“Fourteen years ago.”
“Fourteen years ago we bought it from Jack Smith on time. It wasn’t much, but me and Jenny and Joe and Stella just buckled down and worked like tigers. The neighbors made fun of us at first, and even the niggers thought it was funny. Now, I aint telling you this because I’m stuck up about it, but it just shows what the Powell family has done, and it shows what any poor folks can do if they just stick at it.”
“Didn’t the old man help?”
“Yes, a little. But we had to live, and then he spent lots of his time a-fillin’ up, so the brunt of the money part fell on me and the children. We bought the mudhole, and he made the mudhole what it is now. Right here where the mudhole was there is a corner lot, and them what used to laugh at us would like mighty well to own it now.”
And the old lady smiled as though the thought was a very pleasant one.
“Yes, sir,” she continued, “it’s worth a good deal now, and the first thing you know, when the streets get paved along here, it will be worth a lot more than it is now.”
“And the old man?”
“The old man has worked mighty faithful. Little at a time he has fetched dirt, and rocks, and bricks, and trash. Then the city put a pipe there for the sewer, and he begun at the sidewalk on Spring Street and filled back. The bank kept getting further and further, and after, I don’t know how long, we built this little house on the filled-in part. The old man kept fillin’ back till we’ve got a pretty big back yard; and there’s only a little part left to fill back there. You see, he never tore up the old house—the patchwork palace of ’77—just throwed in around it and in it till he has almost buried it.”
“Why?”
“Oh, it’s just a notion of his. He didn’t want to see the old house tore up, and there it is now, with just the roof stickin’ out. In a little while it will be one level yard, fifty by eighty, and a corner lot, too. And by the time it all gets filled up—well, me and the old man is gettin’ feeble now, and we won’t last much longer. But, now that we are all out of debt, and just enough left to do to keep the old man’s hand in, it does me good to think of that old mudhole, and how we had to save and slave and pinch to pay for it. And I think the old man likes to stand there at the corner and look back how level and smooth it is, and think how it was done, a handful at a time, through the rain and the snow and the sunshine. Fourteen years! It was a big job, but we stuck to it, and I’m restin’ now, for my work is done. The old man don’t work like he used to, but he says his job aint finished yet, and he keeps fillin’ up.”