The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1931-04-03

or spring rains tapped dainty fingers
along the stills, Abby was given TO
taking out the great box of travel
folders, real estate prospectuses and
maps that Isaiah kept tucked on a
closet shelf. to pore over them.
There was one picture of a bum
galow colony on sunny coast A row
of misunderstanding Spanish houses,
drenched in sunlight. backed in noun
tain tops and surrounded by gardens
that took your breath away.
As they grew older, and little
more tired, this old dream of the
Moores began TO resuscitate itself.
They sat together on wintry evenings
and planned their sunny, fiowery fu-
ture Old man Isaiah climbed into his
topcoat, wound his ears in a large
wooden muller and talked of perpetual
summers. The townspeople, the
friends, the loiterers and the cronies
began to shake sad heads over these
two obsessed old people.
"Get out or shut up" they said.
among themselves concerning them.
To their own surprise. as much as
anyone else's, the Moores did the for
mer. The opportunity presented itself
to sell out the grocery store to the
first chain store venture that had come
to Della. All in a fortnight it hap
pened, the opportunity, the sale, the
departure.
Two bewildered and happy old peo-
pie, with cash in their pockets, stepped
off a train into the riotous brilliance
of a southern cline.
They've been too active all their
lives. They'll get tired of loafing,"
had been the prediction Of their
cronieS
The Moores knew better. The dream
within their grasp was too incredibly
good to be true For the first months
of setting up their household goods in
one of the pale-pink Spanish bunga-
lows, surrounded by color and backed
by mountain. the unreality of their
happiness had been the only flaw in
the ointment. 1t was impossible to
wake up and quite believe yourself
lying out in this cradle of botanical
beauty. The old pair pottered about
two-thirds of the day in their brilliant
garden, walked about the wide streets
of their little community. or sat gazing
upon the rhinoceros-like hide of the
towering mountain so easily within
their view. The sun beat ceaselessly;
winds were warm and drowsy; rain
was so rare that you reckoned with 1t
not at all.
At the end of the first year con-
sciousness of this for the first time
took concrete form in the mind of
Abby. To her amazement she found
herself hankering for the sweetness Of
the springlike tapping Of rain on the
window stills, or the solemn gray re-
spite of a steady downpour that used
to wash the landscape in mist. Abby
found herself yearning for a day cold
enough to wind a good old wooden
scarf about her neck and scurry along
the road to keep the blood warm and
going. And, to her surprise, when she
explained this fact to Isaiah, he adj
mitted to a longing that was older
than Abby's for some of the sterner
stuff of those sterner days back home.
The Moores were sunshine-glutted;
satiated with brightness; their eyes
ached with the torrents of cerulean
light that poured over their days.
There came the time when they con-
templated the brilliant fury of each
MONDAY with a certain antagonism to
the relentless consistency of the sun.
The geometry Of the new wide streets,
the pink imitation Spanish bungalows,
the narrow shade of the eucalyptus
trees and the treeless flank of noun
tain began to pail on eyes accustomed
to a fiuctuating climate and geography
of their own state.
A new dream began to form in the
Moores. After all, they were too young
to withdraw from life in this tedious
fashion. The idea Of going back into
the grocery business was pretty firm
in Isaiah's old mind.
The site they finally chose as the
scene of the new enterprise was a
town called Della.