{"id":867,"date":"2021-03-29T12:39:21","date_gmt":"2021-03-29T12:39:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=867"},"modified":"2021-04-23T13:03:51","modified_gmt":"2021-04-23T13:03:51","slug":"trouble-with-water-by-horace-l-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=867","title":{"rendered":"Trouble with Water by Horace L. Gold"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Trouble with Water<\/em><\/strong> by Horace L. Gold (Unknown<\/em>, March 1939) opens with a hen-pecked husband (his wife is constantly nagging him about their unattractive daughter\u2019s dowry) fishing on a lake when he makes an unusual catch:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He pulled in a long, pointed, brimless green hat.
For a moment he glared at it. His mouth hardened. Then, viciously, he yanked the hat off the hook, threw it on the floor and trampled on it. He rubbed his hands together in anguish.
\u201cAll day I fish,\u201d he wailed, \u201ctwo dollars for train fare, a dollar for a boat, a quarter for bait, a new rod I got to buy\u2014and a five-dollar-mortgage charity has got on me. For what? For you, you hat, you!\u201d
Out in the water an extremely civil voice asked politely: \u201cMay I have my hat, please?\u201d
Greenberg glowered up. He saw a little man come swimming vigorously through the water toward him; small arms crossed with enormous dignity, vast ears on a pointed face propelling him quite rapidly and efficiently. With serious determination he drove through the water, and, at the starboard rail, his amazing ears kept him stationary while he looked gravely at Greenberg.  pp. 68-69 (The Dark Mind<\/em>, edited by Damon Knight, 1965)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The little man explains, when Greenberg makes fun of his ears, that he is a water gnome and uses them to swim. There is further back and forth between the two (mostly about the gnome\u2019s fish-keeping, rainfall, and other water related responsibilities) before Greenberg loses his temper and tears the gnome\u2019s hat to pieces. The gnome retaliates by telling Greenberg that, given his poor attitude, \u201cwater and those who live in it will keep away from you.\u201d
The rest of the story flows from this curse, and later sees Greenberg flood his bathroom when he jumps in a bath and the water jumps out, embarrass himself in front of a potential future son-in-law (he can\u2019t shave for the occasion, and chases his soup out of the bowl onto the table), and have to drink beer instead of water.
After further domestic complications the story resolves when Greenberg talks to a (presumably Irish) cop called Mike, who thinks he may have solution. The final scene (spoiler) has the pair on the lake dropping huge rocks into the water (to get the gnome\u2019s attention) and then presenting him with a sugar cube wrapped in cellophane in exchange for the removal of the curse.
This is a pleasant and logically worked out fantasy story, but it doesn\u2019t feel like the classic it is supposed to be (part of that may be because of the character\u2019s attitude and the piece\u2019s dated domestic circumstances, and the fact that it feels a little padded).
*** (Good). 7,850 words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trouble with Water by Horace L. Gold (Unknown, March 1939) opens with a hen-pecked husband (his wife is constantly nagging him about their unattractive daughter\u2019s dowry) fishing on a lake when he makes an unusual catch: He pulled in a long, pointed, brimless green hat.For a moment he glared at it. His mouth hardened. Then, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[249,24,248,7,240],"class_list":["post-867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horace-l-gold","tag-249","tag-3-2","tag-horace-l-gold","tag-novelette","tag-unknown"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=867"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":941,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867\/revisions\/941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}