« THURSDAY, AUGUST 8, 1946
A Bit of Variety
BONA MORRIS WORKMAN
HOCKING W RANCH
New-daught«r
came
trotting
into the kitchen last evening just
a* 1 was starting dinner. “Oh,”
she said, and I thought her voice
held a note of disappointment,
"have you got dinner very far
along?
I thought It would be
fun to have a picnic supper down
by the swimming hole. I’ve got
some hot-dogs,” she continued
hopefully, “and we can roast them
on sticks over the coals. Dinner
isn't too far along, is it?” she
finished coaxingly.
If I had had the whole dinner
ready to put on the table I would
still have agreed that hot-dogs
plus other things served down by
the river was to be preferred any
old day, that was sunny, to a
“sittin’-down meal” eaten in the
house.
In Sarah Orne Jewett’s
delightful book, “Country of the
Pointed Firs,” a country woman
remarks, “Some folks wash on
Monday and iron on Tuesday even
if the circus is goin’ by, but I
like variety myself.” That wom
an and I are sisters under the
»kin.
8o I eagerly collected my share
of the makin’s of a picnic, handed
one of the baskets to the Big Boss
—who growled like a wolf at
having to walk down to the river
to get fed—and we went through
the barn-lot, across the gravel
bar and found a campfire burning,
and a card-table spread with the
-necessities and a few of the lux
THE EAGLE, VERNONIA, ORE.
uries of picnic eating, in a little
alder grove on the island where
the river curves.
Now I don’t care for hot-dogs
as a rule, nor do I eat potatoes,
but there was something about a
weinie that is toasted brown
(and a wee bit black in spots)
over glowing coals, and a fat po
tato roasted in hot ashes, then
dusted off and spread with but
ter, that made a real appeal to
that capricious thing we call the
appetite, and the smell of hot cof
fee wafting up from the two
steaming pots by the fire blended
everything into a perfect meal.
We hadn’t gone far from the
house. We were not eating food
radically different from that which
we would have cooked on the
stove and served properly and de
cently on the dining table, and
our little excursion didn't cost
us an extra cent, yet we four en
joyed the change it made in our
quiet lives. The leaping flames
of our campfire, the slowly deep
ening dusk of evening, and the
occasional whisper of wind through
the alder leaves made a little
world that was subtly different
from our routine life.
We
watched the alder logs burn down
to a mass of glowing coals and
our talk ranged from lightest jest
to the far reach of space and
stars so many light-years away,
from common every-day events
to the wonders that the future
may hold. It was good talk, yet
when we were silent the river
and the might talked with us and,
who knows, perhaps in that silence
we gained a bit of wisdom, a
glimpse of timelesensas that frets
little about the transitory things
of daily life.
And when the
fire had burned down to only
flickering lights, regretfully we
smothered their last glow and
and gathering up tha house
things we walked slowly home
through the soft darkness.
We all need a change, a bit
of variety, to break the daily
routine of our days. If we do not
have it, there is a hunger that
nothing can fill, dreams die, life
loses its lilt and laughter and we
go plodding wearily along the
road of existence. We do noil need
to travel far from our hearth
stone to find a bit of change.
Across the road or just around
the nearest corner will bring us a
new view. Opening our minds to
a new thought will widen our
horizon; breaking the routine of
our daily tasks or introducing
new methods of working -will give
us impetus for further effort. It
is in the mind that the deadly
sameness of unchanging routine
day after day leaves its mark.
If men and women travel the
same path to work and thought
for too long without change, they
forget to “lift up their eyes to
the hills.” -Life becomes stale and
flat, like a pool into which no
fresh water ever runs, yet there
are sweet springs of clear water
all about us if we just reach
out to them. Walk in tha quiet
dark alone, or with one who un
derstands, and look at the stars. out the night and the stars.
There are many things that are
Let your imagination take wings
and fly across the intervening necessary for real living besides
light years of space, and when just food and security and the
you-come back to your lighted daily routine of existence. A wise
house the things which had de man once said, “If you have two
pressed you before have stepped loaves of bread, sell one and buy
back into their proper relationship white hyacinths,” and the gypsy
with life. Facing the infinite, the chieftain <in "Lavengro”—I think
it was—made this simple state
finite loses its power to bind.
Yes, I am like the old coun ment:
try woman, I like a bit of variety. “Life is sweet, brother;
If the circus comes by, or I Day and night, brother, both sweet
things;
<
want to climb out of my daily rut,
then I am going to go sometimes, Sun, moon and stars, brother,
both sweet things.
even if the washing has to wait
until Tuesday. Or if duty calls There is likewise the wind on the
heath.”
too sternly and I dare not go,
No, I dare not plod unceasingly
then I will think new thoughts.
I will send my mind into strange along the furrow of daily routine.
lands and it will bring back rich I shall miss too much of the real
cargoes. I will play a bit while beauty of life if I do not break
I am living, even if only in my away from it sometimes. The
thoughts, or in having our eve- walls of my self-made furrow
- ning meal by a campfire instead may limit my vision and I may
of within four walls that shut forget to look at the stars.
The average New York worker
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a month in the subways.
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