for my gardener. You see how it works out? The trouble with cities is, people do more than their share. We city people are hoggish. We are bears for work, as they If everybody took it easier, there would be plenty for all.”

“If you would do a little of the spade work in your garden,” said Jim, “you’d understand it more and appreciate it a great deal more.”

“No,” I disagreed, “I’ve tried it, and it doesn’t work. What I love about a garden is the wonder of it. In June I love to go and stand in the middle of it and think, ‘How beautiful all this is, and I got it just for the asking.’ No labor or toil, no dirt, no anything. Just tell somebody, who doesn’t care, let there be beauty. And there it is! That’s what gets me.”

“Well,” said Jim, “about this clay, now. I don’t believe I would order clay, even from somebody you know. Because, after all, there is clay and clay. He might go and pick up a load of junk from some building, excavation, full of dear knows what; or maybe a load from some vacant lot, full of weed seeds that would ruin your garden in two weeks. No. If you want a load of clay, select it yourself. From some nice farm land, where you can see what you’re getting.”

“I wouldn’t know clay if I saw it,” I confessed.

“I’ll come with you,” offered Jimmie.

So I borrowed the grocer’s second truck, a little old thing that would hold very nicely all the clay I needed. And after supper, Jim and I, in old fishing clothes, sallied forth to the country’s edge.

We drove quite a way before Jimmie saw clay. He saw sandy loam and clay loam; sand and loam; some was too gravelly and some too dusty.

“As a matter of fact,” said Jim, getting back into the truck after one of his frequent dismountings for inspection, “the kind of clay I have in mind doesn’t seem to be very common around these parts. Why, when I was a kid, every time I came into the house my feet were the size of hot water bottles with thick blue clay.”

“It’s getting dark,” I pointed out.

“It won’t take five minutes,” said Jim, “to shovel on a load when we find it.”

“Shouldn’t we ask the farmer for it?” I asked.

“Puh,” said Jim, “what farmer would begrudge a little load of clay?”

At Jim’s suggestion, we started turning along side roads and lanes and presently, just as the sun was shining its last glorious farewell, we came to a little gulley with a thin creek through it, and with a loud cry, Jim identified, on the banks, the valuable blue clay we had been seeking.

“Back her in this gate,” said Jim. Which I did.

“Toss me the spade,” said Jim. Which I did also.

With a few expert flourishes, Jim flung aside the dry outer integument of soil and began cutting free large wet gobs of pure heavy clay. I got down off the truck and started to roll up my sleeves.

“Hey,” came a voice from the little hill above us. A figure was silhouetted there. “What’s goin’ on there?”

“Oh, hello,” cried Jim. “We’re just taking a few spadefuls of this clay.”

“Clay?” said the man starting down the slope, with his dog. “Where you from?”

“We’re from the city,” said Jimmie. “My friend here wanted a little clay to tighten up his garden soil. He’s got nothing but sand…”

The farmer, a long and bitter man, stared at us coldly.

“Let’s see,” he said. “You come all the way out from the city to here for a load of clay?”

“That’s it,” said Jim, starting to bend for another spadeful.

“I don’t believe it,” said the farmer. “Coming away out here for a load of clay? You’re crazy. Or you’re crooked. Get out of here!”

“But just a minute,” cried Jim. I got back behind the truck wheel. Quickly.

“Come on,” said the farmer roughly, swinging his arms and legs, preparationaly. “Git.”

“But surely,” said Jim, shoving the spade angrily aboard the truck. “Just a load of clay.”

“It don’t make sense,” said the farmer. “There’s all kinds of grafters. What are you really up to? Come on! What is it you’re after?”

“Clay, I tell you,” we both stated angrily.

“Come on,” said the farmer, with great finality. “Git.”

And he spat on his large dark rough right hand.

So we gitted.

“Can you beat that?” cried Jim. “For sheer hard-boiled suspicion? We’ll look for clay somewhere else along here….”

“Nix,” I said. “we’re going home. I’ll order it, as usual.”

“It’s not dark yet,” said Jim, leaning out and watching the roadbanks with an agricultural air.

“People are too suspicious, Jim.” I said.

“He’s just mean,” Jim said.

“Not him,” I disagreed. “He’s just naturally suspicious, and reasonably so. It’s like that back-to-the-land plan of yours, about the civic farm. People are too suspicious.”

“It’s a queer world,” sighed Jim.

“Yes,” I agreed, “and I’m going to let the usual guy haul, my clay and the usual guy fork it under. And, as usual, I’m going to enjoy my garden when it arrives.”

“Without doing any work to earn it?” protested Jim.

“In this life,” I explained, “it’s as near as we’ll ever get to the Garden of Eden.”

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, September 28, 1946.

“Neighbors,” submitted Jimmie Frise, “can be very trying.”

“Speak for yourself, Jim,” I informed him. “I never have the slightest difficulty with my neighbors.”

“Oh, I don’t mean I’m having any actual trouble,” explained Jim hastily. “It’s just about my potatoes.”

“Haven’t you got those potatoes dug yet!” I cried.

“The way the weather’s been…” muttered Jim.

“Why, my dear man,” I expostulated, “they will be rotten. They’ll be all scabs. It’s the end of September!”

“The last ones I looked at,” said Jim, “were about the size of marbles. Maybe a few as big as ping-pong balls.”

“Leave them in the ground,” I advised. “Dig them in as compost for next year. And next year, for Pete’s sake, plant asters or zinnias. The war’s over. You don’t have to grow vegetables now.”

“That’s where the neighbors come in,” explained Jim. “Potter, next door, as you know, is a real gardener.”

“He’s got a very pretty place,” I admitted, “but that’s all he does. He doesn’t go fishing. The garden’s his hobby.”

“That’s what I mean about neighbors,” said Jim. “They set a standard. And everybody around has to live up to it, or be shamed. If one guy paints his house, everybody on the street has to paint his house.”

“Keeping up with the Joneses,” I smiled.

“Well, in the case of Potter, it’s worse,” declared Jim. “He is always working in his garden. Wake up at 6 a.m. and there’s Potter quietly toiling in his garden. Twenty-fourth of May, Dominion Day, Civic Holiday, Labor Day, when you come home from fishing, there’s Potter’s garden all trimmed and weeded, the plants tied up neatly, the topsoil forked and dressed… looking like a show place.”

“It’s his hobby.” I insisted.

“Well, then,” hunted Jimmie anxiously through his mind, “it’s a way he has of standing, smoking a cigar, with a smug, satisfied expression, and looking into my garden….”

“You’re proud of the fish you catch,” I countered. “Don’t you ever feel a little smug, standing over a nice catch of trout laid out on the ground?”

“Yes, but Potter never looks at my trout, when I happen to take them out in the back yard when I come home from a fishing trip,” explained Jim. “If I call his attention to them, he just sniffs and says he can’t go for fish of any kind.”

“All right, why do you bother about your garden then?” I demanded. “Whenever you see Potter gloating over his garden, just sniff and say that gardening is for old maids.”

“Yeah, but…” worried Jim.

“My boy,” I proceeded, “I think the way we millions of human beings can live in complete harmony and indifference to another, cheek by jowl, is the greatest triumph of society. Here we are, all over the civilized world, millions upon millions of us, living not only in houses jammed right up against each other, but often in apartments and duplexes, on top of and underneath each other. Yet, to all intents and purposes, we act as if there were nobody living within miles of us.”

“It is kind of wonderful,” admitted Jim.

Sneering Across the Fence

“When you think of the natural warlike nature of all men and women,” I went on. “When you think how we struggle, hour by hour and day by day, to get ahead of each other in all kinds of business! When you think of the disagreeable characteristics we display towards members of our own families, towards our relatives, towards those we work with in office, shop and factory all day long, isn’t it a marvel the way we live in a community, without ever coming to blows? Why, a great many millions of us don’t even know the names of the people living three doors away from us, or directly across the street.”

“That’s a fact,” exclaimed Jimmie.

“Don’t know their names,” I pursued, “and don’t care. We respect each other. We are careful at all times to respect their rights. We keep quiet, so as not to disturb them. We keep our houses and premises tidy and in order. So do they. We cut our grass, keep our garbage cans hidden, and conform in every way to the rules of society. But we don’t know who they are, what they do – and don’t care!”

“By golly, that’s a fact…” pondered Jim.

“It may be,” I continued, “that the very man we gyp in a smart business deal is that unknown neighbor, four doors north. We might be so slick in business that we ruin somebody. And maybe that somebody we ruin is the elderly gent across the road, directly across, whom we’ve never spoken to in eight years.”

“And are careful not to speak to,” added Jim.

“Exactly,” I cried. “In business, in our trade or calling, the more people we know, the more people we contact, the better off we are. Then we come home at 6 o’clock to our homes and immediately change into a basically different creature, who doesn’t want to know anybody on the street.”

“A man’s home is his castle,” expounded Jim. “Maybe the secret of the success of society – if it has been a success – is this queer characteristic of walling ourselves up in our homes, though our homes are actually attached, like the cells in a bee’s nest, to all the other homes in the city.”

“All I can say,” I wound up, “is, when you consider the curious, inquisitive, greedy, possessive, intruding nature of mankind generally, it is a world wonder the way we have succeeded in building our towns and cities like bees’ hives, yet remaining as aloof from one another as though we all were hermits in the depths of lonely forests.”

“It would be a great thing,” sighed Jim, “if the nations of the world could mind their own business the same way…”

“Yeah,” I smiled, “but some Potter would always sneer across the fence…”

“He’s just waiting,” gritted Jimmie, “to see me dig those potatoes. I feel he’s watching every day, to see me dig them…”

“Why don’t you dig them at night?” I asked.

“And give him the satisfaction,” cried Jim, “of knowing I had ducked him?”

“How did you come to plant those potatoes anyway?” I demanded. “You’ve got no room for a vegetable garden. Your back yard is fit for nothing but a few little flower beds.”

“Well, in the spring,” complained Jim, “you know how it is. In April? The fishing season hasn’t opened. The air is sort of… sort of balmy and full of quivers and queer impulses. Well, there’s Potter, like a man in love, furiously at work in his garden. He’s raking, spading, forking. He’s trimming the climbing roses. He’s uncovering little muddy lumps in the earth and bending over them like a surgeon engaged in a major operation. Those little muddy lumps are his perennials, and he’s had them under mulch and straw all winter…”

“You shouldn’t let it get you, Jim,” I assured. “When you see Potter working in his garden in April, you should rush up to the attic and get your tackle box out and start sorting your fishing tackle out on the back steps, where he can see you.”

“Potter,” declared Jim angrily, “sets the whole block on fire. First, those of us nearest see him. Then we start raking and spading and tidying up. Then, farther up and down the street, others see us. And so it spreads, until the whole block is working like mad, in the moist April evenings…”

“Potter,” I submitted, “is a very good influence in the neighborhood.”

“Last spring,” pursued Jim, “he set aside the whole bottom end of his garden to tiny plots of very choice vegetables. On one side, some kind of great big southern tomato. Then onions. Then cress and pepper grass. In the middle, a little plot no bigger than a writing desk, to herbs!”

“Herbs, eh?” I inquired lively.

“Sweet basil, marjoram, parsley, fennel, a lot of queer herbs you never heard of…” said Jim.

“I bet Potter eats very tasty dishes,” I smacked.

“Well,” concluded Jim, “when I saw his vegetable garden, I dug up that patch in my place and planted potatoes…”

“You have no imagination, Jim,” I assured. “Potatoes!”

“Nothing I like better in this world, as I told Potter,” said Jim, “than a great big baked potato, big and mealy, with a little butter and French dressing dribbled into it…”

“French dressing!” I protested.

“Oil and vinegar,” said Jim, “about a teaspoonful of French dressing and a little bit of butter. You cut an X in the baked potato, loosen it up your fork, then dribble a little French dressing and butter down into it… man, at this time of year, you never tasted anything so good!”

“You told Potter this?” I inquired.

“Yes, groaned Jim, “and all summer, whenever we talked over the fence, he would inquire how the big baked potatoes were coming along…”

“They didn’t come along very good,” I recollected.

“By the end of August, hardly any tops left…” sighed Jim.

A Neighborly Jolt

I sat thinking about Potter, and his cigar, snickering over the fence at Jimmie’s poor sunburned garden.

“Jim,” I said, “I think the Potter type should get a little jolt now and then. Nothing worse than a smug neighbor.”

“He’s unjoltable,” sighed Jim. “He’s an expert in all he’s interested in. And he is totally uninterested in anything he isn’t expert in.”

“I know the type,” I mused. “Let’s see. How about this? How about us buying a bag of the biggest Idaho potatoes we can lay hands on. Tonight, when it’s good and dark, you and I quietly, veeeerrry quietly, go out and dig up all those poor little marbles of yours, and replant the big Idahos…”

Jim was on his feet cheering and waving his arms.

We went to the fruit market and hunted around until we found a bag of the most enormous, beautiful great big pallid potatoes you ever saw. They looked more like people than potatoes. You may have seen such beauties. A sort of Indian tan buckskin or rawhide color. They had eyes that fairly looked you in the eye. You could imagine them winking at you.

“Them,” said the potato expert from whom we bought the bag, “are the best potatoes in the world. They bake to the most beautiful flour…”

We smuggled the bag in the side drive, which is on the opposite side of Jim’s house from Potter’s. We took them down to the cellar and gloated over them. It was dim in the cellar, so we failed to notice that about every 10th potato had a purple trade mark stamped on it, a ring with the grower’s name.

After supper, we saw Potter and his wife leave in their car. To make certain, we waited until dark. And when no light showed in Potter’s house, we proceeded stealthily to the garden and set to work. With a garden fork, we opened Jim’s long-neglected hills, and found what we expected – poor little marbles, ping-pong balls and robins’ eggs of potatoes, most of them withered and mushy to the touch, many of them just a scab and a good many of them semi-liquid. We combed with the fork and by hand until we had found every last one and carted them to the back of the garden under the syringa bushes, where we buried them in a common grave.

Then, having carefully set to one side of each hill the withered remnants of the potato tops, we re-dug good big holes and planted the swollen and incomparable Idahos.

In some hills we put four, in some six, and here and there, nearest the Potter fence, we buried eight or nine.

“The earth’s a little moist,” whispered Jim, “and it’ll stick to ’em…”

After the planting, we set the withered tops back in realistic ruin. And we patted the hills into shape, and with the fork and a broom, as best we could in the dark, we roughed everything up to give it the characteristic appearance, of neglect it had originally.

During the night, a sprinkle of rain fell, and when I called for Jim in the morning, he took me around to behold our handiwork. If ever a few hills of potatoes looked unpromising, sad and forlorn, these did.

It developed into a fine afternoon, and Jim and I were in the garden about supper time when Potter came into his garden to stand, in appreciative glory, amid his still continuing flora: dahlias, zinnias and incredibly beautiful little throw rugs of nasturtiums, yellow, crimson, orange.

Jim proceeded to the potato patch, fork in hand.

“Hel-LO!” cried Potter, suddenly, over the fence. “Do you mean to tell me you’re going to dig your Idahos?”

“I don’t think I need to leave them in any longer, do you?” inquired Jim earnestly.

“Heh, heh, heh,” laughed Potter, coming over and leaning delicately on the fence. “This is going to be SOMETHING!”

“How do you mean?” inquired Jim innocently, while I arrived with a bushel basket and some smaller containers.

“I’ve been waiting all September to see you dig those spuds,” said Potter amiably. “Say, shouldn’t I call in some of the neighbors–?”

“Do you mean-” asked Jim uncertainly, “do you mean I won’t GET any potatoes–?”

“Look,” said Potter, “I told you last spring not to plant potatoes in that soil. You’ve got no soil at all there. You’ve never cultivated it or fertilized it. Besides, it’s totally unfit for potatoes.”

Out Popped the Idahos

He blew cigar smoke into the air and looked us both in the eye with the wisdom of the expert.

“But–” Jim protested, very dejected, “I remember the guy I bought the seed potatoes from, he said they’d grow anywhere-“

“It really gives me a laugh,” said Potter, kindly, “to see the efforts of people around here to try and make a garden. Why, gardening is an art. You don’t just stick seeds in the ground and expect… Why, look at my place here! There’s the result of art and science. And any amount of hard work. First, you take samples of the soil, at different depths, topsoil, subsoil, and have them analyzed by the government. Then–“

While he was talking, Jim, with the absent air of a man deeply disappointed, stuck the fork into the first hill, went good and deep under the dry and withered stalks of the tops straggling over the earth, and pried up.

And up popped four or five of the most magnificent ldahos any man ever cut an X in.

They seemed to pop, to burst, to bounce. out of the hill.

“HEL-lo!” cried Jim delightedly.

Potter so nearly swallowed his cigar that he had to grab for it with both hands.

“Well, well, WELL!” I exclaimed, kneeling and beginning promptly to pick the spuds up and toss them into the bushel basket.

Jim, as though it were just what he expected, forked carefully in the hill and turned out two more beauties. I felt into the loosened hill with my fingers and found no more.

“Ha!” I said casually, “if they’re all as good as that–“

Potter just leaned on the fence and glared. His face turned a slow purple.

Jim dug the fork deep under the next hill, heaved up, and out tumbled seven more great big Idahos, the moist earth sticking lightly to them in realistic style.

“What do you think of those, neighbor?” cried Jim cheerily, holding up a champion for Potter to see.

“Urp,” said Potter,” whaw, huff, it’s a… it’s a miracle!”

“Aw,” said Jim very off-handedly, “miracle nothing. You buy good seed and stick it in the ground, and OF COURSE it comes up. What else can it do? Some people go to all kinds of toil and trouble over growing a few things, a few vegetables, a couple of patches of pretty flowers–“

“Gardening,” I suggested to Potter as I knelt and heaved the murphies¹ into the baskets, “gardening is a spinster’s game really–“

“Say,” cried Jimmie, “how about calling in some of the neighbors as you suggested, Potter–?”

“I’ve,” he said, in a daze, withdrawing his hold from the fence, “I’ve got to tie up a few dahlias, so big they are falling over… I’ve got to fasten them up…”

So Jim stood up and looked over the fences in various directions and called the neighbors to see his potato crop. And they came and exclaimed and yelled and made sounds of incredulous delight, while through the bushes, we could see Potter bent down, tying up dahlias and looking 10 years older.

But finally, he could stand it no longer and came around the side drive too.

And it was he, unbelievingly fondling and examining the beautiful Idahos, who discovered, about the fourth one he petted, the purple ink ring and the grower’s name printed on the pallid rawhide skin of the spud.

Which made everybody, including Potter, feel good. And we all went in Jim’s kitchen and turned on the gas stove oven and baked 20 Idahos and put French dressing, butter and salt in them and sat around the kitchen eating and talking about fishing.

---

Editor’s Note:

1. “Murphies” are slang for potatoes. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, June 14, 1947.

“One man,” growled Jimmie Frise, “can ruin a whole neighborhood.”

“Meaning,” I murmured, “Mr. Fidler.”

We were sitting on Jim’s top step watching Jimmie’s next door neighbor, Fidler, hot at his task.

Fidler had just finished trimming a group of little ornamental bushes along the front edge of his terraced lawn.

“It is the hour,” pursued Jim; in a low voice,” “when every normal man should be sitting on his top step awaiting the call to supper.”

“Fidler,” I pointed out, “is mad about gardening. It’s his hobby.”

“But does a man need to be so mad,” protested Jim, “as to come tearing home from work, change his clothes and rush madly out into the garden? Look: He even changes his clothes!”

Fidler was dressed in a white shirt and brown canvas pants.

“You don’t object to a golfer,” I submitted, “changing his clothes and adopting the uniform of his hobby?”

“Golfers,” said Jim, “are decent and discreet about their hobby. They have lockers out at the golf club, where they keep their golfing clothes. They don’t flaunt themselves in the face of the whole neighborhood. A golfer can quietly go golfing, and not a soul in the district will guess what he’s up to. In fact, many of the most ardent golfers wear formal business suits and go to a lot of trouble to conceal their intentions…”

Fidler was now down on his hands and knees, industriously grubbing at something along the edges of the shrubbery.

Across the street, Mrs. Anderson strolled out onto her verandah and gazed about. Her eyes settled on Fidler, and after a moment of thought, she stepped down off her verandah onto the lawn and began idly examining the borders against the house. It was the hour when the fried potatoes are quietly hissing on the top of the stove and the stuffed pork tenderloins are coming to the right brown in the oven.

“Oh, George!” we heard Mrs. Anderson call musically.

After a moment, George Anderson in his shirt sleeves, with the open newspaper by his side, came to their door. Mrs. Anderson beckoned him, and he came reluctantly down the steps.

“See that!” hissed Jimmie. “The whole pantomime, right before our eyes. She wandered out while the supper is cooking, saw Fidler; and now see what’s happening!”

Mrs. Anderson was pointing here and pointing there.

Her husband stood, the newspaper behind him, moodily following Mrs. Anderson’s gestures.

“Poor Anderson!” sighed Jim. “And all on account of Fidler.”

Fidler was now on his feet, with a big double handful of earthy junk, which he carried industriously to the side drive and we heard the garbage can lid rattle.

“Busybody!” muttered Jim, bitterly. “When I think of the number of man hours that guy has been responsible for in this one city block! I bet I’ve done 10 or 15 extra hours on my lawns and gardens on account of him…”

“Aw, well, you’re right next door to him,” I reminded. “His evil influence,” declared Jim, “goes all the way up this block and I bet you into the next block. Maybe women who live three or four blocks away have come walking by here, pushing their baby carriages. And have seen Fidler out there putting on one of his exhibitions…”

“After all,” I soothed, “every man, every householder, is obliged to do a certain amount of work around his house. For his own sake.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” exclaimed Jim. “I think every man should do a little work around the garden. Maybe two or three hours a week, during the start of the season. But this guy Fidler is at it from daylight to dark. From April to November. He’s consumed by an awful passion. He rakes and he digs. He plants and he sows. He changes and shifts. One year, it’s a perennial border along that far side of his place. This year, it’s this corner patch of evergreen and flowering shrubs. He never leaves well enough alone…”

“He’s what they call a horticulturalist, Jim,” I explained. “He’s just as important to the world as an agriculturalist – only on a smaller scale. Such men make the world beautiful. With the world gone nuts on science, isn’t it kind of beautiful to see a man like Fidler who, for the sheer love of beauty – beauty with no money angle! – toils and labors with joy…?”

“Joy!” scoffed Jim. “Do you realize how much trouble and nagging and quarrelling this guy Fidler has been responsible for – just in this one little city block? Wives nagging. Husbands growling. And, as I say, hundreds, maybe thousands of man hours of labor, hard, back-breaking labor… Pssstt! Look across the road!”

Mrs. Anderson had just suddenly remembered the stuffed pork tenderloins and was hurrying up the steps. Anderson stood gloomily looking around him. Then he slowly followed his wife, his shoulders humped, the newspaper dangling behind him.

At the top of the steps, he paused and looked back. He looked across the street, to where Fidler was coming from his side drive with a wheelbarrow. Anderson stared long and cold at Fidler. Then he happened to catch his eyes. He shrugged wearily and went indoors.

“Anderson will be out, right after supper,” prophesied Jim feelingly.

“What I can’t see,” I said, smelling the fried tomatoes and bacon that the Frises were having for supper, “is why you ruin your supper by sitting out here brooding like this. If you think Fidler is wasting his time, what about you ruining your digestion by sitting out here griping?”

“You remember helping me fertilize this lawn,” queried Jim, nodding to his front grass.

“And not a bad job we did,” I remarked. “It’s coming along very nicely, considering that we just about burned the stuffing out of it with commercial fertilizer.”

“I’ve got to roll it,” said Jim hollowly.

“Get some kids to roll it,” I suggested hastily, at the same time rising; for my supper too would be ready.

“Kids can’t do a proper job,” announced Jim, “Fidler says so. It’s Fidler’s roller we’re going to use.”

“Oh, you’ve got Fidler to help you?” I queried.

“No, I phoned your wife, as soon as I got home,” explained Jim, “and asked her if you were free tonight…”

“Jim, get Fidler,” I urged. “He KNOWS about gardening. And besides, he’s your next door neighbor. Think how he must suffer, seeing your neglected premises…”

“I’ll see you right after supper,” said Jim rising in response to a call from within. Supper was ready.

So I walked up the street and around the two blocks thinking how far the influence of a man like Fidler can reach in one small neighborhood. As I walked, I noticed the influence of Fidler very strong up to the corner. Once around the corner, I could see the Fidler influence waning steadily; until at the next block from the corner it was obviously a different regime entirely. There was no Fidler for two solid blocks. And I knew of no other for the two blocks beyond my place.

We had speckled trout, – a gift from a bachelor friend – asparagus, home fried potatoes and strawberries with cream. Then, with some old clothes I changed into, I sauntered back to Jim’s. After all, friendship is friendship: And trout and strawberries set very flattering on the stomach. I felt like befriending somebody and it might as well be Jim.

Fidler and Jim had just dragged the lawn roller out of Fidler’s side drive and were trying to haul it up the little terrace that divides Jim’s lawn from Fidler’s.

“Roll it,” explained Fidler, when we got the dang thing up on Jim’s level, “roll it first straight back and forth. Then change, and roll it crossways. You can tell if the rolling is sinking in. If not, then roll it kitacorner. See? Diagonally, from this corner to that. Then back again the other diagonal. See?”

“It’s been nice and damp the past week,” I enunciated. “I imagine one rolling will be ample.”

“Not at all, not at all!” cried Fidler, who now had large leather gauntlets on, and was obviously about do some trimming in his rambler roses out on his back fences and pergolas. “A little rolling is worse than none at all. Give it a good, sound rolling. It not only smooths the appearance. It breaks down all the worm casts, and all the solid chunks, beneath the turf and sod… No, no! A thorough rolling…”

So he went back to his roses, and Jim and I, after glancing across the street to see Anderson already squatted down unhappily underneath his living room window ledge, took hold of the roller and started to haul.

Fidler’s roller was solid concrete. A large drum of steel, filled with concrete. It was more practical, Fidler held, than one of those rollers you fill with water. It weighed a ton.

It was all Jim and I could do to get the thing moving. And once you had it moving, it was harder to stop. You had to brace yourself for the start. Then brace yourself for the stop.

Jim’s property slopes slightly towards the sidewalk. And on the Fidler side, marked off by a terribly neat little box hedge, there is a short, steep terrace, about two feet down – to Fidler’s impeccable lawn.

We did the straight up and down passages of the roller. And then the straight across passages. It is 10 passages the long way. And eight passages the cross way. Each time we arrived at the edge of the terrace down to Fidler’s, Jimmie and I both slowed carefully and brought the roller to a sound, sturdy stop a good foot from the verge of the little declivity. I cannot say what thoughts were in Jim’s mind, as we crossed and recrossed. But I imagine they were the same thoughts as in mine; for I could feel him slightly trembling, as, our arms pressed together on the roller handle – trembling slightly each time we heaved that mass of concrete to a cautious, over-careful stop.

We rested. And there was Anderson across the street, staring at us.

He waved his trowel up street and down. “Quite a community out tonight,” he called. We looked up and down. There were about 10 of the neighbors out, in one pained attitude or another.

“A heavy job you got there,” called Anderson.

“And tricky,” I added.

“A lot of responsibility,” he said oddly, bending back to his task.

I looked at Jim and Jim looked sharply away.

We seized the wide grip of the roller and started the diagonal.

This diagonal rolling is harder than you would suppose. At the corners of the lawn, it is a very short roll. Back; then forward. At the middle of the lawn, it is a much longer pull. Longer, even, than the longest pull on the full length of the square.

The first centre diagonal passage was completed, forward, then back. The second centre diagonal was the longest of all. We started to push.

Now, maybe we were tiring.

Or possibly we were perspiring. Our hands may have been slippery with sweat. Or it is conceivable that Jimmie and I, being of decidedly unequal size, were not exerting a properly balanced pressure on the handle of that heavy roller.

But the fact of the matter is that, within about six feet of the end of that second long diagonal passage of the lawn, and precisely at the moment the roller was aimed at Mr. Fidler’s beautiful new triangular patch of perennial and ornamental bushes at the front of his lawn, that monstrous mass of cement suddenly went out of control.

Jimmie swears my hands let go of the handle bar sooner than his. I swear that it was the sudden weight of the mass, consequent on Jimmie letting go of it, that caused me to lose my grip.

With the smoothness of a roller skate, the roller sped for the small box hedge at the terrace.

With a sickening squash, it rolled the little hedge flat.

And suddenly gaining momentum from the terrace, it leaped, it fairly leaped, for Mr. Fidler’s triangular ornamental shrubbery bed.

Mr. Fidler had two such beds. One nearest Jim. The other  – which we cared little about – at the far side of the Fidler property, up against the other neighbor’s premises.

Given a sort of waggle, as it leaped down the terrace, the roller, after squashing the one ornamental bed terribly and writhing flat, seemed to skid up on one edge, and steer straight for the second triangular bed.

All this happened in a twinkling, and of course in deathly silence, save for a low rumbling and a queer malignant hissing as the roller passed over the delicate twiggery. But now, Jim’s and my shouts, and a kind of triumphant cheer from across the road at Anderson’s, was merged with a terrific crash as the roller pulled up against a low stone wall that decorated Fidler’s farther terrace.

It hung there, amid the dust and ruin, for only an instant. And then down it came, the full length of Fidler’s lawn, back over one of the triangular beds, out onto the sidewalk where it crushed a kiddy car belonging to a little boy called Eddy, and then smack up against the Jones’s motor car (that’s the third neighbor below Jim) which it pushed half way across the road, sideways.

And all came to a deathly stop.

Save for Mr. Fidler coming on the double out his side drive.

Well: There was $60 damage to the Jones’s left rear wheel. Eddy’s father settled for $12.

Fidler said $2 would fix the low stone wall.

But it wasn’t the intrinsic value of the ornamental bushes that mattered. It was the work, the labor, the toil.

Jim said he would help re-plant the triangular beds as well as provide all the necessary bushes.

But after all the wreckage was cleared away and the garage men gone and little Eddy put to bed and Fidler turned his back bedroom light out, there was quite a gathering in Jim’s – Anderson and Jones, and Eddy’s father, and the old man three doors north – in fact the whole neighborhood seemed to come shyly in at Jim’s open door; even as late as eleven.

And there was more hand-shaking, and chuckling, and even snickering…

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, May 10, 1947.

“Public opinion? Pffft!” declared Jimmie Frise.

“Do you suppose,” I scoffed, “that we’d be out here scattering fertilizer on your lawn if it weren’t for public opinion?”

“I resent that!” stated Jim, pausing in the task of strewing greyish chemical fertilizer from the big paper bag. “I like flowers. I like a well-kept lawn. I like a place tidy and attractive. And you say it’s all on account of the neighbors.”

“So it is,” I insisted. “Your lawn is kind of run down. You see all the neighbors’ lawns nice and green. Every time you look out the front window your lawn reproaches you. Your wife reproaches you. Your neighbors, in the evening, as you stand on your verandah, call across to you about your lawn being kind of skimpy…”

“So,” said Jim bitterly, “instead of giving me credit for being out here working, you give it to the neighbors?”

“Certainly,” I agreed.

“You’ve got a pretty low opinion of mankind,” submitted Jim. “At that rate, everybody in this block is just keeping up with the Joneses.”

“That’s it,” I admitted.

“Jim stood and gazed with some resentment around at the neighboring houses. Then he started flicking handfuls of the powdered fertilizer onto the grass again; and I with my bag of it followed suit.

It was just about to rain. It was one of those soft May days when it threatens rain for hours and then begins; the rain dropping softly as feathers. A perfect day for fertilizing a lawn. Jim had called me an hour before to run over in my old clothes and give him a hand at revitalizing his front lawn.

“Not too much,” warned Jim, as we passed each other, carefully flinging the chemical powder. “Too much will burn it. We’ve got to spread these two 20-pound bags evenly over the whole lawn…”

“It’s coming out even,” I assured.

Jimmie looked up at the lowering clouds and held out his hand.

“If it’ll just hold off another 15 minutes,” he said, “while I scuffle it with the rake, it will be perfect.”

“Nice timing,” I agreed. “And in a couple of weeks, you’ll have a lawn here that will admit you back into full citizenship with your neighbors.”

“Look,” said Jimmie firmly. “If I lived away out in the backwoods, somewhere, I’d still have a tidy and attractive home. I’d have a nicely painted shanty, even If it were only a shanty. I’d have nice grounds. around it, and flower beds…”

“In all your life,” I interrupted, “did you ever see a nice tidy place in the backwoods? No. They’re all the same. With old junk leaning up against the walls. With tools and implements dropped just where they happened to fall. Jim, the nature of man is to be as untidy as he can get away with.”

“Listen, I’ve seen lonely farm houses,” declared Jim, “away off the beaten track, that were simply beautiful, with flower gardens, and lawns, and everything beautifully painted.

“That isn’t the general rule, Jim,” I countered. “The farther off the beaten track you go, the more run-down the farms are. The more you come into farming communities, the better are the chances that some one farmer has got a little style to him. And he infects the whole neighborhood. And everybody starts keeping up with the Joneses.”

“In other words,” exclaimed Jim a little angrily, “we’ve all got to be led. We aren’t equals. We don’t stand on our own feet. We don’t do good of our own free will. We have to be wheedled or prodded or SHAMED…”

“That seems to be it, Jim,” I philosophized. “Our whole social system is based on the mutual respect of neighbors. Now, you take a big city like this. There are districts full of dirty, slummy streets where every house is equally run-down and dilapidated. Not one house in a block will show the slightest sign of care or attention. Do you suppose that among the hundreds of men and women living in that street there isn’t ONE good housekeeper? Not one good man who would like to improve the appearance of his home? There must be. But they respect their neighbors. They respect everybody else’s poverty. They fall in line.”

“Hah!” exulted Jimmie. “Now you’ve disproved your own theory!”

“Not at all,” I assured, walking along the last edge of the lawn and sprinkling the chemical evenly. “The thing that keeps this street you live in all at about the same general style and condition is that you all fall in line. And if you people fall in line, you must expect the slum districts to fall in line. We are led up. Or we are led down. But we hate to be conspicuous. So we all do as our immediate neighbors do.”

“In the slums,” insisted Jimmie, “I HAVE seen the odd nice, tidy, painted home…”

“Yes, and a very unhappy man you’ll find in that house,” I explained. “It’s the same with streets like this one you live in. Now and again you’ll come across a neglected, run-down home sticking out like a sore thumb amid all the neat and tidy neighborhood. Somebody very unhappy lives there too. In the case of that neat little house in the slums, that man will keep on struggling until he can move away into a better district. In the case of the run-down place in the nice district, the guy will continue to muddle and struggle until he is able to move down into some neighborhood where he is more at home. To be happy in this world, Jim you have got to conform.”

“To YOUR neighbors?” demanded Jim, glaring around at the circle of pleasant homes surrounding his.

“To your neighbors,” I sermonized. “Public opinion is everything in this world. Not public opinion in the broad sense. But in the narrow sense. Some people think public opinion as being a vast vague body, like the ocean or the air we breathe. Public opinion is no such thing. It is in compartments. It’s like water in a bucket. Or air in a sealed room. It starts in small compartments like this immediate neighborhood in which you live. The public opinion you are most concerned with is the opinion of your immediate neighbors here. Then comes the public opinion of this district at large. Then, adding the various districts together, you get the public opinion of your city. Then, of your province. And so on. But it all starts right here on this lawn.”

“You mean…?” cried Jim indignantly.

“That we are throwing this fertilizer here on this lawn,” I triumphed, “because you are submitting and conforming to public opinion!”

“I hate the whole idea,” muttered Jim, casting his eye over the finished job.

We had got the grey powder very nicely and evenly distributed by hand all over the expanse of the lawn. Here and there were little patches where it was too thick, but Jim was getting the rake to scuffle it evenly.

Any minute, the rain would start to fall: Soft May rain that would first dampen, then moisten, and finally wet the fertilizer and, according to the directions on the bag, seep the revitalizing chemicals sweetly and harmlessly into the soil around the tender spring grass-roots.

Jimmie got the rake and swiftly scuffled the top dressing. And I went and sat on the verandah.

“There!” cried Jim, as he finished the raking to his satisfaction. “And just in the nick of time.”

I saw the first gentle drops falling through the air. And Jim came up and joined me on the verandah to lean back in our chairs and smoke and view with satisfaction a job well done.

“How long,” I inquired, “will it take for this stuff to show results?”

“The directions on the bag,” said Jim, “say that an emerald green will be apparent within a few days. If the stuff is properly applied.”

I picked up the empty fertilizer bag off the verandah floor and found the directions. I read them with the pleasure intended by the writer. I could fairly feel the little grass-roots out there tingling. I read down to the bottom, where it said “Warning!”

“Warning”

“As this fertilizer is a concentrated plant food, do not exceed the prescribed amounts or serious burning of the vegetation will result. Be specially careful of lawn grass. Ten pounds per 1,000 square feet is the maximum and less is recommended rather than more.”

“Ten pounds,” I said to Jim sharply. “Per 1,000 square feet! Why, Jim, that lawn isn’t much more than 1,000 square feet…”

“I figure it’s 4,000 square feet,” said Jim. “Forty foot frontage by…”

He sat forward abruptly.

The rain was increasing. Soft, but thick.

“Holy…” gasped Jimmie.

“Jim,” I cried. “We’ve put 40 pounds of fertilizer on there…!”

“Forty foot frontage by…” whispered Jim in agitation. “Forty by 10 is 400 square feet…. Oh, my gosh!”

“Jim, it’s ruined!” I shouted, leaping up.

“The hose! The hose!” wailed Jim, floundering to his feet.

“What’ll the hose…?” I cried following.

“We’ll wash off all we can, before the rain seeps it in!” shouted Jimmie, leading into the house.

He grabbed his raincoat and threw me a spare slicker. It was much too big for me, but it would do. That rain outside was increasing to a lovely warm deluge. And every second, that poor grass was being burned worse.

Down the back steps we galloped like firemen, seized the coiled hose and raced out the side drive with it. Jim slammed the connection up to the garden tap and started screwing while I took the nozzle end and dragged for the lawn.

The rain was now pelting. It beat on my slicker and bounced in a warm spray.

I felt the hose stiffen and the cool stream shot forth. Jim came and seized it from me.

“You get the broom,” he panted, “and the rake. I’ll hose as hard as I can, and you try to sweep…”

I dashed around to the back kitchen and got the broom. And on rejoining Jim, I stood forth and swished for all my might. I swished as Jim hosed.

And the rain came down all the harder.

I happened to look across the street, and a lady, one of Jim’s neighbors, was standing on her verandah in an attitude of astonishment.

When she saw me look at her, she suddenly shrank back and disappeared indoors.

“I guess the neighbors will think we’re crazy,” I cried to Jim.

I happened to glance up again in a minute, and I saw several ladies standing on their verandahs. Also a couple of old gentlemen of the kind who have retired.

They were all watching us.

The ladies began skipping, in the rain, with their coats over their heads, from porch to porch, and gathered in little knots and groups.

And the rain increased. And Jim advanced with the hose, step by step, shooting the powerful stream in its work of mercy, while I danced ahead, swishing with the broom.

“We’re creating a little excitement,” admitted Jim, as he saw the gallery increasing.

“I wish this slicker fitted me better,” I said. “I must look kind of silly….”

“Well, neighbors are neighbors,” muttered Jim. “Even if we do look silly, they don’t need to spread the word…”

“They’re not laughing,” I pointed out.

“By golly…” said Jim, seeing the same shocked expression on them all…

Then from one of the verandah gallery groups a figure detached itself. It was old Mrs. Crisp, one of Jim’s favorite neighbors. A dear old lady under an umbrella, who often came and sat in the evenings on the Frise porch.

Resolutely, she marched across the streaming pavement and Jim turned the hose away as she came close. Under her umbrella, she came right close to us. “Boys!” she said, in a shocked voice. “Boys, for your wives’ sakes, for your families’ sakes, won’t you be good boys and go indoors!”

“Why, Mrs. Crisp…!” cried Jim, staring.

“Boys!” hissed Mrs. Crisp commandingly. “It’s raining. It’s pouring rain. Now, do, like good boys, go in the house. Please! You are making a spectacle of yourselves before the whole neighborhood…”

“But Mrs. Crisp!” gasped Jimmie, turning off the nozzle so he could talk more freely.

“Now, now,” soothed Mrs. Crisp firmly. “I don’t object to a little jollification for you boys. But not with the whole district out observing…”

“Mrs. Crisp,” said Jim, stepping close and bending down so the old lady could see his honest sober gaze and smell his breath if necessary. “Mrs. Crisp, you are quite mistaken. We’ve just discovered we’ve put far too much fertilizer on the lawn, and we’re trying to wash it off, before it burns the…”

“Oh!” squeaked Mrs. Crisp, in consternation. “We thought… we all thought… oh, dear!… I must go and tell them…”

And she hustled across the street under her umbrella and hurried from verandah to verandah, calling out the explanation to the gallery, which, in response to the news, vanished indoors immediately.

“Yah!” grated Jimmie, resuming the hosing, “so there’s public opinion for you! There’s neighbors! Always putting the worst possible interpretation on everything…!”

“Thank heavens,” I gasped, sweeping, “for dear old Mrs. Crisp!”

---

Editor’s Note: There was one other illustration that came with this story, but it was in the seam of the microfilm scan and was completely illegible.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, April 24, 1943.

“Hey,” came Jimmie Frise’s voice over the telephone, “what’s all this on my front lawn?”

“Okay, what is it?” I inquired.

“Don’t you know about it?” demanded Jim. “It’s two full loads of fertilizer. The best I ever saw. I thought maybe that uncle of yours had come through.”

“By George, he may have!” I exclaimed. “He’s been promising us a load of fertilizer every spring for 10 years. But why would he deliver it at your place instead of my place? He knows where I live. And I don’t think he knows where you live.”

“Well, it’s swell stuff, anyway,” said Jim, enthusiastically. “Come on down and have a look. It’s beautifully rotted. And it seems to have loam mixed right in it. Boy, will it ever make my garden grow!”

I got my hat on and trotted down to Jim’s house at once. There was Jim, with a spade and a wheelbarrow, already in action.

“I was born on the farm,” declared Jim, fairly radiant with April glee, “but I never saw better fertilizer than that. Look: it oozes. And it’s all blended in with a kind of rich, black loam. That uncle of yours must be a real farmer.”

“I can’t understand,” I submitted, “why he would dump it off here instead of at my place. There are two loads, at least, there. Why would he dump both here?”

“Maybe your folks were out,” suggested Jim.

“No, they were in all day,” I said. “And Uncle Pete has been at my house no end of times.”

“Well,” sighed Jim happily, “my folks were out all day. So I can’t explain it. All I know is, we came home. And here she was. Two huge loads.”

“It must be Uncle Pete, all right,” I said. “Or have you dickered with anybody else about any fertilizer?”

“No,” replied Jimmie. “I’ve always counted on your Uncle Pete coming through with this. Every autumn, when he is down for the Winter Fair, he has promised us a load of fertilizer in the spring. Year after year, something turned up to prevent our getting it….”

“Last year,” I recalled, “he put 10 more acres under cultivation and couldn’t spare us any.”

“And the year before,” reminded Jim, “the roads were so bad.”

“This’ll be it,” I said confidently. “But I wish he had dumped my half up at my place.”

“Probably,” explained Jim, “he sent a driver with it. And the driver forgot the address and maybe he could remember my name; it’s an odd name, Frise. So he looked it up in the phone book and …”

Two Busy Spreaders

“Okay,” I agreed. “Now, how do we do? How can I get my half up to my place?”

“Let’s do this,” suggested Jim. “You help me spread mine around and then I’ll help you wheelbarrow your half up to your place. It won’t take half an hour to spread mine. And it’s three hours before dark.”

“Okay,” I submitted. “Let’s get going.”

“I’ve wheeled in three loads,” said Jim. “You wheel three, while I load you up. We’ll take turn about, three loads, eh?”

“Correct,” I said, seizing the barrow handles.

And Jimmie spaded up large gobs of the rich, globby fertilizer and dumped it in the barrow. And when it was full, I wheeled it in the side drive and dumped it along the garden borders. Jim had dumped his barrow loads at intervals of about 10 feet. So I followed the pattern. From these barrow loads, Jim could skite the stuff in all directions, over the garden borders, over the lawns, around the perennial bushes.

When I wheeled the empty barrow out to Jim and rested while he filled it, I said:

“Jim, are we making a mistake in putting this precious stuff on our flower gardens? Should we not make victory gardens? For potatoes, tomatoes, cabbages, and other simple garden food plants?”

“A city back yard,” stated Jim, heaving with the spade, “is not really suited to the growing of vegetable crops.”

“This is the fourth spring of the war, Jim,” I reminded him. “Nineteen forty, forty-one, forty-two, forty-three. The fourth spring. We have talked every spring of making some economic use of our gardens. In 1940, it was a whimsical suggestion. In 1941, we thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea. In 1942, we very seriously considered it, as an aid to the war economy. This year, by golly, we are rationed, a food shortage actually looms. And here we are, spreading precious fertilizer over your lawns and flower beds.”

“Well,” said Jim, resting on his spade, “in the first place, city soil is sour and dry and sterile. City yards are shaded by neighboring buildings and trees for many hours of the day. Besides, we are away in the summer at the very time the crops need special attention regarding weeds and bugs.”

“I venture the opinion,” I said, seizing the barrow handles, “that if we got up 20 minutes earlier than usual each summer morning, we could do all the work necessary to make a success of a little market garden plot in our own yards.”

“All you’ve got to do,” replied Jim, as I headed off up the side drive, “is get out any summer morning early enough to see the market gardeners on the outskirts of the city. You’d change your mind. For they are up at dawn and still working at dusk, all summer through. We city gardeners spend one Saturday afternoon raking up and digging our flower beds. We spend two or three evenings, after supper, planting a few seeds and a few seedlings bought at the corner store. And then, except for an occasional grass cutting and a little weeding whenever the spirit moves us we sit back all the rest of the year and gloat amidst the profusion of our flowers and shrubs. But that isn’t the way crops grow. That isn’t the way the farmer makes his hard-earned money.”

I went on in the yard and emptied the barrow in another calculated pile. When I got back out to Jim, I had another angle.

“It seems to me,” I stated, as Jim proceeded to fill the barrow, “that if the food controller really wanted us city people to help produce food, he would have spent the winter organizing the city into gardening societies. Each city block should elect a chairman and a committee. What is a city block but a little community unto its self? It encloses anywhere from 20 to 100 gardens. A city block is a walled village. Within its walls are acres and acres of arable and productive land. Under proper management, those acres could produce valuable crops. But leaving us to our individual resources, we get nowhere.”

“You’ve got a swell idea there,” agreed Jim, shovelling. “Each block elects a committee of its own. The committee inspects each garden within its confines and decides which will grow potatoes, which cabbages and carrots, which corn and so forth. Each householder is then instructed by the committee how to prepare his garden. Then the committee secures the seeds or seedlings, and under expert advice – for there are always one or two good amateur gardeners in each city block – the householder plants his allotted portion.”

“And during the growing season,” I took up, “the committee would inspect and check up on the development of each garden in the block. If any of us are away, we could organize a system whereby our neighbors would look after the stuff. And we could take our turns looking after others when we’re here: Boy, it would work out magnificently.”

“We could add tons and tons, hundreds of tons,” Jim cried, “of invaluable food products to the nation’s food supply. All we need is organization.”

And I wheeled away for the side drive, as Jimmie said:

“The food controller is a man of no imagination.”

And while I dumped this load in its proper place, I thought up a new angle.

“Jim,” I enunciated, as I returned the barrow to the pile, “do you notice how intelligent and full of ideas we are tonight?”

“I was just standing here,” declared Jim, “thinking the same thing. It is as if merely breathing in this fertilizer, we were enriching our brains.”

“It may be that, Jim,” I submitted, “or it may be the way we are debating these questions. We talk together. Then I go in with the barrow for five minutes. That gives us time to reflect. Then I come out again, and we’ve both got bright ideas to communicate. I think the secret of intelligent conversation is being here revealed. The secret of intelligent discussion is in having pauses to reflect.”

“You’re right,” agreed Jim. “Too much discussion is begun and ended at one session, without pausing for reflection.”

“Parliament,” I declared, “ought to work the way we are working right here. Instead of meeting for 12 weeks at a stretch, they ought to meet one week a month, every month of the year.”

To Improve Parliament

“H’m,” said Jim, shovelling. “That would be kind of hard on the members of parliament, wouldn’t it?”

“How?” I demanded. “The reason parliament sits for 12 weeks at a stretch is because when parliament was first invented, there was no means of transportation except the slowest of stage coaches. Members of parliament had to come by horse, or on foot, from all over the British Isles. But why should we be handicapped by outmoded systems based on several hundred years ago? All the government has to do is employ a few airplanes to bring in the really outlying members. I bet 75 per cent of the membership of the House of Commons could get to Ottawa in less than 24 hours by train. And those in Vancouver could hop by airplane from the coast to Ottawa, leaving there at breakfast and would be in Ottawa for late dinner.”

“H’m,” said Jim, having filled my barrow.

“Operating on the principles employed in the time of Queen Anne,” I asserted, “our members of parliament meet once a year for a sort of gabfest. If they had to turn up each month for one week, we would get far better service from them. They would be up to date. They would have three weeks to reflect on last week’s discussions and have thought up their next line of action. There are only 245 of them. It’s time we modernized them. Our government is operating on a system as antique as the feudal system. We should adopt modern business methods, and employ the modern equipment that is everywhere at hand. If we are going to have representative government, we should be represented, not at an annual convention but at a monthly progress meeting.”

“Wheel it away,” said Jim.

So I wheeled it back up the side drive and planned my next subject of discussion.

“Jim,” I declaimed, as I laid the barrow down beside him for the next load, “did it ever occur to you…”

“This ought to be the last load,” interrupted Jimmie. “It looks as if I had my half about now.”

“By George,” I said sharply. “I was so busy thinking. Of course you’ve got your half. In fact, I don’t think we should take another barrow full…”

“Yes,” said Jim, firmly, “one more barrow full will make it about an even half.”

“But Jim,” I cried. That pile is not half the original pile! You had three borrow fulls in before I arrived.”

“I know the original size of the pile,” stated Jim calmly. “I tell you, one more barrow load and it will be evenly divided.”

So Jim loaded her up, taking, I thought, some pretty hefty spadefuls, at that. And just as I started to wheel away, several small boys came racing up the street, shouting and yelling.

“Here it is, Mr. Andrews. Here it is!”

And up the street came a panting gentleman in his shirt sleeves and very moist with exertion.

He stooped down and took a quick look at the texture of the fertilizer. He turned a bit of it over with his foot.

“Where did you get this?” he inquired indignantly.

“A friend of ours sent it to us from the country,” said Jim.

“I ordered two loads,” announced the stranger indignantly stretching his neck and looking down the side drive, “and when it didn’t arrive today, I phoned and discovered it had been delivered.”

“Ah?” said Jim.

“Delivered to the wrong address,” said the stranger, his voice rising. “The man I bought it from is a market garden specialist out in the suburbs. He can’t get in touch with his hired man to see where it was delivered. But I just thought…”

Jim looked at me and I looked at Jim, and we both thought of Uncle Pete and his past performance in regard to long promised fertilizer. And I imagine the stranger must have guessed something from our expressions.

“This fertilizer I ordered,” he said quietly, “is a very special grade. It is mixed with the finest loam and humus. It costs $10 a load.”

“Ten…” said Jimmie.

“I am using it in a victory garden,” explained the stranger. “I have turned my whole garden into a victory garden. I spent $20 on fertilizer. It’s terribly hard to get. I practically had to bribe this guy to get it. And now it has been delivered to the wrong address.”

“Don’t pay for it, then,” I said stoutly. “If a man delivers goods to the wrong address, is that your fault?”

“I have paid for it,” said the stranger, eyeing me coldly. “And besides, it’s the fertilizer I want. Not the $20.”

“Well, an uncle of his,” said Jim, indicating me with the spade, “sent this to us.”

“I just thought,” remarked the stranger, showing no intention of leaving, “that if you had this fertilizer by mistake, you wouldn’t want to have to rake it all back and put it out here again. The man I ordered it from is trying to find his driver. They may be along any time….”

“Jim,” I said, resting the barrow, “could I speak to you a minute in the garden? I want to show you where I’ve been dumping the barrow…. Excuse us, sir.”

“Certainly,” said the stranger, standing guard over my half of the pile.

Might Have Been Worse

“Jim,” I muttered, as we walked down the side drive, “we’re in a mess.”

“It looks like it,” agreed Jim. “Whew! Ten dollars a load.”

“I suggest we tell the guy.” I submitted. “Explain all about Uncle Pete and everything.”

“I’m glad we didn’t get it all spread out,” said Jim, looking at the several neat barrow loads piled around his yard.

“I’m sorry we didn’t,” I submitted. “Because even if we had to rake it all up, stuff as good as this fertilizer would do our gardens good, if only for a few hours.”

“It’s a pity it isn’t raining,” sighed Jim, “to wash some of the good out of that pile on to my front lawn.”

“Let’s go and tell him,” I concluded.

So we walked out and explained the whole situation to the stranger. He was very decent about it, especially when we walked him into the garden and showed him the several piles heaped about.

“If I had a load left on my lawn,” he agreed, “I’d naturally think some of the people who had promised me fertilizer had come through. Almost everybody in the world has been promised a load of fertilizer by their country friends, at one time or another.”

“Especially,” I said, “in the fall of the year.”

We heard a truck snorting out in front. And sure enough, it was the market gardener from out Islington way, with his confused and embarrassed driver.

All three of us took turns wheeling the small piles back out of Jim’s yard while the driver forked the main pile back on to the truck.

And when we all shook hands and they drove off, Jim said:

“Well, it was nice to have had it, if only for a little while.”

“Yes,” I reminded him, “and it seemed to fertilize us into some very brilliant ideas.”

“M’hm,” mused Jim. “I forget. What were they?”

---

Editor’s Notes: In this context, “to skite the stuff” means to move it quickly.

Victory gardens were vegetable gardens that people were encouraged to grow during wars to augment the food supply during times of rationing.

$10 in 1943 would be $165 in 2022.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, August 11, 1945

“How queer,” said Jimmie Frise, “the city looks in summer.”

“You mean the streets like this?” I suggested, as we drove up our old familiar avenue. “Sort of slumbering.”

“I imagine,” mused Jim, “there isn’t another city in the world that has the percentage of summer absentees Toronto has. I bet there are more people in Toronto who have summer cottages than in any other big city on earth.”

“It’s because our lake country,” I submitted, “begins less than 50 miles from the city limits. Not many big cities have a Muskoka, Haliburton and Georgian Bay within a couple of hours’ drive.”

“Montreal?” queried Jim.

“In Montreal, I pointed out, “you see the summer cottages right in the suburbs. But per population, I don’t think Montreal uses her Laurentians to the extent Toronto uses Muskoka. For one thing, vast hunks of the Laurentians are leased out to comparatively small clubs of wealthy men. Some of the choicest lakes near Montreal are exclusive.”

“Just look at this street!” cried Jim. “Not a soul in sight. Not a dog, not a cat. Every house deserted. Look at the trees, all hanging heavy with summer. Look at the bushes and the flower beds. Untouched by human hands for weeks.”

“Let out a yell,” I suggested, “and see if a single curtain stirs.”

We drove in our side drive in the dusk. We were home for just overnight, to attend to a matter of urgent business. We were going straight back to the cottage in the morning, as soon as we had bought some potatoes.

“I’ll just run around to my place,” suggested Jim, “and see if everything is okay. Then I’ll come back and spend the night here, so we can get organized for the morning.”

“No use disturbing two houses for the one night,” I agreed. “Let’s leave it until morning, and we’ll call at your place in passing.”

“Okay,” concurred Jim, taking off his coat as we entered the house.

It had the close smell of the summer-deserted house. We went about opening windows and doors. We turned on the radio, tried the taps to see if civilization was still functioning. The cool air of early night blew through the house, freshening it.

We strolled out the kitchen door into the garden. In the gloom of final dusk, we could see the lawn grass thick and wild, and the flower borders tangled and strange with hundreds of blooms. The spare and trim and skimpy garden we had last seen in early July was now a regular jungle of lush growth.

“Jim,” I called, “come over and look at these zinnias!”

Nobody ever succeeds in planting zinnias far enough apart. In the optimism of June, when you buy the little boxes with the baby zinnia plants in them, they look so spindly and lonely, one by one, that you can’t resist the human temptation to plant them close together. Plant them as far apart as you should, and they look like little orphans.

But my zinnia bed was, even in the dusk, a riot of light and dark, of great flat heads of blossom standing above a solid mass of foliage.

We strolled along the borders, peering. The verbenas that had been straggly little wisps of plants were now sturdy clusters from which sprays of bloom lifted, to my lighted match, ping, blue, white and henna. In that false spring we had in April, I had taken a walking stick and poked a hundred little holes here and there all over the borders and dropped cheap nasturtium seeds in. Every inch of my garden that had not already been conquered by some mightier breed was solidly squatted upon by swarms of nasturtiums fairly squirting perfume into the night air. In one spot where I had never seen anything much grow before, a large bush loomed in the dark. My lighted match shower it to be a pom pom chrysanthemum.

“What Was That?”

“Why,” I cried delighted, “there used to be a scraggly little mum bush, here. This is a great year for flowers.”

“It ought to be,” said Jim gravely. “The way we have kicked this poor earth around the past six years I guess it just naturally feels like blooming again.”

“Remember how late the spring was?” I recollected. “It will likely be a wonderful year for autumn flowers.”

“Autumn flowers,” said Jim, “are all Toronto people ought to plant. The average home that can afford a reasonable garden can also afford a summer cottage. The family is all away for July and August. Therefore, Toronto should be famous for its autumn flowers. All our gardens should concentrate or things that bloom in September and October.”

“See that stuff there?” I pointed in the dark to large forests of tall shapes. “Sunflowers, golden glow and other bright gaudy yellow things for September.”

“It’s wonderful the way things have thrived, without watering,” admitted Jim.

“I bet the ground under those things is moist right now,” I said, pushing cautiously among the shadowy stalks and feeling down.

At which instant there was a sharp squeak, right under my hand. And some creature, somewhere in size between a chipmunk and a cocker spaniel, thrashed away up the garden amid the plants.

I leaped back with a yell.

“Hey,” I barked, “what the heck was that?”

“It sounded like a groundhog,” said Jim, tip-toeing up the lawn in the direction in which the animal had gone. “Psst! Scat!”

But whatever it was, it lay very doggo.

“Jim,” I exclaimed, “it was huge. It was as big as a collie.”

“Hardly,” said Jim. “It might have been a rat. Or it might have been a small groundhog.”

“It barked,” I declared.

“No, that was you that barked,” said Jim. “It gave a kind of squeak.”

“Or whistle,” I suggested. “I just about put my hand on it. I was going to feel the ground and I could feel the wind from it as it jumped.”

“Maybe it was a groundhog,” surmised Jim, “that has wandered in from the park. The park is only a few blocks away. And in a city as deserted as this, probably the groundhogs and other animals wander at will through the desolate streets.”

“Let’s get a flashlight,” I proposed, “and ferret it out. I don’t want any wild animals loose in this garden. Why, a groundhog could wreck the place in a week.”

We went and searched the house for a flashlight but without luck. All the torches had been taken to the cottage. We stood on the veranda and gazed up and down the street. Not a window showed a light. There was no flashlight to be borrowed from any neighbor. And the drug store closes at 9, bringing Toronto’s night life to an absolute stop.

“I tell you what we will do,” I suggested. “We’ll each get a clothes prop and poke around in the garden. If we give it a scare, maybe it will keep out for the rest of the summer. I’m worried about what it can do to those lovely plants.”

So we went back to the garden and I located the clothesline props in their usual corner by the garage. Armed with 10-foot poles, Jim and I went systematically around the garden, cautiously poking in among the shrubbery, the flower plots and the unseen tangles of sweet william, perennial phlox, ferns and salvia. In the spot where the mysterious marauder had vanished up the border, Jim thought he detected some movement. He gave a loud “boo” and made a menacing jab with his clothes prop. But it was a false alarm, and when he hauled the pole out, I could see something dangling from the crotch at the end. I struck a match. And it was almost an entire verbena plant Jim had torn loose. One of those rare henna-colored ones.

“Well, if you want me to help hunt…” retorted Jim to my groans.

“Let’s Set a Trap”

We went all over the garden without disturbing anything but a few small moths. And we caused a few crickets to cease their singing for a moment or two.

“It may have been a rabbit,” declared Jim.

“Rabbits don’t bark,” I said sharply.

“That thing did not bark,” said Jim firmly. “It squeaked.”

“Or sort of whistled,” I insisted.

“Okay, whistled,” resigned Jim. “But it certainly isn’t here any more.”

I stood in the dark, picturing my beautiful garden all eaten off to stubble by the time we got home from the cottage.

“I’ve got it!” I cried suddenly. “A trap. Let’s set a trap?”

“What kind of a trap?” demanded Jim.

“Down cellar,” I said, “I’ve got an old rat trap that we brought from a house we used to live in. It’s a sort of oversize mouse trap.”

“It wouldn’t hold a groundhog,” said Jim.

“But it would scare the bejeepers out of it,” I asserted.

“You don’t want some poor little animal,” accused Jim, “wandering around with a trap fastened to it. A trap should be used for vermin, like mice or rats. And it should kill instantly.”

“Wouldn’t a rat trap kill a groundhog instantly?” I demanded. After all, that was a pretty small animal…”

“I thought you said it was as big as a collie dog,” said Jim.

“First impressions are always hasty.” I excused, “especially in the dark.”

“Well, I don’t like the idea of setting traps at random,” declared Jim. “If you know what you’re after, okay. But to set a trap for an unknown animal is pretty risky.”

“No animal has any right,” I asserted, “in my flower beds. I have my gate locked, so no dogs can get in. I have spent quite a number of dollars on this garden. After all, this garden is my crop. It is my property. Even if it is only ornamental, it is still my property. And anything that damages it is liable to the consequences.”

“Let’s see the trap,” suggested Jimmie.

Which was only his excuse for getting back into the lighted kitchen and organizing a cup of tea. While the kettle boiled, I went down cellar and hunted up the trap. Incidentally, I explored the cellar and found a number of things that would be handy up at the cottage. A box of assorted nails, mostly second hand; a scythe that I had forgotten buying, 10 years back; a long iron bar that I had never seen before but which would certainly come in handy for something up at the cottage.

When I came clattering up the cellar stairs, Jim exclaimed:

“What in thunder is all this junk?”

And when I explained, he muttered:

“Some people should never go down cellar!”

I showed him the trap. Just an ordinary over-size mouse trap. He washed it under the tap and it came up as good as new.

“What will you bait it with?” he inquired.

“I don’t intend to bait it,” I said. “I’m just going to set it. And leave it concealed in among the likeliest looking things. I’ll wait until daylight to place it on a runway. All these groundhogs and things follow regular runways or paths. We’ll find them sure, in the morning.”

“Then,” reasoned Jim, “whatever it is we heard squeaking in the bushes will have to step, with its tiny foot, on this tiny little trigger…”

“Ah, no,” I explained. “That is where my humanitarian instincts come into play. I’ll set the trap and then rest a long stick over the trigger in such a way that whatever steps on or disturbs the long stick will set off the trap with a loud and terrifying smack. Listen …”

And I set the trap and then tapped it with a table knife. It sure made a terrifying sound. It made us both jump.

“The idea,” I pointed out, “is to scare the creature, not to kill it.”

“Ah, this is better,” agreed Jim, pouring the tea.

After we had finished the tea, we went back into the garden with the trap. From the lattice fence, I peeled off a slender strip about the size and thickness of a school ruler. Down among the mint and chives, my two favorite vegetables, I hid the trap, ready set, with the help of matches. Across the trigger, I tenderly laid the strip of wood.

“Now,” I explained, “whatever comes through the mint bed gets the fright of its life.”

Caught in the Mint

And feeling a lot happier about the autumn flowers, Jim and I went in and luxuriated in the unaccustomed pleasures of a hot shower, getting off us a lot of that scale that encrusts the human body after a few weeks in the pure air and cold water of the Ontario northland.

And with rooms flushed full of cool night air, we went to our beds with all the oohs and aaahs of summer cottagers returning from the hard mattresses of the vacation to the light, soft mattresses of the effete city.

It was bright gleaming morning when we were awakened.

I sat bolt upright.

Jim called from his room:

“What was that!”

“Something woke me!” I called back.

Then it came.

A loud shriek.

From my back garden.

I leaped to the window, and looked out. There, dancing in the flower border, was my next door neighbor, a charming lady, with my rat trap clinging to her finger. After a pause in which she stared in anger and astonishment at the outrage, she let out another shriek.

Down the stairs we raced in our pyjamas. Out the back door.

“My dear, my dear lady,” I gasped as I reached her and seized the trap.

“Did you set that?” she demanded angrily, snatching it away.

“Please, please,” I begged, “let me open it.”

Jim held it, while I pried its hungry snapper up.

The lady nursed her hand and studied me sternly.

“What was the idea,” she inquired, “of a trap in the mint?”

“Why, last night,” I babbled, “last night, when we got home … we heard a groundhog or something… last night, just after we got home … Say, I didn’t know you were home.”

“I got home at midnight,” said my neighbor. “And I didn’t know you were home!”

“But … but…” I fumbled.

“Your wife told me,” said the lady firmly, “to help myself to the mint any time I was down in the summer. I came down just to get some potatoes and some supplies, and I was leaving right away. Suddenly, I thought of the mint. And this …”

She held up her damaged fingers.

“Do you believe me,” I inquired earnestly, “when I tell you we heard some sort of animal in the shrubbery here… Jimmie, did we hear some sort of groundhog?”

Jimmie, in his pyjamas, solemnly bore me out.

“I don’t think,” said my neighbor, “that you deliberately set the trap for me. But it was me you got.”

So we picked her a nice big bouquet of mint, with some chives too, though they’re not at their best this late.

And I took the trap back down cellar and hid it up in the furnace pipes.

And Jim made another pot of tea.

---

Editor’s Note: “Down cellar” (meaning “in the basement”) is a regional phrase common to old Ontario. My grandparents said it all the time.

By Greg Clark, July 14, 1945

“How much hose, inquired Jimmie Frise, “have you got left?”

“By golly,” I said, “I’ve only got about 30 feet.”

“That’s about what I’ve got,” muttered Jim. “And even that leaks.”

“Mine,” I informed him, “spurts all over at the tap. It has two main flaws which shoot fine jets about 15 feet. And in between are sundry soft spots that dribble.”

Mine’s exactly the same,” said Jim. “What I was going to suggest, we ought to pool our hose. I’ll bring my section over and we’ll make a new splice and join them up together. It will make one good hose. Then, on alternate nights we’ll roll it up and take it to each other’s house.”

“A fine suggestion,” I commended. “Maybe out of the two 30-foot lengths we could get one decent hose of 50 feet. Which would just about reach the foot of my yard.”

“Same here,” said Jim. “At this moment some of the best flowers I’ve got are parching to death, 10 feet out of range of my hose.”

“Shouldn’t we have bought some of this ersatz hose?” I inquired. “This wartime composition rubber? I see lots of that hose for sale.”

“Not me,” declared Jim. “I’m waiting for the experiments to end before I invest in any wartime substitutes.”

“I’ve talked to some people,” I advised, “who say that these rubber substitute hoses are better than any rubber hose they ever owned.”

“Maybe so,” said Jim. “But if rubber heels and the rubber soles you get on sport shoes these days are any sample of what rubber substitute is, I don’t want any of it. Did you ever notice the black scars the kids’ shoes make on the hardwood floors?”

“So that’s what it is?” I cried. “I’ve been wondering what those black scratches were.”

“Every scar,” asserted Jim, “is a little bit of wear and tear on the rubber substitute in the shoes. At that rate, they can’t last any time. And I bet hoses and tires are the same.”

“But it stands to reason,” I countered, “that science would sooner or later find some substitute for rubber. The minute the motor car was invented and good roads began to branch out in all directions all over the world, we should have foreseen that mankind would not for long be dependent on the juice of a tree that would only grow in certain restricted climates.”

“It does seem silly,” agreed Jim. “The whole world, from the Arctic through the temperate zones to the tropics and on down through the south temperate zone into the Antarctic, hundreds of millions of people with millions of motor cars each with five tires, all dependent upon a few South Sea Islanders squeezing the sop out of some special trees.”

“It isn’t good enough,” I submitted. “Science just had to get busy, war or no war.”

“Yet,” pointed out Jim, “look how dependent the world still is for so many different things on some small section of the world. Tea, for example. And coffee. How is it the whole world has become so victimized by certain habits and customs? Russia drinks billions of gallons of tea every day. Look at Britain, soaking up tea in lakes and gulfs. Up in northern Canada trappers having to have their pail of tea breakfast, noon and supper. And coffee! Millions of Americans, millions of South Americans, Frenchmen huddled over their coffee cups all along those open-air cafes of the boulevards. Spaniards, Italians …”

Mystery of the Moose

“That’s a queer thing,” I admitted. “A little bush grows in China and India. A few famished Chinese soak the dried leaves in boiling water. They’ll soak anything in boiling water. Sharks’ fins, birds’ nests. So they soak dried leaves. Presently, the queer little habit had spread all over the earth, and hundreds of millions simply can’t do without it.”

“Science hasn’t done anything about that,” pointed out Jim. “Maybe they can find a substitute for rubber. But can they find a substitute for all the other odd things men squeeze out of trees or pluck off bushes in comparatively small areas of the earth’s surface?”

“Do you know, Jim,” I mused, “it seems to me mankind is the laziest animal of all. Admitted, a moose is lazy. All a moose had to do, 1,000 years ago, was keep on slowly feeding south, through continuous lily pad ponds and willow brush and all the other things he eats, in order to reach the southern states. And there, in lush comfort, with no severe winter, the moose tribe would have found heavenly habitat. But are there any moose in Louisiana or Georgia? No. They are found exclusively in the hardest, bitterest spruce tracts of the north, where winter comes like grim death and hangs on for six months out of the 12. Why didn’t the moose tribe feed steadily southward? Why were they so lazy as to stick up in the inhospitable Canadian north?”

“Hmmm,” said Jim.

“The same with so many other beasts,” I said. “But man, apparently so energetic, so discontented, so eternally in search of better and more comfortable regions in which to live, is so lazy that If some Chinese shows him how to soak dried leaves in boiling water, mankind thinks the Chinese have the only leaves that can be soaked. Why haven’t we experimented with our own leaves?”

“Maybe we have,” said Jim. “Maybe those of us that are still left are the ones that haven’t – experimented. I think it is safer to let the Chinese experiment with soaking dried leaves and the Turks experiment with roasted berries. Always let somebody else do the experimenting. If they find something good and it doesn’t kill them, okay. Let’s use it.”

“That’s the trouble with us,” I protested. “Is there a sillier spectacle on earth than the past 30 years, with millions of motor cars racing all over the world, in seven continents, surely the most energetic and hectic spectacle in all human history. Yet the whole vast pandemonium dependent on the juice of some trees growing in a couple of small tropic areas. Modern industry may be a marvel. Modern science may be a wonder. But they both ought to be ashamed of themselves, putting the whole traffic of humanity on a foundation of bug juice from some pagan island.”

A Question of Rubber

“The best principle to observe in modern business,” explained Jim, “is, if it works, leave it alone. The first use of rubber in connection with traffic was rubber tires for wealthy men’s buggies and dog carts. Then – came the bicycle. And before anybody had time to invent a synthetic substance for the millions of bicycles in the 90’s, the rubber importers, who had got busy to meet the buggy trade, were able to produce enough wild rubber to meet the first onset of the bicycle tire trade. Then, foreseeing the great days ahead when the whole world would travel on bicycles, the rubber planters began to create orchards of rubber trees. Nobody foresaw the motor car. But by the time the motor car dawned, the rubber growers had got far enough ahead with their dreams of a world entirely bicyclized to meet the first onset of the motor car.”

“And of course,” I put in, “the motor car would have been simply out of the question without rubber tires.”

“Correct,” agreed Jim. “So you see, the rubber growers and rubber importers in every case were far enough ahead to meet the demand. So science had no call to get busy and invent a substitute. Industry always leaves well enough alone. Business says, if it works don’t change it. And that is why, up until now, there has been no call to science to invent a substitute for rubber.”

“Have they really got it?” I questioned. “Don’t you think rubber, like tea or coffee, like leather for shoes and wool for clothes, is something natural-born and right and fitting? Even if they do work out a perfect substitute for rubber, won’t there always be a demand for genuine rubber tires? They’ve invented no end of substitutes for wool and cotton for clothes. They’ve got imitation leather of every description. But people still like wool clothes as the ancient Romans did, and cotton, as the ancient Egyptians did, thousands of years before Christ. And can you imagine the day ever coming when men will give up genuine leather shoes?”

“Rather than be ruined,” Jim submitted, “I imagine the rubber planters of the east will offer their rubber so dirt cheap that the rubber Importers and the rubber processors will see the chance to make a little dough; and the rubber industry will be revived. Then we’ll witness a great pitched battle between the synthetic rubber interests and the natural rubber interests. Cartels will be formed. Little gangs of British bankers and investors, desirous of cutting the throats of other British bankers and Investors, will gang up with little gangs of American bankers and investors desirous of cutting the throats of other American bankers and investors. That’s a cartel.”

“I thought a cartel,” I interrupted, “was where all the British bankers and investors desirous of cutting one another’s throats got together with all the American bankers and investors desirous of cutting one another’s throats, because it was agreed that the public was hardly worth all the throat cutting. So they ganged up and cut the public’s throat instead.”

“I guess that is a cartel,” amended Jim. “And it may well be that rather than stage a pitched battle over synthetic rubber versus natural rubber they will organize a gigantic world-wide stock company of all the natural rubber plantations. All the planters will be bought out. All the importers and processors will be bought out. And then they’ll sell the stock to the public.”

“That would be a good way to put an end to the natural rubber industry,” I agreed. “But in the meantime I sincerely hope they get through with their experiments on synthetic rubber before the tire rationing comes off. Don’t you think one of us ought to invest in one of these rubber substitute hoses?”

“Look,” said Jim. “There’s just this one summer left. Surely we can pool our hoses and get by for the next couple of months. Then, by next year, either real rubber will be back or else a first-class substitute will be available. I have the feeling that with the war still on the best substitutes are still going into war materials.”

“Okay,” I subsided. “You bring your hose over and we’ll see what we can salvage from the two.”

So Jim ran home in the car and rolled his hose and brought it over to my garden. Jim’s hose was already synthesized. Of the 35 feet he had serviceable, 20 was an old smooth-bore type of hose dating back to the year of his marriage, about 1918. And the rest was the ribbed type, part of an extension he had bought about 1926.

Mine was just the one brand. It was the old smooth-bore style and was the relic of the first and only hose I ever bought. It had three splices in it. The passing years had seen soft spots and bends and cracks appear. I cut the defective section of a foot or so out, and then rejoined the good bits with those metal tubes and rings that splice hose together.

Evening in the Garden

Jim’s had an old-fashioned bronze nozzle. Mine had a more modern nickel-plated nozzle, with a knurled section for easy turning. But the connections at both my nozzle and the tap ends were so defective that regular fountains played at both ends. I had to stand at arm’s length from my nozzle; and even so my feet got soaked.

“So we’ll use my terminal connections,” suggested Jim.

A couple of summer bachelors can spend no more profitable evening than pottering in their gardens with hoses and hoes. With a sharp knife I severed from my three-spliced hose both the nozzle and the tap connection. We attached Jim’s hose to the tap to locate the best spot in which to splice in my hose.

His tap connection was flawless. Not a drop oozed. His nozzle was pretty good, but it had only two kinds of spray – either a great heavy flood like hailstones beating the zinnias and phlox; or else a fine mist of spray that would take all night to dampen the pansies.

But it was the mid-section of Jim’s hose that really fell short. There were several soft spots, dozy, like punky wood. These allowed water to seep out. There were also several real cracks, from which spouts of water 10 feet high curved up in various directions when the tap was turned up full.

“Jim,” I said, “this looks to me like a deal you’re putting over on me. There isn’t a five-foot stretch of your hose that hasn’t got a leak in it.”

“Cut it in the middle,” urged Jim, “and we’ll splice your hose in. Maybe with a good 30-foot section in the middle, like that, the water will flow too fast through mine to leak.”

“Nonsense; the more the pressure, the greater the leak,” I stated. “I don’t think it’s worth while trying to splice yours. Wait minute.”

And I went along and counted seven leaks.

“Each of those leaks,” I pointed out, “would require at least six Inches of hose cut out. That reduces your hose by close to four feet. And seven splices would require seven splicers.”

“Oh, try it anyway,” cried Jim. “We’ve got two splicers. Hitch her up and see if we can get enough pressure at the nozzle to reach the back of your yard. If not, we will simply have to go and buy some substitute rubber hoses.”

So we squatted down and went to work on the splices. We cut Jim’s hose at the junction between the old smooth-bore and the later model ribbed hosing. Then we dragged mine up and spliced its 32 feet in between.

When we pounded the end of the ribbed iron splicer into Jim’s hose, the perished rubber split, and we had to keep on paring off an inch or two until we finally hit upon the idea of filing the splicer a little smoother.

We got it hitched at last and then Jim walked back to the tap and turned it on.

It was quite a performance. I was holding the nozzle. If I turned it to the coarse stream a wavering jet, about seven feet long, wobbled and splattered heavily on the turf, digging a hole. If I turned to the fine spray a round balloon appeared, about the size and shape of an umbrella, and most of it drifted back to me.

An Idea Dawns

But back down the hose there was a wonderful display. From Jim’s two sections seven different spurts rose and arched in various directions. From both splices angry little explosions hissed in all directions. And from my section, in the middle, one very fine spurt and two smaller ones divided the north and south about equally between them.

We stood and watched for a moment.

“Turn her off, turn her right off, at the nozzle!” cried Jim suddenly. “Turn the way for the fine spray until she goes tight off.”

I turned. And as I did so all the spurts and fizzles and splutters suddenly arched higher. And three new ones appeared.

Jim strode up to me.

“My boy,” he cried excitedly, “this has been staring mankind in the face for centuries. Ever since hoses were first invented, we’ve been enslaved by the one idea. The fire hose. The hose with one stream to be directed on one target. But a garden hose should have not one but 10 or 20 outlets.”

“Don’t you see?” he expanded, “Talk about substitute rubber and drinking tea and coffee! Why, it has taken the war to show us what a proper garden hose should be like. Instead of the human race having to stand on damp lawns, steering a silly hose yard by yard over the flower borders, we invent a modern hose, a hose with 10 or 15 little nozzles. And then, all we do is walk down and stretch the hose the length of the garden, turn her on, and then sit back in the garden chairs and watch the garden get watered properly, simultaneously and at our ease!”

“Jim, if we patent this!” I gloated expectantly.

I laid the nozzle end down, and we walked the length of the hose, inspecting the leaks. Those that were not quite big enough, I enlarged with my pen knife, until they threw a nice spurt about 10 feet.

“Cut new holes, at regular intervals,” suggested Jim.

And judiciously turning the tap on and off, we spaced our cuts at regular intervals, until we had a series of 19 jets that, with the evening breeze wavering them, covered the whole expanse of the garden.

“Think,” I said, as we sat back in the deck chairs and watched the play of the little fountains, “of the old-fashioned sprinklers. The kind you had to keep getting up every few minutes to walk over wet grass and get squirted yourself, shifting them from place to place.”

“All we have to do now,” added Jim, “when we’re through, is turn off the tap and haul the hose back in. Only our hands get wet.”

As we sat and gloated, my next door neighbor came out and looked over the fence.

“Some hose,” he remarked.

“There you see,” I informed him, “the birth of a great idea. It is going to be patented. Our fortunes are made. This is the Frise-Clark hose. Or the Frike hose. Or maybe the Clarf hose. History is being made before your eyes.”

“Didn’t you ever see a cloth hose?” inquired my neighbor.

“A what?” I inquired.

“A cloth hose that waters the ground all along its length?” he asked.

“I certainly didn’t,” I said. “But anyway, it doesn’t sprinkle.”

“Sprinkling is the worst feature of hoses,” said the neighbor. “If we could water our gardens without sprinkling the flowers and foliage, causing them to weaken and blight, but merely wetting the earth, we would have the ideal hose. And we’ve got it in the cloth hose.”

“Where did you ever see one?” I demanded.

“You could have seen one for the past three summers,” said the neighbor, “by just looking over the fence.”

Which we did. And there, draped along the flower borders and over the grass, was an earth-brown hose of cloth, originally white, he told us. And it was quietly leaking water onto the parched earth, leaving the flowers and foliage to the dew, but richly soaking the ground and the roots.

“I got it,” he explained, “rather than one of those substitute rubber things.”

Jim and I went back to our garden chairs.

“Well, anyway,” said Jim, “I like the look of ours better.”

And we noticed, at the same time, that the spurts were not quite so high.

But when we counted them, instead of 19, there were already 22.

---

Editor’s Note: Rubber was rationed during World War Two. Innovations in the different types of synthetic rubber was stepped up to meet demand.

By Greg Clark, April, 13, 1935

“This year,” said Jimmie Frise, “I’m going to have a real garden.”

“Me, too,” I admitted.

“A garden full of old-fashioned flowers,” declaimed Jimmie, his eye roving out the window. “Hollyhocks, zinnias, verbenas.”

“Stocks,” I said, “and phlox.”

“Sweet william,” added Jimmie, “and pinks and gillieflowers.”

“What is a gillieflower?” I enquired.

“Hanged if I know,” said Jim, “but I love the sound of them and I’m going to have them.”

“Dianthus,” I said. “There’s a swell name, Let’s have dianthuses.”

“But really,” said Jim, sitting forward and resting his elbows so that he could cuddle right down deep into the very heart of the thought of a garden scented with a hundred perfumes and glowing with color in a June evening, “really, I am going to have a garden. I’m going to put time and thought and labor on it. I’m going to plan it. I’m going to take my time about it. Usually, the way we all do is go out some evening, after supper, buy a couple of dollars’ worth of seeds and a few boxes of infant annuals, and stick them around the garden before dark. Now, this year…”

“Every year,” I interrupted, “I go through what you are going through now.”

“So do I,” confessed Jim, sadly. “But this year I am going to try and really do it. I’m going to hold grimly to my determination.”

“I remember that, too,” I remembered. “But always, some time between the fifteenth and thirtieth of April, a queer change came over me. And by the time the planting was to be done, my heart was In the Highlands or something.”

“This year,” said Jim, sitting back fiercely and crossing his arms tightly across his chest, “I’m going to do my garden in a practical and common sense way. For example, I will spend two or three long evenings digging and turning it over.”

“Like plowing.” I said.

“Precisely,” said Jim. “I was born and raised on the farm. I know the principles of agriculture. The farmer spends weeks plowing. He does not plow and plant all in one day.”

“No, indeed,” I agreed.

“So,” went on Jim, “I’ll spend maybe three long evenings spading and turning over my borders and beds. If the weather is rainy, I won’t desist merely because of the discomfort. I’ll carry right on. Rain or shine, cold or warm, I’ll spend three evenings, one after the other, spading over my garden, burying the top earth and revealing the rich undersoil, exposing it to the life-giving air and light.”

“Good man,” I said, admiringly.

“Then I’ll break it up with my hoe and rake,” said Jim. “I’ll break the lumps, disintegrating them, so that the soft living rain of April may nourish the soil. Why should a man, born and raised on the farm, be afraid of a little rain on him?”

“It’s ridiculous,” I agreed.

Violence is Necessary

“Then, with the spade work well and truly done,” said Jim, making notes on a piece of paper, “I will go out and buy a few boxes of the taller annuals. A few boxes only. It is a mistake to buy the whole works the one night. You have to hurry to get them in. No. Take your time, that is the secret. A few boxes of tall annuals, like zinnias, nicotine, and so forth, the first night. And at great leisure, in comfort and east, so that you can have time to reflect and put them where you want them, you plant them slowly and thoroughly.”

“You do, Jim,” I pointed out. “It is you we are talking about.”

“Quite,” said Jim. “Then the next night, if It is soft and pleasant for planting, get a few more boxes of the less tall annuals, stocks, verbenas, the old-fashioned marigolds.”

He pronounced it the English way, marry-golds.

“Jim,” I said, “you deserve a lot of credit. If everybody in Toronto were like you, what a city this would be!”

“Now, mind you,” declared Jim, “a garden does not consist merely of some plowing and some planting of few square yards of earth. There comes all the long and happy weeks of cultivation. The hoeing of the soil around the young plants. The watering, weeding. The regular spading up of the earth, so that water, air and light may penetrate down towards the roots. I intend, this year, to devote one hour to my garden every night, rain or shine.”

“It is noble of you,” I admitted. “If I hadn’t gone through just what you are going through so often that I have lost faith in myself, by George, I would be tempted to be inspired by you, and try to make the same resolutions.”

“One thing you might do,” said Jim, “just for your amusement, is to come over and watch me do some spading?”

“I certainly will,” I said heartily. “In fact, I might even do a little spading for you myself.”

Which accounts for the fact that two nights later, that particularly soft evening last week, I walked over to Jim’s and sat in the rustic bench while he, looking fresh and healthy, worked with a spade along his borders.

A robin singing and a man spading in April – what more lovely moment is there in all the year?

“Dig deeper,” I said, after watching Jim a few minutes.

“It is the top six inches,” said Jim, pausing in his labor. “There is no need to dig deeper.”

“I disagree,” I said, lighting a new cigarette and signaling to one of the girls in the house to bring me a cushion. “What is true of farming is not necessarily true of city gardening. The open fields of the country are subjected to violence. The great rains pound down, Gales blow across the land. The ice in spring causes great cracks deep into the earth. The freshets belabor and smash the soil. But a city garden, protected by walls and fences and houses, gets no such essential disturbance.”

“Gardening,” replied Jim, delicately spading the earth, “at its best, should be a leisurely pastime.”

“You’re just tickling the earth,” I declared. “Just titivating it, dabbing at it like a lady applying cosmetics. Dig it, man!”

“It is the top six inches,” repeated Jim.

“Now I know the reason,” I said, “why city gardens are such poor, fragile things. They last a week or two: then they are burned up in the first heat of summer. Why? Because you have just dibbled or fiddled the top few inches. You don’t get down deep, the way nature does in the open fields. To make a garden fertile, we have to tear it loose.”

Jim stood leaning on the spade.

“Sail into it,” I admonished him. “Give it what November gives the farms. What March does. Knock hell out of it.”

Jim began to dig with more resolution. He began to enjoy it. He began hurling earth in all directions.

“Now you’re shouting,” I shouted. “Whale the stuffing out of it.”

Jim paused. He jabbed the spade into the earth and came over and sat on the rustic bench beside me. I lent him the cushion.

“I believe you’re right,” he said, “I honestly think what a garden needs is a real shaking up. I never thought of that before. We shelter our garden from nature, and then expect nature to make it bloom as healthy as nature itself.”

“What a garden needs,” I assured him, “is a steam shovel.”

Jim sat up and slapped me on the back.

“Great,” he cried. “Great. I know a guy who owns a steam shovel. And it’s unemployed.”

“Swell,” I exclaimed. “All my life …”

“He was saying a few weeks ago that he wished there was some place he could dig with it just to keep it in shape. It needs exercise.”

“Get him to come up,” I cried. “You could pull it through this back gate.”

“Get him nothing,” said Jim. “I’ll run it myself.”

“Why not?” I admitted. “Go and telephone him.”

And, in five minutes, Jim came out radiant, to inform me that for $2 paid to the caretaker for bringing it up, Jim could borrow the steam shovel any day.

“I said Friday,” Jim exulted, gazing around his garden. “It is one of those self-contained steam shovels. It has its own tractor tread. It’s not one of those great big steam shovels, you know?”

“All my life, Jim,” I said, “I have wanted to run a steam shovel. Just once.”

“Every man does,” agreed Jim. “Why do men stand by the hour watching a steam shovel down in an excavation? A steam shovel is the most fascinating thing in the world. It has power, might, strength. It is power, rude power, all in the hands of one man.”

“Could I help you?” I asked.

“Certainly,” said Jim.

So Friday after early supper I came over to Jim’s in a suit of overalls I borrowed from the garage. One of my boys owned a cap such as engineers wear, and my wife put a gusset in the back of it so it would fit me. Even Jim was astonished and delighted with my appearance.

“Boy,” he said, “you look like the real thing.”

“All I need,” I said, “is a chew of tobacco,”

“We can pretend,” said Jim, shooting an imaginary squirt to one side. “Now let’s look her over.”

The steam shovel, which Jim said was a small one, just about filled the yard. It had a cabin mounted on caterpillar trends. From its top was suspended a giant rusty iron arm on the end of which was a bucket as big as a roadster.

“She works,” said Jim. “The man that brought her banked the fire for me, and I turned it on a few minutes ago. We’ll have a head of steam in ten minutes.”

Jim showed me inside, where, in a little boiler, a fire gleamed brightly and there was a sizzling and a hissing. The steam gauge trembled. There was an air of excitement in the little cabin.

Jim showed me the various levers, throttle and handles, one for hoisting, one for lowering and opening the massive jaws of the shovel. And by this time, the hot and hissing little fire had set the steam gauge trembling at the necessary figure.

“O.K.,” cried Jim. “You get out and stand well over by the corner of the garden.”

Jim tried the various levers. The great arm rose slowly and dropped suddenly with a terrific crash. The cab rattled violently, and the huge creature took half a step forward.

The great bucket descended with a crash to the earth. It fumbled and groped on the ground. It scrabbled and opened and shut. It was like a prehistoric monster mumbling the earth in pursuit of a mole. The engine roared. Steam belched. The arm tightened. The bucket began slowly to rise, rise. It rose twenty feet in the air, slowly swung northerly, and paused, suspended over the middle of the back lawn. Then with another mighty roar of engine, the jaws of the bucket opened, the bucket crashed to earth, and a soup plateful of dirt deposited in the middle of the lawn.

“Hooroo!” yelled Jim, sticking his out of the cab.

In five minutes Jim had mastered the machine. It was a noble sight. One small man the god of the machine. Once he got a little hole dug, it was no time until Jim could sink that steel-toothed, iron-jawed monster into the soil, gouge a hunk as big as a piano, close the teeth on it, hoist it up and swing it into the middle of the yard and dump it. He began to get a big pile on the lawn.

“Why not put the dirt back,” I said, “as you go along?”

“I’ll put it back on the return journey,” hollered Jim, vanishing into the cab.

And with roarings and snortings, the great clumsy pachyderm waddled inch by inch down the border, and inch by inch Jim turned it back, and then, with increasing skill, grabbed scoopfuls of earth from the pile on the lawn and laid it into the border.

“Come on up,” he bellowed from the cab.

I got in. It was hot and steamy and tangled with levers and gears and wires and gadgets.

“Now, watch,” shouted Jim, over the hissing of the engine. “You take this lever, see? Now, slowly, slowly, see? That hoists her. Then this, see? That lowers her. Then you take this one, and it makes it open and grab, see?”

“All right, all right,” I cried, for it was fast growing dark outside.

“Take it slow and steady,” shouted Jim, swinging back out of the cab.

I shoved the second lever. The whole vast contraption began to shudder and stagger. I made a quick grab at what looked like a hand brake. I felt the colossal thing begin to lurch and move.

Jim’s face appeared whitely at the cab door, his mouth open wide. But I could not hear him. I snatched all the different levers and handles one after another. I saw a small dirty rope hanging from the roof. I thought it might be the ignition. I frantically yanked it, and a piercing whistle sounded above the din and drunken clamor of the vastly lurching and staggering machine. The giant arm rose and fell. I felt the cab turning dizzily, as each lever failed to quiet it. I heard crashings and felt crunchings. But in the fumes and the vapor and the staggerings, I dared not look out. My eyes, my soul, my brain were glued to the mass of levers glittering at me in the gathering gloom.

Then, in the midst of a more savage lurch than all, Jim came through the open door of the cab, flung me aside and in an instant all was still.

“Quick,” he gasped. “Get out.”

“What happened?” I asked, friendlily.

“We’re five doors north of my place gasped Jim. “Up a hill. Across five fences. Through one garage.”

“Jim, it went wrong,” I explained. “Suddenly it went wrong.”

“If only,” gasped Jim. “you hadn’t blown the whistle. Why did you blow that whistle?”

“I didn’t know it was a whistle,” I complained bitterly.

“People will be here,” said Jim breathlessly, “any minute.”

But mysteriously, despite all that tumult and crashing and screeching of whistles, nobody came. They must have all been at the movies. Jim had lost his nerve. He would not drive it back to his yard. He telephoned his friend, and, in half an hour, the caretaker came and drove the short away down the lane and off to New Toronto through the dark and shining streets.

“Now,” said Jim, “while I inspect the damage and make an estimate of the cost, the least you can do is shovel that heap of earth out of the middle of my lawn back into the border.”

And it was midnight before I got home, all dirty.

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Editor’s Notes: A freshet is flooding caused by a spring thaw.

Titivating means to make small alterations to something.

To older readers, a steam shovel, might be recognized as a generic term for an excavator, but as can be seen in the story, it was a mechanical excavator that was really powered by a steam engine. Actual steam powered machines were being replaced by diesel ones by the time this story was written.

New Toronto was a separate town west of Toronto which was later merged into Etobicoke and eventually amalgamated into Toronto itself.