Being a Good Neighbor, For a While

I heard a story about this fellow John. It seems John was trying to get started farming during those hard times following World War II. He had been able to get the down payment on a small farm at the edge of the hills of Mississippi. Both his wife and he had jobs in town and they farmed on the weekend. They were having a hard time keeping everything going.

Now it seems another fellow, George, lived just a little piece down the road. George, it was widely agreed, had no love for hard work.

Now John always made sure that there was enough wood for the week’s fires. Enough for the cook stove and the fireplace. He kept it stacked neatly in the barn so it would stay dry.

But it seems John was having trouble with the wood pile. It looked as though he was cutting more wood than they were burning. And he just happened to notice that George always had a nice fire, but he never cut much wood. So John finally ran out of patience and decided to take action. That Saturday afternoon he got a nice stick of wood, drilled a small hole in it and whittled a wooden plug to fit the hole. From a shotgun shell, he got a few grains of powder and poured them into the hole. Next, he carefully pushed the plug into the wood. Then he laid that stick right on top of the pile.

A few days later, way over in the middle of the night, John and his wife heard a small explosion. George was not hurt, but there was no glass left in his windows. And John never missed any more wood.

I was in the coffee shop one morning when the real “John” was asked about this episode. He just smiled and sipped his coffee.

--Tom Crumby