Mrs. Dunlap's Dutch Colonial: Part Two

[Click here to read the first installment.]

Duncan, who doubtless had heard from his mother about the unsightly oil barrels, explained in a letter what he had in mind. "You can use twelve stakes on one side of your driveway and ask Mr. Huntley to let you put twelve stakes on his side. That way you can partially screen your garage and totally obscure Mr. Huntley's oil barrels."

Mrs. Dunlap came over to talk to my mother and repeated Duncan's instructions word for word or so she thought. My mother was surprised to hear that Mrs. Dunlap wanted to "obscreen" the oil barrels, but knew Mrs. Dunlap well enough to know what she meant. After all, she had once overheard Mrs. Dunlap respond to an invitation she meant to accept by saying in her most gracious voice, "I am delighted to decline."

"A son like Duncan," my mother said, abandoning more graphic comparisons, "Admirable as he is, has caused Mrs. Dunlap to lose her ordinary sense of speech."

The oil barrels were without a doubt unattractive, but they were necessary to provide the feed line to the stoves. Modern steam heating such as Mrs. Dunlap's new house had was thought by Papa and many others in our town to be oppressive and possibly unhealthy.

As Mr. Benton, who did carpenter jobs for everybody in town and who constructed the housing for the barrels, raised to an elevation impossible to ignore, said when he finished, "Those barrels hit a person right between the eyes."

My mother, who thought all along that it was a good idea to obscure the oil barrels, had not been able to convince Papa that it was worth paying for; but she promised Mrs. Dunlap that she would try again to persuade him.

Mrs. Dunlap went straight home and called Mr. Benton, a very talented and well-read handyman, to come and talk to her about the job. "My son Duncan says these grape stakes make a charming, naturalistic type of fencing."

The first thing Mr. Benton said was, "Mrs. Dunlap, you don't want that kind of fence with your kind of house. They don't look good together. You'd do better to plant some more bushes."

"I don't have time for bushes to grow, Mr. Benton. Can you do the job or not?"

"Tell you what I'll do," he said. "I'll line those poles up and lean them against a sawhorse and let you see how it looks. Then I'll line them up on Mr. Huntley's side and see what the effect looks like to him, but I'm not digging any holes until you think it over. How does that sound?"

Mrs. Dunlap apparently forgot that she was going to wait to hear from my mother's attempt to get permission from Papa before proceeding and said, "Just you do that, Mr. Benton. I'm in an awful hurry to get this job done."

That afternoon when Papa ventured outside for his modified constitutional, he was confronted by a sawhorse and twelve grape stakes propped up in such a way as to conceal his oil barrels and lying beside them was Mr. Benton's posthole digger. Mr. Benton had gone home for lunch.

Mrs. Dunlap forgot to tell Mr. Benton that she was due at The Book Review Club as it was her turn to bring refreshments. She also desired a venue to announce Duncan's engagement. Everybody in town already knew, but it was after all Mrs. Dunlap's privilege to offer the announcement in her own words and with the pride of the moment she was entitled to. She set off happily and did not worry about Papa's seeing the execution of Mr. Benton's idea as she thought that his eyesight was failing so badly that even if he did happen to come outside he probably would not notice the grape stakes on his property.

Of course, Papa's eyesight was not good enough to read small print or to work out the knots in his high top shoes, but he could certainly see 12 six-foot poles lined up on his property was well as the sawhorse they were propped against. "Trespassing" is what he said, kicking at the poles when Mr. Benton returned from lunch. "Those poles are illegally trespassing on my property."

[Part two of an undated story by Virginia McKinnon Mann. Click here for the final installment.]