World Made by Hand: A Novel by James Howard Kunstler

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What used to be the rear patio of my house was rigged up to be a summer kitchen. You didn't want to run a wood-burning stove indoors when it was ninety degrees, and it was that hot much of the time, May through October. I had a sheet-metal wood-burning cookstove out there under a roof with open side walls, a sturdy eight-foot pine table I'd made, and a cupboard with pierced tin panels to keep my salt and cornmeal and honey safe from little animals while it let air in. A smoker sat a way back from there, an old refrigerator on blocks, over by the fence. It was hard to imagine that we used to cultivate lawns. My yard was now a raised bed garden. It was geometrical, a cruciform pattern, the beds transected on the diagonal as well, with brick paths carefully laid. With our many material privations, it was not possible to live without beauty anymore. I spent a lot of time in my garden, and the feel of being in it was as important to me as the vegetables I grew. At the center, I built a birdbath out of stacked granite blocks with a concave piece of slate on top that caught the rain. The birds seemed satisfied with it and it was pleasant to look at. I would have preferred a statue of the goddess Diana in the manner of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, but I hadn't managed to scrounge one up. The smoker, much as I needed it, was an insult to the garden. It galled me to see the damned thing: a scarred old Kelvinator that mocked our failed industrial dreams. I intended to replace it someday with a proper brick smokehouse.