Free Front Yard by Norman Draper

paper stacked in front of her and sighed. It was the sigh of great ambitions thwarted.
    God, how she hated teaching! Research, that was what she was born to do, and here she was with no major research grants to her name and a bunch of her students’ final papers and internship reports gathering dust and daring her to touch them, to read them, perchance to grade them.
    The year was almost over and she would have to deal with these sooner rather than later. Dr. Richlin, the department chair, had just reminded her in no uncertain terms that she was to wrap up her final grades immediately.
    â€œWhat seems to be the problem, Hilda?” he said. “We have got to get these kids’ grades completed. They’re leaving in a couple of days. Everyone else has their grades in. So, what’s your story?”
    â€œResearch,” said Dr. Brockheimer severely. “I’ve got important research to wrap up.”
    Dr. Richlin rolled his eyes, then smiled condescendingly. He’d heard this before from Dr. Brockheimer, and knew it to be either an exaggeration to hide her distaste for the requirements of teaching, or the futile exercise of a professor who hadn’t been responsible for a single bit of important research in at least six years. She was cruising on her reputation, that’s what she was doing.
    â€œOkay, Hilda,” he said, employing the diplomatic tone he trotted out for stubborn incompetents and malcontents. “Research is important. We all know that. Everyone here does it. But you must teach here to be a professor of horticulture. That is a basic requirement at this institution.”
    His point made, Dr. Richlin modified his smile to reflect a more pleasant, avuncular persona. He removed his glasses, and leaned toward Dr. Brockheimer, who stood before him as rigid as a post.
    â€œYou have been a great credit to this institution, Hilda,” Dr. Richlin said. “We all know and respect this. But, quite frankly, you’ve been coasting on your reputation for quite a while. All of us here have other duties to perform, and that includes you. Will you please make my job easier by getting your grades in by Friday noon at the latest?”
    Dr. Brockheimer was one of the top floriculturists in the St. Anthony metro area and, one could argue, the entire state. Dr. Phil Goudette, at Headwaters State University, in Sap City, was really the only one who could give her a run for her money. They had quite an impressive department up there at Headwaters that they coupled successfully with a landscape design division.
    Dr. Brockheimer burned with jealousy after reading Dr. Goudette’s research paper on the use of bogs to develop exotic new flora that could then be transferred to semi-moist soils without the benefit of intermittent flooding. It had been groundbreaking—and it had been her idea, too. They just hadn’t given her the time to work on it, a fact she pointed out when she thundered into Dr. Richlin’s office with the news.
    The importance of that paper would have been evident to even the most callow of undergraduates, but Dr. Richlin had just brushed it off as if it had been a middling senior thesis, instead of seeing it for the threat it was. Now, Headwaters was going to be getting the research dollars, not them. Didn’t the fool see that? Instead of sloughing it all off, he should be freeing her from her teaching responsibilities and giving her carte blanche to do whatever research she saw fit to do.
    But that’s the way it is around here, thought Dr. Brockheimer. The faculty gravitated toward sloth and the undemanding status quo once they were tenured. They tended to pad their résumés with meaningless journal articles and insignificant board positions, and rest on the laurels of whatever token research they’d accomplished in their younger years. They’d pile up bogus honors while teaching a few classes and serving as consultants to large