Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 106, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 May 1916 — The GARDEN of EDEN IN CEMENT [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The GARDEN of EDEN IN CEMENT

THERE’S an Old &>Gentleman in a, Kansas town who has done some unusualwork in the modeling art

By ROBERT H. MOULTON.

k P. DINSMOOR of Lucas, Kan., calls it the Garden of Eden, and being seven-ty-three years old, a greatgrandfather five times, a survivor of 18 battles and nonhyphenated, all Of which he freely admits, h e has a right to his opinion. Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the uevil and all the old charter members of the original garden are there, done lorever in cement; also, for the sake of variety rather than consistency, 125 more figures, Biblical and otherwise, perched in concrete trees in his front yard and glowering down in their impassivity on villagers who pass that way by day, but who sedulously avoid it after dark. In the center of the Garden of Eden, in the midst of all this ghostly array of cement creations, is Mr. Dinsmoor’s cabin home, a “log house’’ built of stone from native ledges. One of the two porches is ornamented with cement beer bottles and jugs and mugs as a sort of merry jibe at Kansas’ prohibition laws. One of the many Inlaid tables in the cabin home is a small one which contains 162 pieces of wood. Over the door in the living room is what the old gentleman calls a wooden sermon. It is the motto: “Home Is What You Make It.” Outside, as he facetiously explains, the sweep of his hand taking in the petrified Garden of Eden, are 130 stone sermons. It took over 43% tons, or 130 sacks, of cement to make them, and the cost so far has been over SI,OOO. But even at that Mr. Dinsmoor declares he is far from being through. There is a system to everything about the place. The garden to the west represents the creation and fall of 'man according to Moses. The front, or north, represents modern civilization, how one animal preys on another down to the little worm. There are eight cement trees from 30 to 40 feet high lighted with 20 electric lights. For the grape arbor, flag, devil and rambling rose to stand on there are 13 trees from 8 to 20 feet high. It all seems to represent a lot of bard work. But Mr. Dinsmoor is a philosopher. It wasn't work, he says, but play. Work, according to his theory, is doing something you don’t like to do. He worked for 50 years. Then he went to playing. He found when he fed pigs for play they got fat; if he fed them for profit he fed too much, and they died. He figured

out that he never did make any money as long as he worked. He lost nearly everything except his wife. Then he got to playing at farming, and his mules and horses got to making money for him and his land grew in value. It got so valuable that, a man came along with a checkbook and ran him off. Then he moved into town, and it looked like he was going to dry rot and be made fit for the boneyard until he took to playing again.. He started his Garden of Eden, and today he is friskier than ever. The first figures one sees on entering the garden are Adam and Eve, who stand eight feet high, hands clasped over the gate. One serpent is putting an apple in Eve’s extended palm and another is being stamped to death by Adam, while the devil appears overhead on a limb, with spear poised and malevolent eyes glaring at this world’s first lovers. Mr. Dinsmoor confesses that they were made with cement and a trowel. Some people don’t like the looks of Eve, and their creator admits he doesn’t blame them. But then, he explains, his models were women who passed the house, and as they generally passed in a hurry, he couldn’t follow them very closely. There are two things about the garden that the townspeople do not like. One is the all-seeing eye on a high cement pole which winks electrically at night as if it were a solemn warning to all who look at it. The other has to do with the principal figures of the garden, which are mounted in trees re-enforced by gas pipes. Very often when a curious crowd gathers outside and gapes at the creations, Mr. Dinsmoor, who loves a joke, will slip to the basement. Presently the angel with the flaming sword, perched high in a cement tree, will speak sotto voce: “Cain, Cain, you son of a gun, where is Abel?” To this unangelic query Cain will give the twentieth century reply: “Search me, kid. I’ll be darned if I know'.’’ Whereupon the devil from his dignified position will bawl out: “I should worry.” This generally makes the crowd move on, especially if it’s Just growing dark and the weird conversation is accompanied by the winking of the all-seeing eye.

Among the cement wonders the most notable is a flag four by eight feet done in red. white and blue cement and weighing nearly half a ton. It swings in the breeze on ball bearings, making a weather vane. Another odd feature is a cement pyramid on which strawberry vines are planted in the spring. The cement is about one

and a half inches thick, over a soil Interior, with tiling and spray to irrigate. On top of the pyramid are planted touch-me-nots, and when -the strawberries' are ripe and visitors come Mr. Dinsmoor calls their attention to the flowers. He says, however, that next spring he intends to set out milkweed in place of the flowers, hoping to raise strawberries and cream on the same bed.