The Big Front Yard
Clifford D. Simak
Open Road
Print $15.99 ($10.87 as of this writing)
Ebook $7.99 ($4.80 as of this writing)

“The Big Front Yard” was originally published in the October 1958 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.  It won the Hugo for Best Novelette the next year.  This is one of Simak’s best known and most reprinted stories.

Hiram Taine lives alone with his dog Towser in a house that’s been in his family for over a hundred years.  Located in a small village across the road from a wooded area, Hiram makes his living in the small town by repairing appliances and selling antiques.  When the story opens, Towser seems agitated about what Hiram at first thinks are mice under the floorboards.  They aren’t mice.  Hiram lets Towser out and tells him to leave the woodchuck across the road alone.  Only it turns out later that Towser isn’t trying to dig up a woodchuck.  What’s buried out in the woods is something much bigger, both in size and in importance.

A bossy neighbor lady and her hired man, Beasley, bring a television for Hiram to repair.  He and Beasley carry it to his basement, where he does his repairs.  She comments on the new ceiling he’s put in.  Only Hiram hasn’t put in a new ceiling.  Someone has, though.  That someone repairs the television while Hiram is out buying antiques.  They also convert it from black and white to color.  This story was written in 1958, remember.

Soon Hiram, Beasley, and Towser find themselves with more than just invisible beings repairing things once Hiram’s front yard suddenly gets a lot bigger.  Hiram is a Yankee trader to a tee.   He wheels and deals like no one else in the area can.  This skills will ultimately serve him and humanity well.

Hiram has always treated Beasley with respect, even though the rest of the town thinks he’s a joke.  And while Simak does at times use Beaseley as a foil and comic relief, especially near the end, when Hiram wakes up after sleeping around the clock from exhaustion to find Beasley carrying gas cans through his house, Simak treats him with great affection and makes Beasley one of the most important characters in the story.

I don’t want to give too much away. Part of the appeal of this story is the sense of discovery.  The characters of Hiram and Beasley are well-developed and very sympathetic.  The conflict between Hiram and the government, not to mention the rest of the world, over who owns Hiram’s property now that it has unique…properties is well done, albeit slightly naive by today’s standards of cynicism.

It had been well over a decade since the last time I read “The Big Front Yard”.  Some of the details had faded, but the things that made me love this story as a teenager when I first read it in The Hugo Winners (Asimov, ed.) were still there.  A few of the details are dated, such as the television.  Other than that, the story still holds up well.  Check it out if you haven’t read it.