BEATING THE LANDLORD

Waikato Independent, Volume XXII, Issue 2491, 7 January 1922, Page 6

BEATING THE LANDLORD

GIRL'S EXAMPLE

I BUILDS HEE OWN COTTAGE

Special to Waikato Independent -i '•'.' , '.' j NEW YOEK, Nov. 27,

jAt an age when planning pretty (Slothes', dancing and the movies monopolise :niost of the average working firFsleisure, Miss Flora Holmes of has been building a house. ■jibing -the day Miss Holines hammers v -typewriter and handles sheets of figthe eommercial department of jhe New York Telephone Company's »mee. : Evenings and .Saturday after-. aeons, and Sundays for the past few iiohths she has been hammering nails Sid handling safes, laying flooring'.and luting., up siding and partitions in ah retractive new home on Pratt Avenue t't the furthest fringe of the northern sg<? of the city. The Holmes house is n Edenwald near Pyre Avenue stafS^n it Ti-e No-< York. Westchester-- and Bos-. pi Eaiiroad. Tlie approach to it is an. ij£- .;."=- Through a slfcV-'li .• «i ltV:,ranfc- ; wo()(.is, where men are cutting and clearing now lots and where pJa.-'i shovels are levelling the streets. *=PG;sed on a scantling or a stepladdcr Siora', Holmes makes a pretty picture. ;nait, has been her chief handicap. She 3 a slender girl of about t.Wenty and Weighs slightly over a hundred pounds. Itnldihg the house would, have been 'ver'so much easier if she • had been she has had to pay the pen!ty of being a picturesque, pioneer. 'eople came from miles around to land on the grass and watch her work. I&nytiriujs she lias made angry little ■if'echps. from the top rang of the lad?r a%king*-thfein—to please-go, away.

'(i'f came .here to*, work, not to be. a»l,at or talked about. Haven't Sn-folks/anything to do?" '.That was her comment on the annoyg/i neighbourliness of other Edenwald-m-ilwhb came too early and stayed too' For .'-.with thousands of shingles rig to-she adjusted to the ends and ..taut*---roof of a house and winter faring oiij a i&twy carpenter cannot af-rdif-to be .'upset .by the sort of stage ight th'it will subject a delicate umb "to.-..a frightful , whack from a c&.o'd* hanimcr r . '""!■ /.. A Pretty Interior . Miss'Holmes and lier uncle and aunt, i-' ian.d 'Mrs, A. B. Holmes, with whom e t has lived since she was a little •t- inoved, into the Pratt Avenue use'before it. was finished. The last I the girl builder did before inviting \ family -to fetch ,the furniture was :"rnix and-spread the cement, foundan' over which she' laid the tile kitch--1 floor. It is a sunny old-fashioned chen with three windows' opening £upon acres of country scenery and ;roeery store in the offing. The liv--1 room, dining room a ! nd closets take first floor and there •four bedrooms and a bathroom upirs and; an attic under the. roof. The prior would have been finished long ¥'ii it had not been for the garage.

fc Flora ..Holmes philosophised that YxQ the family might be able to ads';, and adapt itself to certain incontienees, it would not be fair to im- & anything like that on the automo- \- that takes herself and her uncle' Ivtown every morning and fetches |; • home again 'at night, he only jobs for which skilled were the iteic Elation ancl, verandah, and the,; hi!ofioh of the: furnaceyand' plumbing, s Holmes can handle a spade almost ■jfetively as 'she.:'handles a hamper to dig the excay*Jt'ioh

and garage. When these were finished friends came in for an old-fashioned "raising" and put the timbers and beams in place. When this skeleton was silhouetted against the woods and the sky, Miss Holmes assumed that the rest of the building task was chiefly hers. Her uncle '" sometimes worked with her on Saturdays, and holidays, but the family admits that the house is almost altogether the work of her hands. They are particularly and justly proud of the neat job she made of laying the hardwood floors. Perhaps it is because there are still a few finishing touches to.be put on the interior that Flora Holmes thinks time is too short spend much of it talking about her .achievement. '

MAny girl could do what I have done," is her modest, comment on her carpentry. And then she scatters encouragement and. inspiration by addling: "-Any giil Van do anything if she waritH very much to do it. We wanted oui own home and hero it is!" The GaPing Neighbours Xext to the family, idlers who came around 1 to stare at her on her stepladdcr, Miss Holmes' principal setback cumo from certain neighbours who objected to the sound of her hammer on nails on Sundays. A delegation waited on her one Sunday morning and called her'attention to the fact that she was breaking the Fourth Commandment of the Decalogue. Up to that time Flora Holmes fiad imagined that working out the family's emancipation from the injustice of landlords was a praiseworthy any day. But being a believer in fair play and as anxious not to offend her new neighbours as she was that they should not annoy her, she promised-that they would never again be shocked by the sight of her on a stepladdcr on the Sabbath, and intimated that if they would stay as far away as the street they might not be disturbed by-*founds, cither.,

From that day forward the outside work was pushed with all the power of her hammering'hand through, the long summer evenings and Saturday afternoons. On Sundays the partitions were put up, the floors laid and the stairway built. Then the interior had to be lined with plaster board and the rows of tacks covered with strips. And to beguile outsiders into imagining that'the inside work was finished and thus distract their curiosity from the activities of the pretty amateur carpenter, Flora Holmes put up-the white window curtains on the day the family moved in. Since then she has been plying her task as house builder at nights behind the drawn shades and with the illumination of lamps, waiting for the electrician to come to do his work. This is not the first time the Holmes family carried out an effective declaration of independence against the land-' lords. -A few years ago, rather than pay an increase in rent, they fitted oui. a houseboat for themselves on the Harlem River.at 213th Street and lived there until the Edenwald house was ready for occupancy.