[6/8/2011] Perelman Tonight: The shock of the new home -- Part 2 of "Acres and Pains" (continued)

"I wouldn't live in the city if you paid me a million dollars a year -- well, let's say forty-two dollars a year. How people can exist side by side with utter disregard for each other, never prying into anybody's business, is beyond me. In the country, folks are more matey; there is always an extra stiletto for the newcomer and a friendly hand ready to tighten around his throat."

-- from Chapter Three of Acres and Pains

Acres and Pains
Part 2

TWO

Outside of a spring lamb trotting into a slaughterhouse, there is nothing in the animal kingdom as innocent and foredoomed as the new purchaser of a country place. The moment he scratches his signature on the deed, it is open season and no limit to the bag. At once, Nature starts cutting him down to size. Wells that bubbled over for two hundred years mysteriously go dry, stone walls develop huge fissures, and chimneys sag out of plumb. Majestic elms which have withstood the full fury of the hurricane and the Dutch blight begin shedding their leaves; oaks dating from the reign of Charles II fade like cheap calico. Meanwhile, the former owner is busy removing a few personal effects. He rolls up the lawn preparatory to loading it on flatcars, floats the larger trees downstream, and carts off the corncrib, woodshed and toolhouse. When I first viewed my own property, my dewy naïveté was incredible -- even Dewey Naïveté, the agent who showed me around, had to suppress a smile. What sealed the choice was a decrepit henhouse occupied by a flock of white Wyandottes. According to my estimate, it needed only a vigorous dusting and a small can of enamel to transform it into a snug guest cottage. Shading my eyes, I could see the magnificent wistaria, heavy with blooms, creeping up a lattice any amateur could construct with ten cents' worth of nails. As soon as I took possession, though, I discovered it must have been on casters, for all that greeted me was a yawning pit trimmed with guano and eggshells.

This baptism, however, was merely a prelude to the keelhauling the natives had in store. Like any greenhorn from the city, I used to choke up freely at the sight of the man with the hoe. Every bumpkin I encountered reminded me of Daniel Webster; his dreariest platitude had the dignity and sweep of Walt Whitman's verse. Selecting one noble old patriarch, who I was sure had served with John Brown at Harpers Ferry, I commissioned him to paint the barn. Several days later, he notified me that forty-seven gallons were exhausted. "No use skimpin'," he warned. "A hickory stump, a widow woman and a barn has to be protected from the weather." I was chuckling over this bit of folk wisdom without quite understanding it when I detected a slight bulge under his coat similar to that caused by a five-gallon drum. He intercepted my glance and informed me fluently that he usually picked a few cranberries during his lunch hour. Apparently he lunched on Cape Cod, five hundred miles to the north, but since he never took more than half an hour, I overlooked it and ordered more paint. A week afterward, his barn burst forth in a shade of red identical with mine.

"Looks like yours, don't it?" He grinned. "Durned if I can tell 'em apart." I knew what he meant.

I have been taken to the cleaners since by some notable brigands, but the most brazen of the lot was the kinsman of Jesse James who repaired our road. Edward Mittendorf and his merry men spent a fortnight lounging about in well-cut slacks, pitching quoits and reading Kierkegaard. Occasionally one of the more enterprising workmen would saunter over and deposit a pinch of gravel daintily in the ruts. Whenever my wife passed by, the crew appraised her charms, whistling and clucking spiritedly. I entered a mild demurrer and received the following instructions: "You tell 'em, corset; you've been around the ladies." The day of settlement dawned on schedule, and with Mittendorf watching me beadily, I began to examine his bill. It was a closely typewritten document resembling the annual report of the Federal Reserve. Among other items he listed depreciation on shovels, lemonades for the men, and some bridgework his niece had ordered.

"Who's Ed Mittendorf?" I inquired, indicating a salary in excess of Cary Grant's.

"My cousin -- the little fat feller," he explained.

"Is he the same as Eddie Mittendorf?" I asked.

"No, that's my dad," he returned smoothly, "and Ned Mittendorf there, he's my uncle. I'm Edward -- got that straight?"

"I should," I snapped. "Your name's down here twice."

"It is?" he gasped. "Well, I swan."

I swanned also on reading the total, but I paid through the nose, a locale which was rapidly taking on the aspect of a teller's window. If you ever drive up the lane, be careful. Those diamonds raise hell with your treads.

* * *

THREE

I wouldn't live in the city if you paid me a million dollars a year -- well, let's say forty-two dollars a year. How people can exist side by side with utter disregard for each other, never prying into anybody's business, is beyond me. In the country, folks are more matey; there is always an extra stiletto for the newcomer and a friendly hand ready to tighten around his throat. The moving men have hardly kicked the rungs out of your Chippendale chairs before neighbors spring up like mushrooms, eager to point out any flaws you may have missed in your place and gloat over your predicament. My wife and I were still knee-deep in a puddle outside our front door, exchanging shrill taunts and questioning each other's legitimacy, when our first visitor drove up. Shearing off an irreplaceable dogwood, he pulled into a flower bed and got out. From the expression of mingled condescension, malice and envy, I knew at once he must be another city man turned farmer. As his gaze traveled slowly over the estancia, he took on the look of one who has just bitten into an unripe persimmon.

"Finally unloaded it, did they?" he remarked with a ghoulish smirk.

"What do you mean?" I asked, my hackles rising to attention.

"The old pesthouse," he said intimately. "So they found a simp to take it off their hands."

"Oh, I don't know," I said with what started out as dignity but wound up as a girlish toss of the head. He examined my clothes intently. "You the hired man?" he asked at length.

"No, the simp," I snarled. There was a brief interval during which I could hear his watch ticking.

"No hard feelings, brother," he said eventually. "Nice little spot you've got here. My name's Grundy." He held out his hand.

"Mine's Frankenstein," I said, ignoring it, "and this is the Monster," I added, indicating my wife.

"Glad to know you, Mrs. Monster," he acknowledged. "I see you're having trouble with your foundation."

"I beg your pardon," she snapped with considerable hauteur, furtively smoothing her hips.

"I mean, of the house," Grundy corrected himself. "I saw your husband creeping around under the porch a while ago."

"Oh, he was just rooting for truffles," she said sweetly. As she stalked off, Grundy smacked his lips. "Some package," he commented. "Where'd a little shrimp like you ever meet her?"

"Listen here, my friend," I began, taking a step toward him.

"Yes," he said thoughtfully, "you've got plenty of things to worry about. You'll never be able to drink the water -- it's tainted. And that woodwork of yours is alive with termites. What did you give for this root cellar?"

"Nothing," I lied. "We took it for a bad debt."

"Well, you were stung," said Grundy. "Come here." He approached one of the windows, and whipping out a jackknife, slashed at the casings. Several panes of glass shivered into fragments on the ground. "Putty's rotten," he said triumphantly. "It's the talk of the countryside. And that's not all. See that stream down there? Every spring it rises to the second story. You'll be doubled up with rheumatism, if the mosquitoes don't get you first. You know, I never saw the shack by daylight before; no wonder they say it's haunted. Now, you take my place -- "

We took his place. It had thirty-five rooms and ten baths -- snug but adequate for his needs. The attic was hand-hewn out of solid cherry, with burled walnut floors. For odd jobs he employed a lineal descendant of Cellini, whom he paid off in green trading stamps; the latter had just remodeled the barn into a game room and servants' quarters at a total cost of $2.76. The soil was none too fertile, he admitted -- it took a week for tomatoes to bear and his dahlias were only a foot across. But there were so many trout in his creek that you could walk across without wetting your feet.

"Tell you what I'd do if I were you," he concluded. "I'd pitch a tent outside and use the dwelling for a cow stable. Only watch out where you camp; the grass is full of black widows." He left, whistling the "Dead March" from Saul, and I entered the house to find my wife in tears. She cried for six days and on the seventh created apple butter. It was good, but not like the woman's next door.

* * *

IN TOMORROW NIGHT'S INSTALLMENT OF ACRES AND PAINS:

Every now and then on a breathless August evening, I like to draw up my easy chair before a glowing fire, puff on a calabash and stare thoughtfully into the flames. The heat is unendurable and the calabash makes me nauseated, but like a bachelor remembering his summer sweethearts, it helps me recall the architects who have almost remodeled my quaint old stone farmhouse.

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