i would like to know where you are tonight, and what you have been doing all through this “liberty day.” with us the day has been cloudy and wet, and just as the sun went down nature took the liberty of sending a cold, penetrating rain. so here i am before my big fire with a copy of washington irving’s “life of christopher columbus.” that seems the proper way to end columbus day, for in trying to tell the children about him i found that i did not really know much more than they do about the great discoverer. so here i am back some 400 years in history wondering if any of these pompous and bigoted ways of seeking for new worlds or new methods can be applied to modern life in new jersey.
my back aches, for i have been digging potatoes all day—and i thought i had graduated from that job some years ago. perhaps you will say that we should have been out selling liberty bonds or parading. personally, i am a poor salesman, and we all subscribed for our bonds some days ago. there are eight bondholders in this family. the influenza has left us without labor except for the children while the school is closed. there are still over 100 barrels of apples to pick, potatoes to dig, plowing and seeding to be done, and a dozen other jobs all pressing. so i decided to celebrate liberty day by digging those bible school potatoes. we planted a patch of potatoes between rows of young peach trees and promised the crop to the bible teachers’ training school. last year we tried this, and i put in a few of the latest scientific touches which the experts told us about. the plant lice came in a swarm and ruined the patch. we had a few potatoes about the size of marbles. this year we avoided scientific advice, and just planted potatoes in the old-fashioned way. they were not cultivated in the best possible manner, but they made a good crop. so when liberty day dawned with a thick, gray mist over the land i decided to get those potatoes out instead of going on the march or singing “the star spangled banner.” from what i read of columbus i imagine he would have chosen the parade and left the digging to others. the world has taken on new ideas about labor since then.
so, after breakfast, cherry-top and i took our forks and started digging. the soil was damp and the air full of mist and meanness which made me sneeze and cough as we worked on. happily, out on our hills we are not fined $20 for sneezing outside of a handkerchief, as is the case in new york. if anyone has discovered any poetry or philosophy in the job of digging potatoes he may have the floor. i call it about the most menial job on the farm, and therefore fine discipline for “liberty day.” while we were working philip and the larger boy went by with the team to seed rye. they have thrashed out enough grain by hand, and this is not only ideal weather, but about the last limit for seeding. the land was plowed some two weeks ago, a big crop of ragweed and grass being turned under. if we only had the labor this ground would have been disked twice and then harrowed. as it is, we can only work it once with the spring-tooth. then philip goes ahead seeding in the rye by hand, while the boy follows with the acme harrow to cover the grain. it is rough seeding and would not answer for wheat, but rye is tough and enduring, and it will imitate columbus and discover a new world in that decaying mass of ragweed. so i watch the seed sowers travel slowly along the hillside as i dig, and wonder what was doing on this farm 427 years ago, and what will be doing here 100 years hence! such reflections were the most cheerful mental accompaniment i could find for digging potatoes. they are impractical, while digging is the most practical thing on earth!
as we dug on a man and woman came up the lane. they came after apples, having engaged them before. the boy went down to attend to them, while i kept on digging. then the boy came back with two more apple customers. the trouble with us is that we have more customers than apples this year, but these were old patrons, and they were served. the boy finally came back with $41.80 as a result of his trading, and we went at our job with new vigor. as we dug along we noticed a curious thing about those potatoes. here and there was a vine large and strong, and still perfectly green. the great majority of the hills were dead, but those green ones were as vigorous as they were in june. the variety was green mountain, and we soon found that on the average these big green vines were producing twice as much as the dead hills. some of these living vines carried three or four big potatoes. others had a dozen, with seven or eight of market size, while others had about 16 tubers, mostly small. just why these vines should act in this way i do not know. there are so many possible reasons that i should have to guess at it, as columbus did when, as his ship sailed on and on into the west, the compass began to vary. the boy and i decided that here was where we might discover a good strain of green mountain on columbus day. so we have selected 15 of the best hills. they will be planted, hill by hill, next year and still further selection made. we discarded the hills with only a few big potatoes and also those with many small ones, and selected those with a good number of medium-sized tubers. it may come to nothing, but we will try it. experience and careful figures show that an ordinary crop of potatoes in this country does not pay. the same is true of a flock of ordinary poultry, or a drove of scrub pigs. there is no profit except in well-bred, selected stock. that’s what we think we have in pigs and poultry—perhaps we may get something of the same thing in potatoes.
but there is one sure thing about digging potatoes—you work up a great appetite. at noon there came a most welcome parade up the lane. it was not a woman suffrage procession, but mother, aunt eleanor, rose and the little girls bringing the picnic dinner in baskets and pails. the boy had built a fire up above the spring and piled stones up around it. by the time i had washed my hands and face in the brook mother had a frying pan over this fire with slices of bacon sizzling and giving up their fat. when this bacon was brown the slices were taken out and the fat kept on bubbling and dancing. then aunt eleanor cut up slices of baldwin apples and dropped them into this fat. they tell me ben davis is best for this fried-apple performance, but i found no fault with baldwin as it jumped out of that fat. the chemist will no doubt explain how the bacon fat combined with the acid of the apple, etc., etc., etc. let him talk; it does him good—but have another fried apple! men may come and men may go, but they will seldom find more appetizing food or a more perfect balanced ration than the hope farmers discovered around that fire. there were bread and butter, fried bacon, fried apple, pot cheese and several of our choice red hen’s eggs boiled hard and chopped fine with a little onion. of course, eggs are worth good and great money just now, but nothing is too good for an occasion like this. and so, on that cheerless day, sitting around our fire, we all concluded that columbus did a great thing when he discovered america.
but our job was not to be ended by eating fried apples and bacon, pleasant as that occupation is, and when i put out my hand i was obliged to admit that the first faint evidence of rain was beginning. the larger boy went back to his rye seeding, and very soon tom and broker could be seen on the lower farm pounding back and forth over the field like gray giants hauling up the guns. all hands went to picking up potatoes. mother picked two bushels and then had to go back to her housework. little rose claimed that she picked up 20 potatoes. her chief job was to hold on to her throat and ask if it was not time to eat one more of those sweet throat tablets i had in my pocket. the rain slowly developed from mist to good-sized drops. i know what it means to get wet, and in any other cause i would have left the job, but we were there to finish those potatoes, and we stayed by it until they were all picked up. the last barrel or two came up out of the mud, and our hands and feet were surely plastered with common clay—but we finished our job. then came the boys with broker and the fruit wagon to carry the crop to the barn. one of these boys had on a rubber coat—the other a sack over his shoulders. they went on up the hill to get a load of apples and on their way back brought down the bible potatoes, where they will dry out and be ready for delivery. when we got to the barn there was another party after apples.
we finished it all at last, dried off before the fire and found ourselves none the worse for the day. in the present condition of my back i would not from choice go to a dance tonight, but that will limber out in time. the fire roars away, the rain taps at the window, and we are safe and warm. we have had our supper, and i suppose i could tell where aunt eleanor has hidden a pan of those famous ginger cookies. i will make it a one to five chance that i can also find a pan of baked apples. i think i will not reveal the secret publicly at this time. the food administrator might accuse her of using too much ginger or sweetening! school has been closed on account of the influenza, but the children are still working their “examples,” and i give them a few original sums to work out. little rose listens to all this, and finally proposes this one of her own:
“if a woman paid three cents at a hospital for a baby, how much would a horse cost?”
personally, i will give that up, and go back to the “life of columbus.” the most interesting thing to me is the account of the council of wise men to whom columbus tried to explain his theories. they told him that since the old philosophers and wise men had not discovered any new world, it was great presumption for an ordinary man to claim that there remained any great discovery for him to make. seems to me i have heard that same argument ever since i was able to read and understand. perhaps it is well that all who come, like columbus, with a theory and vision of new worlds must fight and endure and suffer before the slow and prejudiced public will give them a chance. but here comes a message for me to come upstairs and see a strange thing. little rose cannot have her own way, and she has gone into a passion altogether too big for her little frame. she will not even let me come near her, and back i come a little sadly to my book and my fire. they are not quite so satisfying as before. but who comes here? it is mother carrying a very pink and repentant morsel of humanity—little rose. she hunts up my electric hearing device and with the ear piece at my ear i hear a trembly little voice saying:
“i’s awful sorry!”
and that is a fine ending for liberty day. perhaps, like columbus on that fateful night at the end of his voyage, this little one sees the first faint light of a new world! who knows?
