Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 123, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 June 1917 — HOME TOWN HELPS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HOME TOWN HELPS

Gatekeeper Transforms What Is Usually Unsightly Box Into a Thing of Beauty. A bldt upon the “City BeaiiTiful," yet a very necessary blot, is every gatekeeper’s tower at a railroad crossing. It must be high and unsheltered, consequently.sunbaked and windswept. But with the heart of a poet and the skill of a landscape artist, T. J. Jones, a Southern - ’Pacific —gatetender, has transformed his conning tower at Pomona, Cal., into a town ornament. “ The; bare, bleak, stilts-perched box that must be Ills abode day after day through long hours of duty now looks like a vine-covered bird cage. The unsightly posts are completely hidden ; on

one side the road’s initials appear in living green? while the other sides bear quaint designs, and vines outline each ledge. Inside he has window boxes and potted plants wherever they will not interfere with “business.” The wee space around his castle between the tracks he has fenced with smooth, whitewashed stones, and within it has done such systematic, intensive farming that he has raised more tomatoes, potatoes, onions, peas and carrots than he can use. The sturdy young man with the spade is a happy specimen of a thrifty American; certainly he* is a standing rebuke to all lazy neighbors with w’eed-covered lots. -

MAKES TOWER AN ORNAMENT

Unsightly Tower Transformed.