PROCRUSTES FRUSTRATED

Herman H. Lackner

March 31, 1958

Ever since Adam and Eve left Eden to raise Cain, garden
tours have titillated the curiosity and developed the callouses
of an ever-increasing number of devotees.  Garden clubs,
guilds, and federations have multiplied at a rate equalling
their enemies the weeds and in so doing have evolved a com-
plexity of regulations and tables of organization that would
make the Director of Internal Revenue's mouth water.  Curiosity,
intellectual as well as personal, is currently being stimulated
for profit or charity by impecunious owners of historic estates,
directors of charitable institutions, travel agencies, and
garden clubs through the organization of tours.  These tours
may last an hour, a day, a week, or a month; they may be free
or expensive; they may be limited to a radius of one city block
or cover a state or a continent; their objective may be gardens,
houses, art collections, corporation offices, historic monuments,
or narrow-gauge railways; they may have guide-books, tour
directors, seminars and official receptions or they may have
the informality of a chivaree,

Glimpses of domiciles neglected by previous horticultural
or architectural safaris may not add to the world's store of
knowledge but, even for the arm-chair traveller, a trip must
have as an object either to get to or to get away from a place
or a situation so I propose a brief garden tour to see how the

other halves live. Since our magic carpet is supersonic, it
would be impossible to hear the tour director’s spiel in
transit. Therefore it will be omitted and each visit will be
made with an open, if not uninformed mind. Tickets, passports
and tranquilizers being presumed to be ready, let us embark.

Many dwellings of imposing appearance are built to advertise
their inhabitants' wealth or social prestige by the grandeur of
the structure, the prominence of the location, or an air of
stability. However, from the Nevsky Prospekt to Diamond Head
there are probably no addresses which confer greater notability
by reason of the impressiveness of the facade or the durability
of the structure than the first stop on our tour. Neither the
Social Register nor the Real Estate Board consider it a choice
location but its costly appointments and the exclusiveness so
obvious in its entrance lend an undeniable distinction. It is
the Cook County Jail.

After passing the oral examination in the dreary steel and
concrete lobby, one is thoroughly frisked and grudgingly ad-
mitted through heavy steel doors with elaborate locking devices
whence the tour starts in the company of an assistant warden.
At intervals in the single, long, wide, and light corridor
are emergency gates to close off any section. Except for this
corridor all communication is vertical and, being a maximum
security unit, difficult. Each five-story cell-block is served
by an elevator, a stairway, and a dumb-waiter. Entering a
typical unit, the vestibule door is locked behind us and we
find the guard's cage-like cubicle in one corner. This

contains all the switches, automatic locks, etc., but is

empty as one guard is in charge of several units and can only
inspect each about every twenty minutes.  On the other side of
the door are three booths of heavy steel plate with a small
bullet-proof glass window for visitors.  The tiny apertures
make the conversation audible to the guards but almost inaudible
to the participants.  From the vestibule another door opens to
a gallery completely encircling the unit.

As we pass the endless row of cells let's look into one.
All cells were originally designed to be so small that it would
be impossible to accommodate more than one person.  They now
contain three -- one in the original cot, one in an upper berth,
and one on the floor whose head must hit either the seatless
toilet at one end or the bars at the other where if he sits up
suddenly, it will hit the faucetless wash bowl.  Mattresses,
pillows and blankets must often be used in turns if the popula-
tion takes a spurt.  The three steel walls and the outer barred
wall of each cell are painted gray — a durable color in harmony
with the drabness of the inmates' lives and the neutral light
which filters in through the detention windows.  Since the in-
mates, who may be there for as long as 5 years, have only the
clothes they happened to be wearing when committed which they
must wear day and night, the little heaps of dirty clothes in
a corner or the tattle-tale gray bits of washing festooned on
the bars are pathetic.  It is, then, a joy and a relief to come
upon an interior-decorated cell — newspaper or magazine
pictures pasted on the wall, colored paper chains hanging across
the bars, or shades for the single bare light bulb made from the

foil and cellophane of cigarette packages.

Having circled the rows of cells we again pass the day
room in the darkest part of the unit and nearest to the guard's
cubicle and the entrance.  The scene here is reminiscent of the
hold of a troop transport, and, I might say, redolent of one.
The same gray-painted steel, the same lack of seating, the same
half-light, the same card games with three kibitzers to every
player, the same comic books, the same rumors and the same
speculation on the absurdities being contemplated by authority.
At one end of the room is the dumb-waiter which brings three
meals a day.  This creates starvation corner on the top floor
since the men on the lower floors pick the food off as it goes
by.  The Day Room is also the class room and laboratory of the
county's most effective educational institution for here seasoned
professionals instruct young recruits in all the skills and
techniques of larceny, dope-peddling, white slavery, man-slaughter,
black-mail, and getting out 110% of the vote or compare their
achievements in rape and other less gainful forms of crime.
Segregation is unheard of -- first offenders are integrated with
habitual criminals, contagious tuberculars, with the still
healthy, the hardened with those not yet proven guilty.  As
Filippo Strozzi said, "I will take care of my enemies if God
will protect me from my friends."

The basement contains what hope there is in a jail and it
contains the end of all hope in the form of its most famous
article of furniture.  One big room with rows of cots houses
the trusties.  Their quarters are neat and clean though crowded

for they have voluntarily given up half their space fop the
creation of class rooms and a prison library.  These are indeed
the fortunate ones for their days are filled with work instead
of hopeless, helpless boredom.  They are cooks, bakers, cobblers,
laundry men, painters -- whatever trade necessary to the opera-
tion of the jail for which tools and materials can be provided

from a miserly budget.

The fresh air -- even the noise and fumes of city traffic --
the sunshine, and the limitless sky are such a relief as to be
almost a shock as we leave the first dwelling on our tour.
Boarding the magic carpet, we head west, across the broad
Pacific to Guadalcanal.

Perilously skirting the edge of a bomb-crater the jeep
comes to a screetching stop and scatters its passengers in a
small clearing in the jungle.  By clearing is meant a few square
yards of sword grass that could be cleared with only a machete.
A dim, religious light penetrating the tangle of leaves and
vines high overhead, reveals white orchids among the dark
branches of mahogany trees, and suggests weird and mysterious
possibilities beyond the immediate limits of visibility,  A
twisting green tunnel becomes a track in which one alternately
trips on the criss-crossing roots or fights the low-slung
branches.  Unlike the laisser-faire policy of northern woods
where brambles, burrs, and gopher-holes may elicit a mild ex-
pletive, the gruesome Jungle is ferocious.  To stop is fatal --
armies of ants immediately crawl up your trouser legs while

mosquitoes attack from above to carry their scorched earth
policy to the enemy's heartland.  The log you rest on has
poisonous bark.  The breathless, steaming heat does not refresh.

As tracks converge to form a path and the sun occasionally
breaks through to glint on improbable banana leaves, the inevitable
signs of human habitation (whether in Keokuk or the Ross ice
shelf) begin to appear -- empty tins, bottles, and cigarette
butts.  Suddenly a turn in the path brings us to a murky little
stream, almost stagnant between steep banks, across which a
single, slippery log leads to the center of a native settlement.
Since the hard, dusty ground has not been covered with gravel
for the inconvenience of bare feet it is obvious that the
benevolent despotism of plantation manager or missionary has
not yet brought the blessings of civilization.  The cluster of
huts are all alike in their lack of pretension and in their
harmony with unspoiled nature.  The one on our tour has been
picked at random.

The open plan, so much touted in current housing journals,
finds its apogee in the simplicity of this one room house in a
land where architects are unknown.  In Chicago, the birthplace
of modern architecture and the very Mt. Sinai of its commandments
to honor structural honesty, purely ornamental structural steel
is applied to concrete encased beams and columns to suggest
a building’s skeleton.  Such architectural dogma notwithstanding,
the native house displays its forthright frame of saplings tied
together with tendrils supporting a palm-thatched roof.  Green
cocoanut fronds are slit down the center and their leaves

braided to form mats about 6’-0” long and 1’-0" wide which are
tied to the sapling poles like clapboards to keep out the
torrential rains but let in air and lizards.  The major portion
of the house is occupied by the family bedstead which is a
rectangular frame of logs supported on four posts driven into
the ground and laced across with liana vines.

The toughness of liana vines was proven to me when I was
detailed to camouflage latrines which required posts and beams.
Seizing an axe, I selected a tree that rose 50 feet straight as
an arrow before the first branches, and the chips began to fly.
When I had cut half way through I yelled "timber" and waited
for the tree to fall where I had calculated it would as they
always do in the movies.  Nothing happened except a few remarks
in rather poor taste from my mates so I fell to again and cut
a notch from the other side.  Still no results, so I finally
cut completely through leaving a gap of several inches between
stump and trunk.  The giant of the forest hung motionless in its
network of vines and only some months later did the nervous
occupants of a neighboring tent hire a native boy to climb the
surrounding trees and cut the vines.

To get back to the villa on the Tenaru:  No other furniture
than the bed exists for one stands or squats on the dirt floor.
Closets or bureaus are unnecessary as the children have no
clothes, the adults sleep on their lava-lavas at night and the
women hang their formal grass skirts on the framing poles when
not wearing them.  Bath rooms are unnecessary as the nearby
river is in constant use for ablutions as well as children’s

recreation.  Other natural functions are dealt with in the
jungle in accordance with the most rigid taboos for hygiene.
Cooking is done in a separate hut over a kind of picnic stove
of rocks,

Presently our melaneslan host and his family overcome their
shyness and emerge from the jungle.  They are as black as it is
possible for a human to be, short but well-built, and with
tremendously wide and thick feet covered with bruises and
scratches.  The lady of the house is dressed in her finest, which
means a grass skirt inferior in quality only to those made by
the Seabees to sell to the Marines and in our honor she has
added a Tee-shirt recently acquired from a sailor in trade for
papayas.  Since she is unaccustomed to so confining a garment and
since her children have accepted Dr. Spock's rule of demand
feeding, she has cut two holes in the front for her own comfort
and her offsprings’ convenience.  Her sharp little teeth are
black but her lips and gums are orange from chewing betel-nut.
Her thick and kinky black hair stands out to form a bushy halo
of perfect symmetry, apparently never growing longer and never
matting down.  Her lord and master tries to look fierce but cannot
conceal his kindly expression.  He wears only his green baize
lava-lava which looks like a bath towel wrapped around his middle.
His most striking feature is a magnificent bush of platinum
blonde hair, bleached with lime to liquidate its denizens.  They
greet us with great dignity but few words and those few, spoken
only by men, are in a basic-pidgin-biblical English.  At a
discreet distance a clutch of children stare wide-eyed at such

tall visitors with so many clothes.  They are, of course,
black and have spindly legs and large stomachs.  Among them, but
somewhat aloof because of wearing a loin-cloth (as important
a sign of maturity as the change from knickerbockers to long
pants used to be) it is astonishing to find a Polynesian with
copper-colored skin, silky black hair, large almond-shaped eyes,
white teeth and in each pierced ear a gorgeous pink hibiscus,
A visiting cousin?  Unlikely in a world whose radius rarely
exceeds 20 miles.  Ship-wreck survivor?  Even the great Maori
migration had not ventured so far.  Miscegenation?  Throwback?
Stowaway?  Who knows?

After a ceremonious exchange of gifts -- papayas and
bananas for soap and spam -- we point the magic carpet into
the setting sun, to a time and place on which the sun is setting.

Stretching from Leningrad to near the Arctic circle, lies
Ladoga, the largest and the coldest lake in Europe.  In the
years between the wars an excursion boat bearing a silver orb
and cross on its mast ploughed its brilliant blue surface
manned entirely by monks wearing great loose black cassocks,
crucifixes on heavy silver chains, tall black brimless stove-
pipe hats, and flowing beards since heaven, according to orthodox
belief, is denied to the clean-shaven.  The crew is distinguished
from the officers because the skirts of their cassocks are
gathered up and tucked into their rope girdles for greater
mobility — proving that monks do wear trousers.  When the
shore has faded from sight the sun suddenly picks out a gold
orb and cross in the sky which is soon discovered to be

the cupola surmounting the vast blue dome of the Church of
the Transfiguration of the Russian monastery of Valamo.  As
the boat enters a fiord of the rocky, wooded island, buildings
of every shape, size, and condition appear, from a lonely
hermitage on a distant point to huge granaries and storehouses,
all leading the eye up to the great white towers and blue
onion domes of the church and its dependencies.  Landing at
the antique jetty is accomplished in complete silence, the
monks heaving and tugging hawsers with agility and yet with
such aplomb that not a rosary swings askew.  From the pier a
flight of sixty-two steps winds past an unkempt graveyard to
join the wagon tracks from the fields at the gates of the monastery
quadrangle -- an expanse of uncut crabgrass surrounded by bleak,
three story, whitewashed buildings with red roofs.  A monk leads
the way into one of these and, at the end of a long and dimly
lit corridor, opens the door to our bivouac.  This turns out to
be a stone-floored, stone-vaulted cell about six feet by twelve
with a tile stove built into one wall so that heat may be shared
with one's neighbor (a virtue that in this case is abstract
since no firewood is provided until the snow flies).  The
furnishings consist of a chair, a table, and a cot in which
pine planks have been substituted for springs and mattress.  The
solitary blanket can be rolled up as a pillow, spread double for
padding, or used as a cover during the brisk October nights
of the north land -- in any shape it serves as a reminder that
the soul is elevated through mortification of the flesh.  The
complete lack of candles or lamps allows ample time for re-
flection on the ascetic versus the sybaritic life.

Since common or garden tourists, like an army, travel on
their stomachs the victualling of a pilgrimage takes on an
importance to which the men of God seem blissfully oblivious.
Russian is the lingua franca of the monastery, so there are
inherent difficulties in asking for food -- it is hard enough to
find the more basic facilities, let alone the refectory.  A bar
of chocolate or a crust of bread concealed about the person is
indispensable contraband.  When dusk makes the solemn black-robed
monks indistinguishable from the shadows it is a pleasant shock
to have one appear in the cell bringing a bubbling samovar --
what visions of lavish buffet tables it conjures -- but it con-
tains boiling water, neat.  There being no alternative, the
ravelled sleeve of care is soon knit.

Long before daybreak the bells ring out solemnly, joyously,
mystically, in an unfamiliar minor key.  In the sombre crypt
chapel of the great church the muffled peals reverberate as a
dimly heard accompaniment to the chanting of the litany.  The
air is heavy with incense.  A single candle flickers on the
lectern, suggesting rather than illuminating the gilt intricacies
of the iconostasis with its age-darkened icons and gradually,
as the eye becomes accustomed, discovering isolated figures as
rigid as caryatids -- monks in ample, black robes with black
veils flowing from their tall, black hats.  Each stands alone,
in solitary retreat, and yet they worship in perfect unison,
kneeling, rising or prostrating themselves as one man.  At
intervals the clear chant of the priest is dramatically inter-
rupted by the vigorous and magnificent harmonies of the unseen
choir.  When daylight has almost stealthily penetrated the

massive vaults, the singing suddenly stops and the majestic
and deliberate recessional of the monks winds toward the door.
In the happy belief that the procession is heading for break-
fast, the starving pilgrim falls into line.  As they pass the
darkest recess of the furthest bay the monks pause to kneel
and kiss an object which is hidden from view by the procession.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do -- when in Valamo, monk
business is the order of the day.  Only when lips are pursed
and moistened does one discover that looking up from the glass-
topped coffin to be kissed, are the embalmed remains of Herman
the hermit, founder of the monastery in the fourteenth century.
Before appetite returns the procession has been lost.

As national consciousness dawned in the middle ages the
merchants of Novgorod used any means available, including the
church, to expand their economic sphere of influence.  A
militant Christianity was as good business then as it later
proved to be for the Spaniards in the new world or the Americans
in Hawaii.  As Junipero Serra's missions extended from Mexico
up the California coast, so a chain of monasteries gradually
extended from Novgorod and Kiev to Petsamo, the ice-free harbor
beyond the north cape.  The piety of the merchants thus enabled
to compete with the Hanseatic towns must have equaled their
acumen for the monasteries prospered so that in the sixteenth
century the estates, salt monopolies, mines and other holdings
of Valamo extended from the White Sea to the Baltic.  Ever since
the founding hermit, Herman, was joined by Sergei, Valamo has
been self-sustaining, self-regenerating, but necessarily not
self-perpetuating.  Its miniature archipelago contains dairy

farms, orchards, fields of grain, flower gardens, fisheries,
smithys, and all the maintenance shops required for them,
besides schools for the training not only of monks but of boys
in their orphanage and a summer camp where boys from the cities
can enjoy healthy farm work. When the lake freezes over the
monks put on their skates or skis to bring succour to the
hermits tending lonely shrines on outlying islands or to fish
through the ice. Through the bitter cold of a long arctic night
during the Winter War of 1940, a solemn procession of chanting
monks dragged sledges carrying the infirm across the ice, lead
by the aged abbott holding high a gold crucifix -- the first
evacuation of Valamo in its five centuries of straddling the
border between east and west.

Upstairs in one of the buildings facing the quadrangle is
the museum containing religious and historic mementoes, all
neatly catalogued in a fine Cyrillic hand. Among portraits of
patriarchs, lay benefactors, and former abbotts, one stands out —
a sentimental, kindly and, perhaps, idealized portrait of
Nicholas II, last Czar of all the Russias and the first to re-
turn the church to its Patriarchs by separating church and state.

Leaving the quadrangle by a path skirting fields where
monks and boys are gathering in the last of the harvest one
comes upon occasional rude peasant huts resembling north woods
cabins. In one of these two monks are mending fish nets; in
another coarse linen is being woven for the smocks worn over
their cassocks while they work. In all of them one is warmly
welcomed by signs and broad grins even though verbal communication

is impossible. The path ends at a rocky promontory from which
the Holy Island with its ancient miniature wooden church can be
seen tended by a solitary monk.

Women and girls in billowing homespun skirts and gaily
colored kerchiefs are not an uncommon sight outside the quadrangle.
They are the wives and daughters of parish priests who are taking
refresher courses or looking to the advancement of their sons.
Orthodox bishops must be celibate, so they are largely recruited
from monasteries, but the monasteries rely on the married priests
to beget or recruit new monks, so a more worldly atmosphere
exists than is commonly associated with the cenobitic life.

The bells are tolling again but above them comes the sound of
the magic carpet revving up so we'd better embark before local
trickery gets it into orbit. Go West, Young Men, to the land of
the fee-simple.

Leaving the superhighway, we enter suburbia -- a grid iron
of orderly streets lined with telephone poles and identical
houses, each set in a nest of juniper. The village is deserted
because the men are at work, the children at school or play club
and the women at committee meetings. From this daytime ghost
town a new "improved" road leads past signs announcing the
availability of "homes" (never houses) to a scene of desolation
that would have fired the imagination of Scipio. On every hand
bull dozers and steam shovels battle nature, cutting down trees,
changing natural contours, building roads without relation to
the terrain and then criss-crossing them with utility trenches.

The birds and the squirrels have departed to seek refuge in
city parks or in the hedgerows of unreconstructed farms.
Passing piles of lumber, contractors' signs, gaping excavations,
union locals' signs, piles of sewer tile, material company signs,
piles of gravel or top-soil imported from great distance, and
signs extolling the prospective shopping center, we come to a
cul-de-sac.  The top brass of suburbia live on dead-end streets.
They have the snob-appeal of a private road and insurance
policies require less planning than the convenience of snow
plows or fire engines.  Split level ranch houses in reversible
plan, 3 different veneers, and 5 different color schemes are
widely spaced (it is axiomatic to build initially on every other
lot and leave the boundaries only vaguely defined).  Just behind
a cast aluminum reproduction of a gas street lamp and a token
picket fence that a dachshund could jump from a standing start
a girl wearing a garden club badge is sitting beneath a gaily
colored umbrella so we present our tickets and head for the door.

Two mammals are thought to exist which have never been seen
by the naked eye:  the Yeti or Abominable Snow Man of the high
Himalayas and the Common Man.  They are equally elusive and yet
the spoor of the latter has yielded the most precise information
about his family structure, weight, size, health, feeding habits,
sexual behaviour, sources of livelihood, and recreational habits,
as well as a wealth of conjecture concerning his ambitions,
intellectual stimuli, reactions to situations of danger or
positions of trust, and emotions.  Since a Common Man is the owner
of the last dwelling on our tour it is not surprising that he is

invisible, having taken the kiddies to the beach so Mom could
tidy up for the invasion.

Finding no door bell beneath the carriage lanterns which flank
the entrance, we lift the brass knocker which produces a merry
tune from the chimes concealed behind the copy of a crank-operated
telephone with ivy growing from its battery box (the ivy is as
fresh and verdant as the rarest specimen since the lack of sun-
light requires that it be made of vinyl).  The door is opened to
reveal a hall from which stairways without railings ascend or
descend on all sides.  Next to the entrance a small door stands
ajar giving a glimpse of the very apotheosis of the home-maker's
art — the Powder Room, from which powder and perukes have
happily disappeared.  Instead of wigs there are wags.  The
wall-paper depicts cartoons of vintage plumbing with arch little
captions and on the ceiling are stenciled the names of perfumes
such as "My Sin", "Midnight in Paris", "Arpege", "Bond Street".
The toilet paper, on a scented musical roller of course, is
printed with subtle, double-entendre witticisms in three colors,
the back-ground matching the chenille slip cover on the principal
fixture as well as the shaggy mat on the floor.  The miniscule
towels are marked "His" and "Hers" or are printed with lipstick
smudges in bold patterns.  Since only a boor would use a guest
towel it becomes necessary to search out the paper towels, but
they are cleverly concealed under the mirrored Kleenex box and
by the time you need them your hands are wet and your eyes full
of soap so using your pocket handkerchief is easier.

Contemplation of the grandeur of modern bath rooms brings
to mind assorted trivia in the progress of plumbing over the
centuries :

In the Rome of Julius Caesar water consumption averaged 198
gallons per person per day; this figure rose to 300 in the heyday
of the empire and dropped to 150 in 1936.  In the same year of
1936 the City of New York used 120 gallons per person per day.
Seventy-five years ago in Chicago the rule of thumb for determining
pipe sizes was to provide 15 gallons per day per person and l6
gallons per horse.

Quantity and quality of plumbing may be the basis on which
we advertise our standard of living but improvements were accepted
slowly as, in 1878, a New York plumber named 0’Grady lamented:
"The Plumber has to contend with no more formidable enemy than
the downright meanness of the people who employ him."  At the
same time in England water-hammer in pipes was thought to be
spirit tapping.

Now, however, mechanical perfection has reached such a peak
that our only worry is that a college graduate must work three
hours in a bank to earn enough to pay a plumber’s helper for
the 15 minutes labor required to remove a diaper from a stopped
up toilet.

Returning to the hall we choose the shortest and broadest
flight of steps and find ourselves embarked on a sea of wall-to-
wall carpeting harmonizing so perfectly with the "decorator
colors" of the walls that only the symmetrical arrangements of
flower prints in enormous white mats provide an horizon.  To the
left a picture window measuring two hundred combined inches
frames an entrancing view of the identical picture window across
the street except that its ruffled lampshade has not yet had the
cellophane removed.  Centered on the far wall is an ample

fireplace protected by glass doors so that no escaping heat
might upset the balance of the air-conditioning.  On its
marbleized mantel shelf a pair of brass candlesticks flank
a colored photograph of Old Ironsides.  The book cases contain
polished driftwood from Florida, 2 Danish porcelain cats, a
year's file of the Readers Digest and a monogrammed dictionary
received as a wedding present.  No family picture, no child's
artifact, no sentimental heirloom, no item of pure convenience
is allowed to desecrate the studied decor of this room which
meets in every particular the exacting standards laid down by
the magazines found in the pediatricians waiting room.  Down a
few steps, the scenic wall-paper of the Dining Ell fits snugly
around the bleached maple "suite" and indirect lighting high-
lights the tureen in which book matches, pencil stubs, shopping
lists and sitter-money are kept.

The gleaming efficiency of the kitchen is a tribute to
Madison Avenue.  Everything is built-in, two-toned, power-
operated, and, if possible, concealed.  Even the oven with
its self-basting rotisserie is bi-level.  Only the usual
polished copper salad moulds, the clock in the shape of a teapot
and three apothecary jars are allowed to be seen.  The fragrant
pans of rising bread covered with a towel and resting on the
radiator are gone with the snows of yesteryear as are the coffee
mill and the fly-paper.  Behind cupboard doors of synthetic wood
more perfect in grain and color than the real thing are the
appliances bought on the installment plan which create income on
which to pay taxes with which to buy intercontinental ballistic
missiles.

A breakfast bar surrounded by war-surplus bucket seats made
into stools divides the kitchen from the focal point of the
house — a room that has weathered the successive titles of
back parlor, rumpus room, space for indoor living, activities
area, multi-purpose room, hobby shop, and currently, family
room.  It might be described as a noun become a verb --- the
walls are textured, the curtains are hand-loomed, the braided
rugs are crafted, even the Hi-Fi is customized.  Were the family
room not unnaturally cleaned up, we would see, beside the
contour chairs, the barbecue and the planter an exhilarating
confusion of airplane models, sewing machine, dart game, P.T,A.
files, baseball mitts, comic books, write your own list!  In
other words it is lived in – abundantly.  Based on intensity of
use this is the largest room in the house and so, logically,
opens with huge sliding doors onto the patio which today displays
a chaste arrangement of wrought iron and glass furniture,
hurricane lamps, portable barbecue and portable bar.  For the
less dedicated gardeners a peak at the impeccable lawn with
its single specimen thorn tree (all native trees were cut down
by the developer) and its clump of evergreens almost concealing
the trash burner with suffice.  In we go, and up a few steps to the
Hall, having eschewed the lowest level which is the haunt of
meter-readers, cub scouts, and boat-builders, the sanctum of
do-it-yourself.  More steps take us to the bed room area where a
game is in progress.  The game is, in fact, a deadly scrimmage,
the object of which is to get the opponent to distract the
hostess long enough to enable the protagonist to inventory the
bureau drawers.

But time is fleeting and feet are hurting so we must leave
the development house and head for homo, the return trip lasting
just long enough to peruse a brochure we pinched while the group
admired a cobbler's bench used as a coffee table.

Lest anyone think that the ingenuity which has changed the
landscape from prairie to subdivision is exhausted or that the
imagination which has transformed tepee to log cabin to salt-
box to shirt-front to split-level ranch is dimmed let me quote
from this prospectus of a house to be marketed in 1970:

"If you would like a nice thick steak, just pick up the
televiewer and the butcher lets you pick out the one you want,
Minutes after it enters the electronic stove, the sizzling steak
is ready for the table. Even the table is lighted from beneath
for fuller aesthetic enjoyment of the food.

Somebody at the door? Without leaving the comfort of her
irradiated food center, the lady of the house can pick up her
televiewer phone, flick a switch, and know immediately who is at
her door. When dinner is over, her dishes go into the ultrasonic
dishwasher where high speed sound waves shake off the dirt.

Are you longing for ocean breezes, the breath of spring or
the smell of the piney woods? Just touch a switch and you have
the selected fragrance.

In the House of the Future are two bathrooms, one for adults
and one for children. A wave of the hand before an electronic
eye turns the water on or off. The lavatory can be positioned
electronically at any height from 24 to 31 inches. Toothbrush,
toothpaste, shaving lather, and the like, are dispensed
automatically."

Our final visit reveals a room decorated with great
simplicity if little distinction. The lighting is neither
subtle nor dramatic, the colors do not distract, the acoustics
preclude the alibi of not being heard, the chairs are less
comfortable than the arms of Morpheus but more comfortable than
the arms of the law, the ash-trays are elusive. At the rear of
the room tables are laden with restoratives for the consumption
of which we are now mercifully released.