A Stumble and Bumble Update

According to my calculations, it's been a mighty long time, maybe three full years, since I've written a summary of the progress of that dynamic duo of Vernon County house builders, Stumble and Bumble. Readers used to ask, "Which of you is Stumble, and which is Bumble?" Well, it scarcely matters: each nickname denotes a degree of joyful amateurism and gleeful clumsiness that you don't expect from a sober-sided professional who does it mainly for the sake of his livelihood. No, wife Ginny is now the inspired planner of all our projects; she has a head for unusual design. Before her hip operation that left her with both legs of equal length, she used to be a whiz on steeply pitched roofs, skittering along the edges in perfect balance, with no fear of falling off.

I, on the other hand, left my right leg in a Kansas City hospital a few years ago, so I'm not too swift on roofs with any pitch at all.

I can, however, tackle any project on a level portion of land. When, for example, the two of us set out to paint the siding on our new barn, I laid out each row of siding between two old chairs, dipped my roller brush in our special "barn red" paint, and rolled the hell out of I don't know how many rows of siding. When it was sufficiently dry, I could install the bottom rows without too many black-and-blue, or bloody, thumbs -- either my own, or my helpers. After roughly 12 or 14 rows, however, I began to see the need for a ladder, so at that stage I turned it over to my partner, and we got the rest of the rows of "barn red" siding installed.

Spectacular! Norman Rockwell, eat your heart out!!

When, during my semester-long sabbatical from Cottey in the mid-1990s, I hopped aboard our new John Deere tractor and glided along the periphery of our hundred-acre pecan farm and wilderness area, near Montevallo, I took great pleasure in the smooth ride, except for the times I nearly ran over a tiny fawn hiding utterly motionless and noiseless amidst the leaves that had fallen from the pecan tree under which he'd been sleeping.

Our 10-acre farm, on the other hand, promises an equally smooth ride -- until you get on the same John Deere, buckle the safety belt, and set out to mow the seven acres of grass surrounding the three-acre pond, the new "barn red" barn, and the 150-year old stone house, that last being the main reason for our buying the property in the first place. This farm was originally a much larger wine-growing area, some hundred-or-so-acres. Now, about the only reminder of its date of origin, the Civil War era, are two immense, cool stone caves built into two man-made earthen hills, once used to store, and keep cool, the wine made on the farm.

The original farm was much, much larger than it is today. When large chunks of the farm were sold off many years ago, and it turned from a productive "farm" into a mere "household" is a mystery to me, although the year it did so would be easy enough to find out. In any event, the first time I went for a spin around the property on our new tractor, I thought I'd fallen asleep and was now waking on the back of a bucking bronco. Either that, or I was driving across a gigantic earthen washboard that was going to shake loose the new engine, my new false teeth, and my 129-pound teacher's frame as well. In spite of the tractor's safety belt, I still fear tipping over on one of the farm's steeper-than-you-think slopes, and getting pinned under the hot and heavy machine, as both he and the tractor rolled over and over into the thorny hedges at the bottom of the hill.

"%(*&%$^&@," he exclaimed wistfully.

Although I'm beginning to grow very fond of the 10-acre farm (which we haven't named yet), my heart belongs to our 85-acre spread near Montevallo. That's the acreage that's big enough to contain some wild, overgrown parts. It used to make me feel good, adventurous, to tramp through the wild parts. Now, with only one real leg, I don't feel as adventurous as I did a few years ago. But, even so, I sometimes recall that I'm basically a city-oriented guy, and also, I'm getting on in age (66), so my idea of adventure has become sitting with a Diet Coca-Cola on the upstairs porch of our house on the 85-acre pecan farm, reading for review the latest new book sent to me by Library Journal, and being on the alert for yellow-jackets and other flying critters that might take a dump on my virginal paper pages.

When I lived in Westchester County, New York, I knew my neighbors were happy to have escaped from "the city" into "the country," finally free of the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free." I've come to realize, however, that this part of southwestern Missouri makes Westchester County look and feel like a wealthy but incredibly cluttered cluster of houses in the $200,000 to $300,000 range. Yes, Nevada is truly spacious and free of the "huddled masses," and I'm very happy to have sort of stumbled across the town of Nevada, Mo., where, in the past 31 years, I've sort of found myself.