OF THE MIGRANT FROM MARION—OF HIS FEARS—OF LAND AT A NICKEL AN ACRE—OF SAND FLEAS AND SAND SPURS—OF LONELINESS AND HONEYMOONERS—AND OF THE DOCTOR WHO WAS RUN TO DEATH
I CONFERRED with a mild-spoken tin-canner at a Miami tin-can camp one hot February afternoon as to tin-canning in general. His wife, who was a capable and keen-witted lady in a blue gingham dress, sat with us and dug the soft substance out of tiny pine cones, her idea being to sandpaper them and varnish them at a later date, and make them into fascinating strings of beads. This is one of the most popular diversions among lady tin-canners—almost as popular as is horseshoe pitching among the male tin-canners.
The tin-canner was a non-committal corn farmer from the vicinity of that newly-famous Ohio town, Marion. Careful thought on his part, assisted by frequent promptings from his wife, brought out the following information: He had broken away from the farm for the winter because he preferred sitting around where it was comfortably warm to sitting around where it was uncomfortably cold. He wasn’t particularly struck with Florida land, but he liked the Florida air. Looking at Florida land with the eye of an Ohio farmer, he felt that he wouldn’t particularly care to pay much more than a nickel an acre for most of it. He met up with a lot of Michigan and Ohio farmers along the road, and they felt the same way about it. Still, it was kind of restful and soothing to look at, and the sun and the air more than made up for the drawbacks of the land. The sun was nicer just to sit in than the Ohio sun, and there was more of it. This Florida sun made a person feel kind of trifling—trifling being southern and mid-western slang for lazy. He wouldn’t want any Florida people to hear him say that some of the land looked worthless, because they would probably pass an act through the legislature forbidding him to come back into the state again—and he wouldn’t like that because it was a real pleasant place to come back to—in the winter. Besides, you couldn’t tell much about this Florida land from looking at it. Something that was a swamp one year would be nice solid land the next year and selling for fifty dollars a front foot. These Florida people were real touchy people and you had to be mighty careful what you said when they were around. The sand flies pricked holes in him every afternoon, but he preferred not to mention it when any Florida people were around for fear they would say he was a California man that had been paid to come over and cast slurs on Florida’s fair name. And for the same reason he disliked to mention the sand fleas that came up out of the sand around sun-down and nipped him all over the legs, or of the sand spurs that caught in the trousers and felt as though several people were prodding him with ice-picks.
There was one bad feature connected with tin-canning, and that was loneliness. There were a lot of honeymooners among the tin-canners, and they were about the only ones who didn’t seem to get lonely. Unless you had a couple of friends to travel with, or were honeymooners, you were apt to get lonely and homesick, and go back where it was cold, and be sore at yourself for going back.
They were traveling with a doctor and his wife from back home. The doctor was the only doctor in the neighborhood and he had been just run to death. Folks wouldn’t let him alone. He was just run to death. Somebody was getting sick every minute, and they’d call him up at all hours of the day and night and just run him to death. For years he’d been planning to take a vacation and rest up, but they ran him so he couldn’t. So finally when he heard that they were going to Florida, he just up and went. Oh, he was run to death, but a few weeks in Florida had done him a world of good. No, he didn’t know how his former patients were getting along. Probably they were all right. Probably there was some young college feller looking out for them. There generally was in a case like that. He didn’t know. Things like that didn’t worry you much when you struck Florida and began to sit out in the sun.