WIDE MEADOWS: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH (A CONTINUING SERIES)

Editor's note: This is an installment of a chapter from Jean Bell Mosley's book that was first published in 1960.

Nevertheless, Grandpa thumbed through the catalogue in the pump section and one Saturday, when Lou and I were along, we went by the hardware store and had a look at the pumps.

"Need a new pump for that well, Mr. Bell?" Mr. Barton the hardware man, jibed Grandpa. No one in the whole county had escaped Grandpa's discourse on the qualities of his well.

"For the one at the barn," Grandpa replied cryptically. "Why don't you get your prices down to a decent amount?" he grumbled, moving from one pump to another. "Set here on your bottom all day, getting rich off of poor people without lifting your hand."

"Well, tell you what, Mr. Bell. I'll make you a good price on that pump there. It's twenty-five dollars. I'll let you have it for twenty-four-fifty."

Grandpa snorted. "By George, man, you are generous.

Whereupon Mr. Barton laughed and slapped his thigh like it was a big joke. Then in seriousness he leaned toward Grandpa and said, "Tell you where you might pick up twenty-five dollars, Mr. Bell. Even more, if you've a mind to."

Grandpa looked doubtful, like Mr. Barton might be suggesting something that smacked of the activities that went on in the back room of the livery stable.

"Oh, it's all above board, now," Mr. Barton explained, seeing Grandpa's censorious look. "Feller over to the hotel looking for a quiet place to stay this summer. Puny looking. Studying something or other. Educated man, seems like. Be a paying guest." Mr. Barton raised his eyebrows at the possibilities and Grandpa pulled at his mustache thoughtfully.

"What's he studying?" Grandpa said.

"Don't know for sure. Has a white rat in a cage and a lot of books. Miss Abbie says he's always talking about Direct Attack or something or other. But with your big garden and your own meat and milk, be clear profit, Mr. Bell." And then, as though remembering what was in it for him, he added, "Why, you can buy this pump over here." He walked over to a larger more expensive model.

Grandpa tried the handle, comparing the qualities of the lift pump against those of the crank type, commented on the suction mechanism, the valves, the paint job. Lou and I tried the pump, too, and thought it would be much easier than the old one we were so familiar with. And we'd never seen a white rat before!

A week later the professor arrived, bags, books and boxes. He was a little wheezy, near-sighted man, apparently suffering from hay fever. Grandpa was on hand to greet him and, after a decent interval said, "Come out here, professor. I want you to taste my well water."

The professor followed like an obedient child, sneezing and wiping his nose, but after he had taken a generous drink, reflected on it a while, and taken another one mincingly, he pronounced it, in a matter-of-fact but conclusive tone, "Flat."

"Flat?" Grandpa demanded, incredulously.

"Yessir. Flat," the professor replied, and there being nothing else to say, made his way, unescorted, back to his room, leaving Grandpa standing there holding the dipper, his mustache moving up and down with unuttered words.

The professor didn't set too well with Mom and Grandma either. After coming down for breakfast an hour or two after the family had eaten and just when Grandma had her churning started, or Mama some bean canning, he'd want someone to listen to his dissertation on the Dangers of Defense Mechanisms.

"Too many other mechanisms out of fix around here for us to listen to that," Grandma would say, guardedly, and remind Lou and me we'd better get started on the pumping for the livestock.

"Now, you take the haphazard way you live around here," the professor said one day, tactlessly. "You waste too much time and effort by lazy behavior patterns." Grandma and Mama exchanged secretive looks of outrage. "For example," he cast his eyes around searching for a suitable example. "Well, for example, I've noticed you've been trying to break up some broody old hens. I bet you've been wandering around in the same blind alley for years. First you doused them in a bucket of cold water, didn't you? Then you tied long strings to their legs? Now I see you've got them in a small coop. And in the end how do you break them?"

"Why, I guess I cut their heads off and cook them," Mom said, a little ruefully, because she had never won in this battle of broody hens.

"Exactly," the professor said triumphantly. "Now, if you'd do that in the first place, think of the time and effort you'd save for other problems."

"What other problems?" Mom asked blankly.

"But it's the Behavior Pattern!" The professor all but stamped his foot.

And then it was Conditioned Responses, Associative Learning, Psychoanalytic Techniques, until Mom declared we'd all be full-blown "skillet fiends," or whatever it was he called 'em.

"I wish he hadn't paid his board in advance and that Steve hadn't already spent it on that new pump," Grandma said, wearily, as time went on. "Then we could just more or less ask him to leave. That would be the Direct Attack' method, wouldn't it, he's always talking about?" She and Mom were learning a lot of psychology.

"I'd almost be willing to take it out of the interest money and refund it to him," Mama threatened. "Lazy behavior patterns, indeed. I'll try his Direct Attack method and see how he likes it."

We had fried chicken, baked chicken, chicken fricasse, chicken aspic, chicken ad infinitum. But the professor never complained. He liked chicken.