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Roaldus Richmond
r!
SEP 3 ü 1940
I'LL TAKE THE GOOD CLEAN DIRT
"Granites all right for them that likes it," he drawled
slowly. "And cutting stone is all right if a man wants to
make his living that way. I ain't got any quarrel with how
a man works to make his living, no moregn I have with his rel-
igion. I figi;er to tend my own business and let the other
feller do the same. That way folks get along. Meddling is
what makes all the trouble. And it's too bad but we got moregn
our share of meddlers in this world. This Hitler and Musso-
lini and Stalin they're nothing but meddlers on a big scale.
Instead of scheming to get a mange farm away from him they work
it to get whole countries away from people.
Es was a man past middle -age, but still straight and strong,
with a clear red face and sandy gray hair. His eyes were very
blue and calm, crinkled at the corners from looking into sun
and wind. He wore a faded brown coat over his overalls and a
battered felt hat pushed back from a mild brow. On the rail
fence his big hands were knotted and sinewy and the writs were
ridged with muscle. Ye spat tobacco juice expertly and wiped
his yellow moustache with a deliberate hand.
"It ain't all granite up here on the Hill," he said.
"There's farming too and some pretty good farms. Not big rich
farms but fair -to -middling. And there's deserted farms too
where the people gave up and left gem. Maybe it was poor soil
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or mortgages or bad luck with crops and cattle. And maybe it
was somethinl in the people themselves. It ain't easy makin'
a livin' on these farms but it can be done." Fe looked
back over his land, gravely and thoughtfully. "Yes, it can
be done."
7is farmstead sat on a little rise above the road. The
buildings were weathered to a soft silver-gray, but they stood
sturdy and secure acainat the brown autumn background, beaten
by storm and sun, yet tough and resilient as the man. himself.
Showers of scarlet and cold maple leaves fell along the slope
in bright flurries. Tan and wite cattle grazed among the gray
boulders of a far pasture. A scene in sharp contrast to the
great pyramids of waste gran1te and the deep vast quarries on
the other side of the Ft11.
"Well, by lod," the farmer said. "They crn have their
gran'te. I'll take the gord clean dirt for me.
"I've known a lot of granite workers of course. I used
to know all the old-timers and they was good men. I don't know
so many now but the ones T. knew I liked. raybe they lived
faster'n a farmer does. They have to, by Ool, because they
don't last so long. I never blamed 'em for carryiny on the
way they did. They was good-hearted fellers, good fellers to
talk to. They might raise hell but it wa'n't out of meanness.
The work they do, the life) they lead a man/ got to have some
way to let go and get away from it. On the other hand some
of them fellers was sober and quiet as any old farmer." The
clear blues twinkled Whimsically. "And some of us farmers
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ain't always been angels.
"My life has been spent right here on this farm, put right
into these fields. I used to get envious hearint some of them
qvarriers talkin' about the places they'd been, the things
they'd done and seen. I was young then. Now I figLer it don't
make much difference. Most of them fellers are dead and gone.
They had a lot I didn't have and I got a lot they never had,
too.
"My folks come from the Maine coast, Searsport. I don't.
know why they come here. My father wa'n't much of a hand to
talk, and my motler was always too busy raisin' us young ones.
Some of my father's folks was sea-farint men and some was farmers
like him. Some of tem went West in the Forties. I got cousins
out in California now. Never sew 'em, problly never will.
They, was Scandinavians.
"My father built this house and barn, broke this land.
He raised a big family to help him farm it. I was the only
one stayed home after we cot crowed-hup. I guess I was the only
one that took to rennin'. Maybe the rest had some of that
sea-farint blood in 'em. One of my brothers went to cuttinl
stone down in a shed in the City, and he died young. One of
the younger ones was killed Over 'cross in the war, And I
stayed on right here where I was born where I'll die.
"I got a good wife she ain't well now, has a woman to
help her but she's a good woman. Before she was taken she'd
do a man's work any day. We had two children, a boy and girl.
Would've had more if she hadn't been taken sick. This woman
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who helps my wife, shells got a good boy and he works for me.
Lie's a good worker and he likes famine. Been here since he
was a little kid, seems almost like my own boy. My son, he's
workinl out in Dayton, Ohio, married, family of his own. "nd
the girl's married too, livin, down in Baltimore. Married good
too. She was a trained nurse, married a doctor. Sometimes
they come home in the summer but we don't see 'em much then.
Always off playin' golf, some such thing. No more interest
in the farm than nothinl at all. Can't even stand the barn-
yard smell they grew up in. It ain't a bad smell either. I
keep my place clean.
"Me I like the farm and I like farminl. I like to be
round the animals and see things growinl."
i_azed over his rolling fields to the haze of color on
the ridge. "Sugar maples up there. Lost some of 'em in that
hurricane last fall. Took down a lot of timber on me$ too.
Guess we was lucky at that when you see what it done down
country way. I got a nice dairy herd thirty-two head,
Give as good milk as you can get on the :6111. t-;rops come pretty
good this year, but the season's short. Late spring and early
frosts.
"We don't go down to the City much any more. Used to go
when we was younger and the kids was home. Now maybe we go
down Saturday nights, But I don't like it. Too much traffic
and noise, too many people, all strangers seems like, all hurrying
and rushinl and crowdinl like sheep. he lights hurt my eyes
and the noise hurts my ears. It makes me feel old and tired
out. My wife used to like to go down to the picture shows or
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go shoppinl, but I guess she feels like I do lately. `'he ain't
well at all anyway. No, I feel like a stranger down in the
City. Maybe it ain't big but it seems big. I'd ratler set
home and listen to the radio. Or I'd rather go right down here
to the store and set round talkinl with men I know. There's
a friendly kind of feelin' you don't get down in the City. Up
here people got time enough to set easy and talk and smoke and
enjoy things. Down in the City they ain't. Seems crazy to
me the way they rush round. J.Lnd then all these murders and
cries
and scandals, all the war talk. Makes you wonder what
tlAnge are coming to, by God it does.
"They say granite made this place what it is and probtly
it did. But where'd they be without the farmers? there'd any
place be without farmers? People can get along without tomb-
stones, but they can't get along without food, they can't get
along without potatoes, eggs, milk, butter, bread, vegetables.
You can't eat granite.
"sure, some of the monuments them fellers out are beautiful.
But I can't see nothin' beautiful about a graveyard, by Cod I
can't. It's nice to respect and remember the dead, but some-
times it seems like an awful waste of money." "e shook his
shagFy 8ray head and spat a brown stream. "They say folks,
tourists, come from miles around to see them cemeteries. And
probably never look at them mountains over there at all&
"ell, different people are bound to see things different.
I like to work in the dirt. Somebody else likes to cut stone
or set in an office or work in a store. Now you just look up
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there on the verandy he pointed to the great pile of vege-
tablei, heaped golden and orange and green on the wooden porch.
"To me that's what's beautiful. It ain't cold like stone. It's
warm and fresh and ripe. Ain't it pretty? It's what I raised
myself," he said with quiet satisfaction and pride. "And it's
what I like to look at."