Cannons

So my father used to tell this story about a small town in New England that had a village green bordered on one side with an ancient cemetery and on another with a narrow belt of woodland - one might call it a Nature Preserve, but in those days it was probably known as The Trees.  The park featured a raised gazebo type bandstand and a war memorial in the form of a small brass cannon on a concrete foundation, a few benches, some semblance of a garden and a path or two. The woods contained a small (let's be polite about this) historic cottage that leaked minimally.

The people on the town council were aware that this cottage was a potential problem, requiring maintenance, attracting vagrants and vandals, providing a haven for younguns up to no good.   It was decided that the best course of action would be to install a fairly young man in the cottage and offer him a stipend in return for gardening, upkeep and security duties for the cemetery and village Green.
That decision made, they had only to find the appropriate young man for the job.  In time, a council member remembered his brother-in-law's nephew, who was (we are being tactful, here) intellectually challenged, since at the age of nearly fifteen he had not yet passed the fifth grade, although he was strong, obedient and willing to work - a good boy, but not very bright.
And so it went.

Installed in the cottage, the young man did his tasks well, vandalism and pre-marital hanky-panky were reduced in the community, the flower beds looked quite nice, the bandstand was painted regularly, the walks were swept and the grass mowed smooth. The brass war memorial cannon was a mute and gleaming testimony of remembrance and devotion to the husbands, brothers, sons and fathers who had fallen in defense of their country.
Pleased with these improvements, the Ladies Garden Society dedicated a fountain surrounded by six new flower beds and a corresponding length of gravel walkways in the corner of the Green near The Trees, which our young man was expected to look after in addition to his other chores.

It was generally agreed that the money for the young man's stipend was well spent and various neighbors and church groups took it upon themselves to see that the lad was eating well, adequately dressed and warm enough in the winter.  As the years passed, town council members changed, but the arrangement with the young man was never altered or modified to reflect economic fluctuations or an increase of responsibilities.
Our young man didn't mind.   He had a place to call home and useful work to do, money of his own to spend and a certain amount of respect from the townsfolk.   The gardening wasn't that difficult or time consuming and it gave him satisfaction to keep the park as a showcase for his pride and joy, the immaculately polished brass war memorial cannon. In fair weather he could be found in the early mornings wiping the dew from this cannon with an oiled cloth, in the winter he wrapped it in an old blanket and tar paper to protect the brass from damaging effects of sleet and ice.   From his perspective, this was his purpose in life, to polish and care for the brass war memorial cannon and protect it from vandalism.

His schoolmates married and had children old enough to be the impatient couples he discouraged in the twilight shadows around the Green when the first foul words were found scratched in the side of the brass cannon.  Hours of troubled and painstaking labor resulted in partial removal of the offense - enough to blurr the meanings, if not the presence of the letters. When the vandalism was repeated, the (no longer young) man took to sleeping beside the war memorial in fair weather and visiting it frequently at night in bad weather.
About five years after this, our man approached the town council and announced his resignation. Someone else, he said, would have to look after the grounds and protect the war memorial. A concerned council member asked how he expected to earn a living and he responded with pride.
"I'm not as dumb as you seem to think I am. I've been saving up my money and I've ordered my own brass cannon. I'm going into business for myself."