HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 259 



road in summer, after crops were "laid by," 

 bring along their teams and their dinners and 

 spend a day or two working out their taxes. 

 Mostly those days were only occasions for 

 meeting and swapping neighborhood gossip. 

 One of the workers would be chosen as "boss," 

 and by fits and starts the crew would plow out 

 a ditch or two, throw some rough stone into 

 the worst of the chug-holes, and leave it next 

 to impassable till the next rain would wash it 

 down again. It was a good old style, and good 

 for neighborliness, but it didn't help the roads. 

 For the last month a big modern grading 

 machine has been at work on that old road, a 

 gang of huge plows and scrapers pulled by 

 gasoline power and managed by a man who 

 knows what a real road is and how to make 

 one. He's one of the newcomer-farmers of the 

 district. The road has been changed till its 

 own mother wouldn't know it. Deep ditches 

 have been run along the sides, run on such 

 lines that they'll carry off the water in a heavy 

 rain instead of letting it collect in puddles and 

 boggy places. The earth from the ditches has 

 been thrown up and rounded off in the center ; 

 it's been scraped and rolled, and scraped and 

 rolled again. Extra crews were kept at work 



