The Poor Man’s Xanadu  by Ed Hamilton   Gerald Jones had the best compost in Western Kentucky. I can't imagine anyone else laying serious claim to the title. Gerald was my brother Jim's friend, and when I came to visit one warm spring weekend, Jim insisted I meet him.  Jim was my younger brother by two years. And though we looked alike, were outwardly very similar, we had taken different paths in life. I was living in Louisville, working on my Master’s at the university there. Jim hadn’t done so well in college, but he had made friends among the locals in his little college town of Bowling Green, and decided to settle there. He lived in a tiny room filled with books, working at odd jobs to pay the rent. As I was his older brother, Jim looked up to me. Perhaps seeking my approval, Jim had invited me down for the spring break so I could see how he lived and meet some of his new friends. I thought it sounded like a good way to relax and take some time off from the grind.  Though he was in his thirties, Gerald lived at his mother's house, a huge old house, and received an allowance from her since he couldn't hold down a regular job. But he did have a job of sorts, which he pursued very conscientiously. As I swung the car into the alley, the compost heap loomed up before us. It rose to six or seven feet and seemed from our perspective to fill the entire back yard. We parked in the gravel drive and got out and stood marveling at the heap. “He’s added some to it since I saw it last,” Jim said.  A skinny man of medium height was heaving bags of potatoes from the bed of a pickup. This turned out to be Gerald. He had already emptied one or two bags onto the heap. The potatoes were shriveled, soggy, and molded. "I got these down at the school," he said as we walked up.  When my brother said that we were there to inspect the compost, Gerald seemed genuinely pleased. Taking a brush from his back pocket and proceeding to brush his long, dirty-brown hair, he led us into the back yard through an opening in the heap.  No grass at all grew in the yard. Instead, a gooey muck, several inches deep, covered the entire half-acre. Apparently the compost caused drainage problems. We walked on sagging two-by-fours that had been placed strategically about the yard. At one point a board bowed and water sloshed over my tennis shoe. I noticed that Gerald wore rubber boots.  Half the yard was taken up with a sort of half-assed playground knocked together out of stolen lumber and found objects. There were several raised platforms running between trees, a raised playhouse, a tree house high up in an old oak, a tire swing, an old rusty sliding board, and various things to climb around on. Gerald explained that he had built the playground for his son. But, he added with a touch of sadness in his voice, the mother didn't let the boy come over too much. One could understand why. Though I would have loved the place when I was a kid, from an adult perspective it didn't look like much of a place for children to play. There was dangerous stuff laying all around: scraps of corrugated tin, old appliances, boards with nails in them, rusty garden implements. Back in the far corner of the yard, an old wooden shed had partially collapsed, and seemed to be gradually melding into the rotting mass of the compost.  But the most impressive feature of the yard was the compost itself. It walled the place in on three sides, and since the yard was a sort of a sink-pit, the walls seemed to tower up higher than they had from without. Most of it seemed to be composed of straw and sticks and leaves, but there was a good bit of left-over food thrown into the mix as well. Clearly Gerald had been collecting garbage from numerous sources. The color ranged from gray to beige to brown. Some areas were older than others, more rich, and the color was a darker brown. Of course, there was a powerful stench of rot; I could only imagine what it would be like come August.  Though I was to some extent repelled, I was more fascinated than anything. There were twenty or more dried out, brown Christmas trees leaned up against the compost walls. "Did you go along collecting these off the streets?" I asked.  "Naw," Gerald said, drawling his words slowly. "A man was selling 'em in the parking lot of the grocery store. After Christmas, I asked could I have 'em. He said he didn't care. I hauled 'em down here in my truck."  "That's a pretty good deal," I said.  "I sure thought so," Gerald said, continuing to vigorously brush his hair.  Then, without warning, Gerald strode across the board leading to his house. He opened the door and let out his dog, a big brown mutt. The dog didn't keep to the boards, but bounded straight into the muck. He made sure to greet both my brother and myself, jumping up and placing his muddy paws upon us.  “Teddy sit," Gerald said. "Get down boy." He almost whispered it.  The dog paid no attention. After a bit, he ran off to flop about some more in the mud.  "Why do you keep brushing your hair so much, Gerald?" my brother asked. I had assumed this was normal behavior for Gerald, but apparently it was something new.  Gerald weighed his words. "This is a special boar's hair brush," he said. He showed us the brush. Jim examined it and passed it on to me.  "It puts back the natural oils and nutrients into your hair," Gerald explained. "I read that somewhere."  "It looks like a pretty good brush," I said, interested in the item only as a possible key to the behavior of this man. I handed it back.  "So I have to keep doing this," Gerald said, drawing the brush once more through his hair.  The dog was running back and forth at the back of the yard, sloshing through the mud, covering himself in it. Once in a while he would stop and bark excitedly.  “Teddy be quiet," Gerald said softly. "Settle down."  The dog continued to do as he pleased. “Composting is very environmentally sound,” Gerald remarked. "Return the waste to the earth where it came from."  "You seem to have studied the issue," I said.  "I never studied it much."  The dog was still barking, but he had quit running back and forth. Instead, he was digging furiously into the compost with his forepaws.  "What's got into that dog?" I asked.  "Rats," Gerald answered matter-of-factly.  Well, that figured. "You get many rats in here?"  “Hundreds," Gerald drawled, shaking his head in dismay.  "What do you do to get rid of them?"  "Ain't nothin' you can do," Gerald said. "Once in a while I'll dig up a nest with my shovel, or else Teddy'll dig up a nest, and then I kill the little ones. Teddy eats 'em."  I suppose getting rid of the compost was out of the question.  We went back out to the gravel driveway, where we could stand on more solid ground. Gerald sat his brush down on the tailgate of the truck and took a shovel out of the truck bed. He began digging in the compost. I noticed that the house next door was quite close to the drive. There was another house on the other side of Gerald's house, and one across the alley to the rear. "Don't your neighbors complain about this compost?" I asked.  "Well, they don't hardly care for it."  The dog came bounding out from the yard and immediately spied the boar's hair brush. Plucking it from the tailgate, he sat down with the brush balanced between his muddy forepaws, and began to gnaw.  Gerald seemed not to have noticed; he continued to dig at the compost, as I looked on in horror.  “Hey Gerald," Jim said finally, "that dog's got your boar's hair brush."  I expected Gerald to beat the dog, or at least to yell at him, after such a serious offense. Instead, Gerald looked slowly up from his work and said softly, "Teddy, put that down. Drop it, Teddy." The dog continued to gnaw the brush.  Gerald shrugged his shoulders. "It ain't no use."  The soil Gerald had turned up was a rich deep brown, almost black. Rooting around in it with his hand, he found what he was looking for. "Look at this," he said, holding the item out for our inspection. It was a bloodworm, or a night crawler, or something—a big brown worm at any rate. As big around as a finger and eight inches long.  "Damn!" Jim exclaimed.  "God damn!" I said. "Look at that."  "I'm gonna show this to the librarian," Gerald said, a slight note of excitement in his voice.  "What for?" I asked, incredulous.  "I think she'd like to see it."  “Man, the librarian doesn't want to see that," Jim assured him.  "Sure she does."  "No librarian on earth would want to see that!" I said.  “Well, maybe some would,” Jim admitted. “But definitely not this one.”  "Yeah, this one does,” Gerald said.  It turned out the library was just down the block, and Gerald walked there, the worm held out before him. While he was gone, my brother explained that Gerald had been working on his compost for ten years or more. His wife had lived there with him in the house for a while, but had finally gotten fed up with Gerald. The compost hadn’t been the only reason for their split, but it had played a big part. Within the past year she had moved out, taking their 5-year-old son with her. Once in a while Gerald’s neighbors would get a court order against him, and he'd have to haul the compost away to the dump. But he inevitably rebuilt; he was always back at it, year after year.  “Gerald’s kind of nuts, isn’t he?” I said, finally giving voice to what had been on my mind all along.  “Ah, he’s OK,” Jim said.  “But why does he keep doing it?” I asked, indicating the compost with a sweep on my hand. I mean, if it’s so much trouble, if the neighbors and the courts are always after him?”  “I think it’s the work,” Jim said. “It keeps him busy.”  “There’s gotta be better jobs.”  Jim shrugged his shoulders.  “And it’s just out of control,” I said, pressing my point. “Just look at the place. More compost than anybody could ever possibly use. Sooner or later you gotta say, enough is enough. You gotta draw a line somewhere.”  “Why?” Jim asked.  Gerald came back and tossed the worm on the heap. "She didn't want to see it."  All along, I had been assuming that this composting operation was some sort of low-level commercial enterprise. This is America, after all. And I guess to my mind that had to be at least part of what justified it. I asked Gerald, "You get many people to buy this stuff?"  "I don't know if anybody would," he said. "You need some?"  This set me to thinking. Despite what I had said to my brother, I was coming to feel that Gerald's endeavor commanded a certain respect, and I didn't want to trivialize it in any way. Finally, however, I couldn't help asking, "Just what good is all this compost?"  Gerald was unfazed. "Come on, I wanna show you somethin'."  Shovel in hand, Gerald led us around the house to the front yard. Although there were no walls of compost here, the entire front yard was raised about four feet over it's natural level, and covered with a layer of bark mulch. As it turned out, the front yard had once been surrounded by walls just like those in back, but Gerald had spread the compost out in an effort to comply with an earlier court order.  We walked around the edge of the yard and out onto the sidewalk. What had been obscured from our vision by the heap now appeared. All along the sidewalk Gerald had planted flowers. They were of all colors and varieties: azaleas, gladiolas, irises, daffodils: red, yellow, orange, purple. Even some tulips.  I didn’t even know the names of most of them. They were certainly healthy, free of disease, and growing well. I was impressed. The colors were quite vibrant.  "You see?" Gerald said.  “Yeah, I think so,” I said.  I hadn’t even finished admiring the flowers, when all of a sudden Gerald took his shovel and began to turn them under into the compost.

The Poor Man’s Xanadu
by Ed Hamilton

Gerald Jones had the best compost in Western Kentucky. I can't imagine anyone else laying serious claim to the title. Gerald was my brother Jim's friend, and when I came to visit one warm spring weekend, Jim insisted I meet him.

Jim was my younger brother by two years. And though we looked alike, were outwardly very similar, we had taken different paths in life. I was living in Louisville, working on my Master’s at the university there. Jim hadn’t done so well in college, but he had made friends among the locals in his little college town of Bowling Green, and decided to settle there. He lived in a tiny room filled with books, working at odd jobs to pay the rent. As I was his older brother, Jim looked up to me. Perhaps seeking my approval, Jim had invited me down for the spring break so I could see how he lived and meet some of his new friends. I thought it sounded like a good way to relax and take some time off from the grind.

Though he was in his thirties, Gerald lived at his mother's house, a huge old house, and received an allowance from her since he couldn't hold down a regular job. But he did have a job of sorts, which he pursued very conscientiously. As I swung the car into the alley, the compost heap loomed up before us. It rose to six or seven feet and seemed from our perspective to fill the entire back yard. We parked in the gravel drive and got out and stood marveling at the heap. “He’s added some to it since I saw it last,” Jim said.

A skinny man of medium height was heaving bags of potatoes from the bed of a pickup. This turned out to be Gerald. He had already emptied one or two bags onto the heap. The potatoes were shriveled, soggy, and molded. "I got these down at the school," he said as we walked up.

When my brother said that we were there to inspect the compost, Gerald seemed genuinely pleased. Taking a brush from his back pocket and proceeding to brush his long, dirty-brown hair, he led us into the back yard through an opening in the heap.

No grass at all grew in the yard. Instead, a gooey muck, several inches deep, covered the entire half-acre. Apparently the compost caused drainage problems. We walked on sagging two-by-fours that had been placed strategically about the yard. At one point a board bowed and water sloshed over my tennis shoe. I noticed that Gerald wore rubber boots.

Half the yard was taken up with a sort of half-assed playground knocked together out of stolen lumber and found objects. There were several raised platforms running between trees, a raised playhouse, a tree house high up in an old oak, a tire swing, an old rusty sliding board, and various things to climb around on. Gerald explained that he had built the playground for his son. But, he added with a touch of sadness in his voice, the mother didn't let the boy come over too much. One could understand why. Though I would have loved the place when I was a kid, from an adult perspective it didn't look like much of a place for children to play. There was dangerous stuff laying all around: scraps of corrugated tin, old appliances, boards with nails in them, rusty garden implements. Back in the far corner of the yard, an old wooden shed had partially collapsed, and seemed to be gradually melding into the rotting mass of the compost.

But the most impressive feature of the yard was the compost itself. It walled the place in on three sides, and since the yard was a sort of a sink-pit, the walls seemed to tower up higher than they had from without. Most of it seemed to be composed of straw and sticks and leaves, but there was a good bit of left-over food thrown into the mix as well. Clearly Gerald had been collecting garbage from numerous sources. The color ranged from gray to beige to brown. Some areas were older than others, more rich, and the color was a darker brown. Of course, there was a powerful stench of rot; I could only imagine what it would be like come August.

Though I was to some extent repelled, I was more fascinated than anything. There were twenty or more dried out, brown Christmas trees leaned up against the compost walls. "Did you go along collecting these off the streets?" I asked.

"Naw," Gerald said, drawling his words slowly. "A man was selling 'em in the parking lot of the grocery store. After Christmas, I asked could I have 'em. He said he didn't care. I hauled 'em down here in my truck."

"That's a pretty good deal," I said.

"I sure thought so," Gerald said, continuing to vigorously brush his hair.

Then, without warning, Gerald strode across the board leading to his house. He opened the door and let out his dog, a big brown mutt. The dog didn't keep to the boards, but bounded straight into the muck. He made sure to greet both my brother and myself, jumping up and placing his muddy paws upon us.

“Teddy sit," Gerald said. "Get down boy." He almost whispered it.

The dog paid no attention. After a bit, he ran off to flop about some more in the mud.

"Why do you keep brushing your hair so much, Gerald?" my brother asked. I had assumed this was normal behavior for Gerald, but apparently it was something new.

Gerald weighed his words. "This is a special boar's hair brush," he said. He showed us the brush. Jim examined it and passed it on to me.

"It puts back the natural oils and nutrients into your hair," Gerald explained. "I read that somewhere."

"It looks like a pretty good brush," I said, interested in the item only as a possible key to the behavior of this man. I handed it back.

"So I have to keep doing this," Gerald said, drawing the brush once more through his hair.

The dog was running back and forth at the back of the yard, sloshing through the mud, covering himself in it. Once in a while he would stop and bark excitedly.

“Teddy be quiet," Gerald said softly. "Settle down."

The dog continued to do as he pleased. “Composting is very environmentally sound,” Gerald remarked. "Return the waste to the earth where it came from."

"You seem to have studied the issue," I said.

"I never studied it much."

The dog was still barking, but he had quit running back and forth. Instead, he was digging furiously into the compost with his forepaws.

"What's got into that dog?" I asked.

"Rats," Gerald answered matter-of-factly.

Well, that figured. "You get many rats in here?"

“Hundreds," Gerald drawled, shaking his head in dismay.

"What do you do to get rid of them?"

"Ain't nothin' you can do," Gerald said. "Once in a while I'll dig up a nest with my shovel, or else Teddy'll dig up a nest, and then I kill the little ones. Teddy eats 'em."

I suppose getting rid of the compost was out of the question.

We went back out to the gravel driveway, where we could stand on more solid ground. Gerald sat his brush down on the tailgate of the truck and took a shovel out of the truck bed. He began digging in the compost. I noticed that the house next door was quite close to the drive. There was another house on the other side of Gerald's house, and one across the alley to the rear. "Don't your neighbors complain about this compost?" I asked.

"Well, they don't hardly care for it."

The dog came bounding out from the yard and immediately spied the boar's hair brush. Plucking it from the tailgate, he sat down with the brush balanced between his muddy forepaws, and began to gnaw.

Gerald seemed not to have noticed; he continued to dig at the compost, as I looked on in horror.

“Hey Gerald," Jim said finally, "that dog's got your boar's hair brush."

I expected Gerald to beat the dog, or at least to yell at him, after such a serious offense. Instead, Gerald looked slowly up from his work and said softly, "Teddy, put that down. Drop it, Teddy." The dog continued to gnaw the brush.

Gerald shrugged his shoulders. "It ain't no use."

The soil Gerald had turned up was a rich deep brown, almost black. Rooting around in it with his hand, he found what he was looking for. "Look at this," he said, holding the item out for our inspection. It was a bloodworm, or a night crawler, or something—a big brown worm at any rate. As big around as a finger and eight inches long.

"Damn!" Jim exclaimed.

"God damn!" I said. "Look at that."

"I'm gonna show this to the librarian," Gerald said, a slight note of excitement in his voice.

"What for?" I asked, incredulous.

"I think she'd like to see it."

“Man, the librarian doesn't want to see that," Jim assured him.

"Sure she does."

"No librarian on earth would want to see that!" I said.

“Well, maybe some would,” Jim admitted. “But definitely not this one.”

"Yeah, this one does,” Gerald said.

It turned out the library was just down the block, and Gerald walked there, the worm held out before him. While he was gone, my brother explained that Gerald had been working on his compost for ten years or more. His wife had lived there with him in the house for a while, but had finally gotten fed up with Gerald. The compost hadn’t been the only reason for their split, but it had played a big part. Within the past year she had moved out, taking their 5-year-old son with her. Once in a while Gerald’s neighbors would get a court order against him, and he'd have to haul the compost away to the dump. But he inevitably rebuilt; he was always back at it, year after year.

“Gerald’s kind of nuts, isn’t he?” I said, finally giving voice to what had been on my mind all along.

“Ah, he’s OK,” Jim said.

“But why does he keep doing it?” I asked, indicating the compost with a sweep on my hand. I mean, if it’s so much trouble, if the neighbors and the courts are always after him?”

“I think it’s the work,” Jim said. “It keeps him busy.”

“There’s gotta be better jobs.”

Jim shrugged his shoulders.

“And it’s just out of control,” I said, pressing my point. “Just look at the place. More compost than anybody could ever possibly use. Sooner or later you gotta say, enough is enough. You gotta draw a line somewhere.”

“Why?” Jim asked.

Gerald came back and tossed the worm on the heap. "She didn't want to see it."

All along, I had been assuming that this composting operation was some sort of low-level commercial enterprise. This is America, after all. And I guess to my mind that had to be at least part of what justified it. I asked Gerald, "You get many people to buy this stuff?"

"I don't know if anybody would," he said. "You need some?"

This set me to thinking. Despite what I had said to my brother, I was coming to feel that Gerald's endeavor commanded a certain respect, and I didn't want to trivialize it in any way. Finally, however, I couldn't help asking, "Just what good is all this compost?"

Gerald was unfazed. "Come on, I wanna show you somethin'."

Shovel in hand, Gerald led us around the house to the front yard. Although there were no walls of compost here, the entire front yard was raised about four feet over it's natural level, and covered with a layer of bark mulch. As it turned out, the front yard had once been surrounded by walls just like those in back, but Gerald had spread the compost out in an effort to comply with an earlier court order.

We walked around the edge of the yard and out onto the sidewalk. What had been obscured from our vision by the heap now appeared. All along the sidewalk Gerald had planted flowers. They were of all colors and varieties: azaleas, gladiolas, irises, daffodils: red, yellow, orange, purple. Even some tulips.

I didn’t even know the names of most of them. They were certainly healthy, free of disease, and growing well. I was impressed. The colors were quite vibrant.

"You see?" Gerald said.

“Yeah, I think so,” I said.

I hadn’t even finished admiring the flowers, when all of a sudden Gerald took his shovel and began to turn them under into the compost.