The Abandoned Farmers

by Irvin S. Cobb

  CHAPTER III. THREE YEARS ELAPSE

  I WOUND up the last preceding chapter of this chronicle with thestatement that we had definitely given up all hope of owning anabandoned farm. After an interval of three years the time has now cometo recant and to make explanation, touching on our change of heart andresolution. For at this writing I am an abandoned farmer of the mostpronounced type and, with the assistance of my family, am doing my levelbest to convert or, as it were, evangelize one of the most thoroughlyabandoned farms in the entire United States. By the same token weare also members in good standing of the Westchester County--NewYork--Despair Association.

  The Westchester County Despair Association was founded by George Creel,who is one of our neighbors. In addition to being its founder he is itsperpetual president. This association has a large and steadily growingmembership. Any citybred person who moves up here among the rollinghills of our section with intent to get back to Nature, and who, inpursuance of that most laudable aim, encounters the various vicissitudesand the varied misfortunes which, it would seem, invariably do befallthe amateur husbandman, is eligible to join the ranks.

  If he builds a fine silo and promptly it burns down on him, as sofrequently happens--silos appear to have a habit of deliberately goingout of their way in order to catch afire--he joins automatically. If hisnew swimming pool won't hold water, or his new road won't hold anythingelse; if his hired help all quit on him in the busy season; if thespring freshets flood his cellar; if his springs go dry in August; ifhis horses succumb to one of those fatal diseases that are so popularamong expensive horses; if his prize Jersey cow chokes on a turnip;if his blooded hens are so busy dying they have no time to give tolaying--why, then, under any one or more of these heads he is welcomedinto the fold. I may state in passing that, after an experimental testof less than six months of country life, we are eligible on severalcounts. However, I shall refer to those details later.

  Up until last spring we had been living in the city for twelve years,with a slice of about four years out of the middle, during which welived in one of the most suburban of suburbs. First we tried the city,then the suburb, then the city again; and the final upshot was, wedecided that neither city nor suburb would do for us. In the suburbthere was the daily commuting to be considered; besides, the suburb wasneither city nor country, but a commingling of the drawbacks of the cityand the country, with not many of the advantages of either. And the citywas the city of New York.

  Ours, I am sure, had been the common experience of the majority ofthose who move to New York from smaller communities--the experience ofpractically all except the group from which is recruited the confirmedand incurable New Yorker. After you move to New York it takes severalmonths to rid you of homesickness for the place you have left; thisperiod over, it takes several years usually to cure you of the lureof the city and restore to you the longing for the simpler and sanerthings.

  To be sure, there is the exception. When I add this qualification Ihave in mind the man who wearies not of spending his evenings fromeight-thirty until eleven at a tired-business-man's show; of eatingtired-business-man's lunch in a lobsteria on the Great White Way fromeleven-thirty p. m. until closing time; of having his toes trodden uponby other tired business men at the afternoon-dancing parlor; of twicea day, or oftener, being packed in with countless fellow tired businessmen in the tired cars of the tired Subway--I have him in mind, also thewoman who is his ordained mate.

  But, for the run of us, life in the city, within a flat, eventually getsupon our nerves; and life within the city, outside the flat, gets uponour nerves to an even greater extent. The main trouble about New Yorkis not that it contains six million people, but that practically all ofthem are constantly engaged in going somewhere in such a hurry. Nearlyalways the place where they are going lies in the opposite directionfrom the place where you are going. There is where the rub comes, andsooner or later it rubs the nap off your disposition.

  The everlasting shooting of the human rapids, the everlasting portagesabout the living whirlpools, the everlasting bucking of the human crosscurrents--these are the things that, in due time, turn the thoughtsof the sojourner to mental pictures of peaceful fields and burdenedorchards, and kindfaced cows standing knee-deep in purling brooks, andbosky dells and sylvan glades. At any rate, so our thoughts turned.

  Then, too, a great many of our friends were moving to the country tolive, or had already moved to the country to live. We spent week-endsat their houses; we went on house parties as their guests. We heard thembabble of the excitement of raising things on the land. We thought theymeant garden truck. How were we to know they also meant mortgages? Atthe time it did not impress us as a fact worthy of being regarded assignificant that we should find a different set of servants on thepremises almost every time we went to visit one of these families.

  What fascinated us was the presence of fresh vegetables upon thetable--not the car-sick, shopworn, wilted vegetables of the citymarkets, but really fresh vegetables; the new-laid eggs--after eatingthe other kind so long we knew they were new-laid without being told;the flower beds outside and the great bouquets of flowers inside thehouse; the milk that had come from a cow and not from a milkman; thehome-made butter; the rich cream--and all.

  We heard their tales of rising at daybreak and going forth to pick fromthe vines the platter of breakfast berries, still beaded with the dew.They got up at daybreak, they said, especially on account of the berrypicking and the beauties of the sunrise. Having formerly been citydwellers, they had sometimes stayed up for a sunrise; but never untilnow had they got up for one. The novelty appealed to them tremendouslyand they never tired of talking of it.

  In the country--so they told us--you never needed an alarm clock torouse you at dawn. Subsequently, by personal experience, I found thisto be true. You never need an alarm clock--if you keep chickens. You maynot go to bed with the chickens, but you get up with them, unless youare a remarkably sound sleeper. When it comes to rousing the owner, fromslumber before the sun shows, the big red rooster and the little brownhen are more dependable than any alarm clock ever assembled. You mightforget to wind the alarm clock. The big red rooster winds himself. Youmight forget to set the alarm clock. The little brown hen does her ownsetting; and even in cases where she doesn't, she likes to wake up aboutfour-forty-five and converse about her intentions in the matter in ashrill and penetrating tone of voice.

  It had been so long since I had lived in the country I had forgottenabout the early-rising habits of barnyard fowl. I am an expert on thesubject now. Only this morning there was a rooster suffering from hayfever or a touch of catarrh, or something that made him quite hoarse;and he strolled up from the chicken house to a point directly beneathmy bedroom window, just as the first pink streaks of the new day werepainting the eastern skies, and spent fully half an hour there clearinghis throat.

  But I am getting ahead of my story. More and more we found the lure ofthe country was enmeshing our fancies. After each trip to the countrywe went back to town to find that, in our absence, the flat had somehowgrown more stuffy and more crowded; that the streets had become morenoisy and more congested. And the outcome of it with us was as theoutcome has been with so many hundreds and thousands and hundreds ofthousands of others. We voted to go to the country to live.

  Having reached the decision, the next thing was to decide on the siteand the setting for the great adventure. We unanimously set our facesagainst New Jersey, mainly because, to get from New Jersey over to NewYork and back again, you must take either the ferry or the tube; and ifthere was one thing on earth that we cared less for than the ferry itwas the tube. To us it seemed that most of the desirable parts of LongIsland were already preempted by persons of great wealth, living, so wegathered, in a state of discriminating aloofness and, as a general rule,avoiding social association with families in the humbler walks of life.Round New York the rich cannot be too careful--and seldom are. Most ofthem are suffering from nervous culture anyhow.

  Land in the lo
wer counties of Connecticut, along the Sound, was tooexpensive for us to consider moving up there. But there remained whatseemed to us then and what seems to us yet the most wonderful spot forcountry homes of persons in moderate circumstances anywhere within theNew York zone, or anywhere else, for that matter--the hill country ofthe northern part of Westchester County, far enough back from the HudsonRiver to avoid the justly famous Hudson River glare in the summer, andclose enough to it to enable a dweller to enjoy the Hudson River breezesand the incomparable Hudson River scenery.

  Besides, a lot of our friends lived there. There was quite a colonyof them scattered over a belt of territory that intervened between themagnificent estates of the multi-millionaires to the southward andthe real farming country beyond the Croton Lakes, up the valley. By aprocess of elimination we had now settled upon the neighborhood wherewe meant to live. The task of finding a suitable location in thisparticular area would be an easy one, we thought.

  I do not know how the news of this intention spread. We told only afew persons of our purpose. But spread it did, and with miraculousswiftness. Overnight almost, we began to hear from real-estate agentshaving other people's property to sell and from real-estate ownershaving their own property to sell. They reached us by mail, bytelephone, by messenger, and in person. It was a perfect revelationto learn that so many perfectly situated, perfectly appointed countryplaces, for one reason or another, were to be had for such remarkablefigures. Indeed, when we heard the actual amounts the figures were morethan remarkable--they were absolutely startling. I am convinced thatnothing is so easy to buy as a country place and nothing is so hard tosell. This observation is based upon our own experiences on the buyingside and on the experiences of some of my acquaintances who want tosell--and who are taking it out in wanting.

  In addition to agents and owners, there came also road builders, welldiggers, interior decorators, landscape gardeners, general contractors,an architect or so, agents for nurseries, tree-mending experts,professional foresters, persons desiring to be superintendent of ourcountry place, persons wishful of taking care of our livestock for us--awhole shoal of them. It booted us nothing to explain that we had not yetbought a place; that we had not even looked at a place with the prospectof buying. Almost without exception these callers were willing to sitdown with me and use up hours of my time telling me how well qualifiedthey were to deliver the goods as soon as I had bought land, or evenbefore I had bought it.

  From the ruck of them as they came avalanching down upon us two or threefaces and individualities stand out. There was, for example, the chimneyexpert. That was what he called himself--a chimney expert. His specialtywas constructing chimneys that were guaranteed against smoking, andcuring chimneys, built by others, which had contracted the vice. Thecircumstance of our not having any chimneys of any variety at the momentdid not halt him when I had stated that fact to him. He had alreadyremoved his hat and overcoat and taken a seat in my study, and hecontinued to remain right there. He seemed comfortable; in fact, Ibelieve he said he was comfortable.

  From chimneys he branched out into a general conversation with me uponthe topics of the day.

  In my time I have met persons who knew less about a wider range ofsubjects than he did, but they had superior advantages over him. Somehad traveled about over the world, picking up misinformation; some hadbeen educated into a broad and comprehensive ignorance. But here was aself-taught ignoramus--one, you might say, who had made himself what hewas. He may have known all about the habits and shortcomings of flues;but, once you let him out of a chimney, he was adrift on an unchartedsea of mispronounced names, misstated facts and faulty dates.

  We discussed the war--or, rather, he erroneously discussed it. Wediscussed politics and first one thing and then another, until finallythe talk worked its way round to literature; and then it was he told meI was one of his favorite authors. "Well," I said to myself, at that,"this person may be shy in some of his departments, but he's all rightin others." And then, aloud, I told him that he interested me and askedhim to go on.

  "Yes, sir," he continued; "I don't care what anybody says, you certainlydid write one mighty funny book, anyhow. You've wrote some books that Ididn't keer so much for; but this here book, ef it's give me one laughit's give me a thousand! I can come in dead tired out and pick it upand read a page--yes, read only two or three lines sometimes--and justnatchelly bust my sides. How you ever come to think up all them comicalsayings I don't, for the life of me, see! I wonder how these otherfellers that calls themselves humorists have got the nerve to keep ontryin' to write when they read that book of yours."

  "What did you say the name of this particular book was?" I asked,warming to the man in spite of myself.

  "It's called Fables in Slang," he said.

  I did not undeceive him. He had spoiled my day for me. Why should Ispoil his?

  Then, there was the persistent nursery-man's agent, with the teeth.He was the most toothsome being I ever saw. The moment he came in, thethought occurred to me that in his youth somebody had put tooth powdersinto his coffee. He may not have had any more teeth than some peoplehave, but he had a way of presenting his when he smiled or when hespoke, or even when his face was in repose, which gave him the effect ofbeing practically all teeth. Aside from his teeth, the most noticeablething about him was his persistence. I began protesting that it wouldbe but a waste of his time and mine to take up the subject of fruit andshade trees and shrubbery, because, even though I might care to investin his lines, I had at present no soil in which to plant them. But heseemed to regard this as a mere technicality on my part, and before Iwas anywhere near done with what I meant to say to him he had onearm round me and was filling my lap and my arms and my desk-top withcatalogues, price lists, illustrations in color, order slips, and otherliterature dealing with the products of the house he represented.

  I did my feeble best to fight him off; but it was of no use. He justnaturally surrounded me. Inside of three minutes he had me as thoroughlymined, flanked and invested as though he'd been Grant and I'd beenRichmond. I could tell he was prepared to stay right on until Icapitulated.

  So, in order for me to be able to live my own life, it became necessaryto give him an order. I made it as small an order as possible, because,as I have just said and as I told him repeatedly, I had no place inwhich to plant the things I bought of him, and could not tell when Ishould have a place in which to plant them. That petty detail did notconcern him in the least. He promised to postpone delivery until I hadtaken title to some land somewhere; and then he smiled his all-ivorysmile and released me from captivity, and took his departure.

  Two months later, when we had joined the landed classes, the consignmentarrived--peach, pear, quince, cherry and apple. I was quite shocked atthe appearance of the various items when we undid the wrappings. Thepictures from which I had made my selections showed splendid trees,thick with foliage and laden with the most delicious fruit imaginable.But here, seemingly, was merely a collection of golf clubs in a crudeand unfinished state--that is to say, they were about the right lengthand the right thickness to make golf clubs, but were unfinished to theextent that they had small tentacles or roots adhering to them at theirbutt ends.

  However, our gardener--we had acquired a gardener by then--was of theopinion that they might develop into something. Having advanced thisexceedingly sanguine and optimistic belief, he took out a pocket-knifeand further maimed the poor little things by pruning off certain minutesprouts or nubs or sprigs that grew upon them; and then he stuck them inthe earth. Nevertheless, they grew. At this hour they are stillgrowing, and in time I think they may bear fruit. As a promise of futureproductivity they bore leaves during the summer--not many leaves, butstill enough leaves to keep them from looking so much like walkingsticks, and just enough leaves to nourish certain varieties of worms.

  I sincerely trust the reader will not think I have been exaggeratingin detailing my dealings with the artificers, agents and solicitors whodescended upon us when the hue and
cry--personally I have never seen ahue, nor, to the best of my knowledge, have I ever heard one; but it iscustomary to speak of it in connection with a cry and I do so--when, asI say, the presumable hue and the indubitable cry were raised in regardto our ambition to own a country place. Believe me, I am but tellingthe plain, unvarnished truth. And now we come to the home-seekingenterprise:

  Sometimes alone, but more frequently in the company of friends, wetoured Westchester, its main highways and its back roads, its nooks andits corners, until we felt that we knew its topography much betterthan many born and reared in it. Reason totters on her throne whenconfronted with the task of trying to remember how many places we lookedat--places done, places overdone, places underdone, and places undone.Wherever we went, though, one of two baffling situations invariablyarose: If we liked a place the price for that place uniformly would beout of our financial reach. If the price were within our reach the placefailed to satisfy our desires.

  After weeks of questing about, we did almost close for one estate. Itwas an estate where a rich man, who made his money in town and spent itin the country, had invested a fortune in apple trees. The trees werethere--several thousand of them; but they were all such young trees. Itwould be several years before they would begin to bear, and meantimethe services of a small army of men would be required to care for theorchards and prune them, and spray them, and coddle them, and chaseinsects away from them. I calculated that if we bought this place itwould cost me about seven thousand dollars a year for five years aheadin order to enjoy three weeks of pink-and-white beauty in the blossomingtime each spring.

  Besides, it occurred to me that by the time the trees did begin to bearplentifully the fashionable folk in New York might quit eating apples;in which case everybody else would undoubtedly follow suit and quiteating them too. Ours is a fickle race, as witness the passing of thevogue for iron dogs on front lawns, and for cut-glass vinegar cruetson the dinner table; and a lot of other things, fashionable once butunfashionable now.

  Also, the house stood on a bluff directly overlooking the river, withthe tracks of the New York Central in plain view and trains constantlyski-hooting by. At the time of our inspection of the premises, longrestless strings of freight cars were backing in and out of sidings notmore than a quarter of a mile away. We were prepared, after we had movedto the country, to rise with the skylarks, but we could not see theadvantage to be derived from rising with the switch engines. Switchengines are notorious for keeping early hours; or possibly the engineerssuffer from insomnia.

  At length we decided to buy an undeveloped tract and do our owndeveloping. In pursuance of this altered plan we climbed craggy heightswith fine views to be had from their crests, but with no water anywherenear; and we waded through marshy meadows, where there was any amountof water but no views. This was discouraging; but we persevered, andeventually perseverance found its reward. Thanks to some kindly soulswho guided us to it, we found what we thought we wanted.

  We found a sixty-acre tract on a fine road less than a mile and a halffrom one of the best towns in the lower Hudson Valley. It combinedaccessibility with privacy; for after you quitted the cleared lands atthe front of the property, and entered the woodland at the back, youwere instantly in a stretch of timber which by rights belonged in theAdirondacks. About a third of the land was cleared--or, rather, had beencleared once upon a time. The rest was virgin forest running up to thecomb of a little mountain, from the top of which you might see, spreadout before you and below you, a panorama with a sweep of perhaps fortymiles round three sides of the horizon.

  There were dells, glades, steep bluffs and rolling stretches of fallowland; there were seven springs on the place; there was a cloven rift inthe hill with a fine little valley at the bottom of it, and the firsttime I clambered up its slope from the bottom I flushed a big cockgrouse that went booming away through the underbrush with a noise likea burst of baby thunder. That settled it for me. All my life I have beentrying to kill a grouse on the wing, and here was a target right on thepremises. Next day we signed the papers and paid over the binder money.We were landowners. Presently we had a deed in the safe-deposit box andsome notes in the bank to prove it.

  Over most of our friends we had one advantage. They had takenold-fashioned farms and made them over into modern country places. Butonce upon a time, sixty or seventy years back, the place of which wewere now the proud proprietors had been the property of a man of meansand good taste, a college professor; and, by the somewhat primitivestandards of those days, it had been an estate of considerablepretensions.

  This gentleman had done things of which we were now the legatees. Forexample, he had spared the fine big trees, which grew about the dooryardof his house; and when he had cleared the tillable acres he had left inthem here and there little thickets and little rocky copses which stoodup like islands from the green expanses of his meadows. The pioneerAmerican farmer's idea of a tree in a field or on a lawn was somethingthat could be cut down right away. Also the original owner had plantedorchards of apples and groves of cherries; and he had thrown up stoutstone walls, which still stood in fair order.

  But--alas!--he had been dead for more than forty years. And during mostof those forty years his estate had been in possession of an absenteelandlord, a woman, who allowed a squatter to live on the property, rentfree, upon one unusual condition--namely, that he repair nothing, changenothing, improve nothing, and, except for the patch where he grew hisgarden truck, till no land. As well as might be judged by the presentconditions, the squatter had lived up to the contract. If a windowpanewas smashed he stuffed up the orifice with rags; if a roof broke awayhe patched the hole with scraps of tarred paper; if a tree fell itsmolder-ing trunk stayed where it lay; if brambles sprang up theyflourished unvexed by bush hook or pruning blade.

  Buried in this wilderness was an old frame residence, slanting tipsilyon its rotted sills; and the cellar under it was a noisome damp hole,half filled with stones that had dropped out of the tottering foundationwalls. There was a farmer's cottage which from decay and neglect seemedready to topple over; likewise the remains of a cow barn, where noself-respecting cow would voluntarily spend a night; the moldy ruinsof a coach house, an ice house and a chicken house; and flanking these,piles of broken, crumbling boards to mark the sites of sundry cribs andsheds.

  The barn alone had resisted neglect and the gnawing tooth of time. Thiswas because it had been built in the time when barns were built to stay.It had big, hand-hewn oak sticks for its beams and rafters and sills;and though its roof was a lacework of rotted shingles and its sides werefull of gaps to let the weather in, its frame was as solid and enduringas on the day when it was finished. This, in short and in fine, was whatwe in our ignorance had acquired. To us it was a splendid asset. Personswho knew more than we did might have called it a liability.

  All our friends, though, were most sanguine and most cheerfulregarding the prospect. Jauntily and with few words they dismissed thedifficulties of the prospect that faced us; and with the same jauntinesswe, also, dismissed them.

  "Oh, you won't have so very much to do!" I hear them saying. "To besure, there's a road to be built--not over a quarter of a mile ofroad, exclusive of the turnround at your garage--when you've built yourgarage--and the turn in front of your house--when you've built yourhouse. It shouldn't take you long to clear up the fields and get themunder cultivation. All you'll have to do there is pick the loose stonesoff of them and plow the land up, and harrow it and grade it in places,and spread a few hundred wagonloads of fertilizer; and then sow yourgrass seed. That old horsepond yonder will make you a perfectly lovelyswimming pool, once you've cleaned it out and deepened it at this end,and built retaining walls round it, and put in a concrete basin, andwaterproofed the sides and bottom. You must have a swimming pool by allmeans!

  "And then, by running a hundred-foot dam across that low place in thevalley you can have a wonderful little lake. You surely must have a laketo go with the swimming pool! Then, when you've dug your artesia
n well,you can couple up all your springs for an emergency supply. You know youcan easily pipe the spring water into a tank and conserve it there. Thenyou'll have all the water you possibly can need--except, of course, invery dry weather in mid-summer.

  "And, after that, when you've torn the old house down and put up yournew house, and built your barn and your stable, and your farmer'scottage and your ice house, and your greenhouses, and your corn-crib,and your tool-shed, and your tennis court, and laid out some terracesup on that hillside yonder, and planned out your flower gardens and yourvegetable garden, and your potato patch and your corn patch, and stuckup your chicken runs, and bought your work stock and your cows andchickens and things--oh, yes, and your kennels, if you are going in fordogs--No? All right, then; never mind the kennels. Anyhow, when you'vedone those things and set out your shrubs and made your rose beds andplanted your grapevines, you'll be all ready just to move right in andsettle down and enjoy yourselves."

  I do not mean that all of these suggestions came at once. As hereenumerated they represent the combined fruitage of several conversationson the subject. We listened attentively, making notes of the variousnotions for our comfort and satisfaction as they occurred to others.If any one had advanced the idea that we should install a private racetrack, and lay out nine holes, say, of a private golf course, we shouldhave agreed to those items too. These things do sound so easy whenyou are talking them over and when the first splendid fever of landownership is upon you!

  Had I but known then what I know now! These times, when, going along theroad, I pass a manure heap I am filled with envy of the plutocrat whoowns it, though, at the same time, deploring the vulgar ostentation thatleads him to spread his wealth before the view of the public. When Isee a masonry wall along the front of an estate I begin to make mentalcalculations, for I understand now what that masonry costs, and knowthat it is cheaper, in the long run, to have your walls erected by alapidary than by a union stonemason.

  And as for a bluestone road--well, you, reader, may think bluestone isbut a simple thing and an inexpensive one. Just wait until you havehad handed to you the estimates on the cost of killing the nerve andcleaning out the cavities and inserting the fillings, and putting in thefalsework and the bridgework, and the drains and the arches--and all!You might think dentists are well paid for such jobs; but a professionalroad contractor--I started to say road agent--makes any dentist look aperfect piker.

  And any time you feel you really must have a swimming pool that is allyour very own, take my advice and think twice. Think oftener than twice;and then compromise on a neat little outdoor sitz bath that is all yourvery own.

  But the inner knowledge of these things was to come to us later. For thetime being, pending the letting of contracts, we were content to enjoythe two most pleasurable sensations mortals may know--possession andanticipation: the sense of the reality of present ownership and, coupledwith this, dreams of future creation and future achievement. We were onthe verge of making come true the treasured vision of months--we wereabout to become abandoned farmers.

  No being who is blessed with imagination can have any finer joy thanthis, I think--the joy of proprietorship of a strip of the greenfootstool. The soil you kick up when you walk over your acresis different soil from that which you kick up on your neighbor'sland--different because it is yours. Another man's tree, another man'srock heap, is a simple tree or a mere rock heap, as the case may be; andnothing more. But your tree and your rock heap assume a peculiar value,a special interest, a unique and individual picturesqueness.

  And oh, the thrill that permeates your being when you see the firstfurrow of brown earth turned up in your field, or the first shovel-loadof sod lifted from the spot where your home is to stand! And oh, thefirst walk through the budding woods in the springtime! And the firstspray of trailing arbutus! And the first spray of trailing poison ivy!And the first mortgage! And the first time you tread on one of thoselarge slick brown worms, designed, inside and out, like a chocolateeclair!

  After all, it's the only life! But on the way to it there are pitfallsand obstacles and setbacks, and steadily mounting monthly pay rolls.

  As shall presently develop.