Harlan Hubbard (1900–1988)

This bucolic book was published in 1953 and covers the period 1944-1951. Hubbard was a painter (artist) and his newly married wife spent a number of years building a "shantyboat" in Ohio. This term is new to me but hearkens to the frontier days when immigrants drifted down the Ohio on rafts with crude living structures and whatever else dangled haphazard, like a drifting country shack - pots of growing sweet potatoes, coops of chickens, dogs and cats, stoves, live fish wells etc. Hubbard's eye for detail and language elevates this to something special, a timeless classic about a lost world. Gone are the days when the river was mostly uninhabited along the shores except for occasionally farmers seeking news from upriver. When one could drink from the river and eat the bottom feeding carp daily. When the natural world produced a "mess" of wild greens for the taking, dogs could be let loose any old place to roam for the day, and one could pull over and set up a large garden for the summer. It seemed a gentler, kinder and richer place, more in common with Mark Twain's 19th century than the 21st. The descriptions of the natural world abound, and it is a land of plenty, Hubbard does not indulge in environmental complains (as I am doing) except occasionally but very obliquely. It's worth noting he did eat carp and catfish daily, and 3 years into the trip he experience a ruptured appendix (where toxins accumulate) perhaps a coincidence. We (now) know how toxin-laden the fish are, but Hubbard lived to a hale age of 88, so there you go. There is a lot to be said for a slow lifestyle and simple living.… (mehr)