In
ancient times the suburbanite gathered leaves from
the ground using an instrument called a rake. A
cunning tool of simple technology, it was basically a
long rod with a fan-like spray of tines at one end.
Its use built healthy muscles without contributing
greenhouse gases to global warming, except when the
piles of raked leaves were burned. It was a wonderful
smell, formerly one of the delights of the season,
but is now illegal.
In modern times the suburbanite employs the leaf
blower. It is a reverse vacuum cleaner invented by
the Japanese that allows you to push leaves with air
as opposed to pulling them with tines. They can run
on gasoline or electricity and make an obnoxiously
loud noise, a detriment to someone like me who works
nights and sleeps days. The leaves then get placed
into bags or pushed to the curb to be sucked up by
municipal trucks in order to prevent the pollution
that comes from burning. We never wanted a leaf
blower. We never understood the point. But then, at
the Wawa, Ms Keogh saw something new that changed her
mind.
It is not unusual for Ms Keogh and me to eat a quick
meal in the car. We regularly stop at one or the
other nearby Wawas that are either close to home or
en route to our destination. Wawa is a local chain of
convenience stores with a deli counter and is usually
open all night. They all look the same, white blocks
with glass doors and windows along the front. They
compete with the 7-Elevens. 7-Elevens are a suburban
American phenomenon that has globalized, spreading
abroad to Thailand, Turkey, Sweden, China, Japan and
more. You might have a 7-Eleven around the corner.
We favor Wawa. Personally, I'm prejudiced because
these stores were born from a hundred-year-old dairy
farm here in Pennsylvania. The name "Wawa"
is the Lenni Lenape word for the ubiquitous Canada
Goose, the bird in flight appearing as their
trademark. Also, I'm glad to report, their food and
coffee is much better than 7-Eleven's.
We were eating in the parking lot behind the Wawa in
Yardley and listening to music from the car's radio,
when Ms Keogh became intrigued by the young man
working with what looked like a loud leaf blower. It
was in actuality a relatively quiet leaf sucker. She
climbed from the car and was introduced to a Black
& Decker Leaf Hog, a device that vacuums leaves,
twigs, pine needles, and such, mulches them and
deposits them into a bag. It was love at first site.
Our house in suburbia is engulfed in bushes and
trees. Although they would never say anything to our
faces, the community likely mumbles about the
appearance of our property. We are an eyesore, a spot
of wilderness in a neighborhood of lawns. We actually
like our rustic appearance, a front yard of moss and
the house hidden by brambles and vines. We stand in
contrast to our neighbors' austere homes on manicured
fields of grass.
It is late Autumn and our trees have dropped nearly
all their leaves and pine needles. We've hired
someone to clear our lawn, someone we can afford. As
a consequence of being affordable there is a
trade-off, the work is not completed in a timely
manner. While we wait, inevitably the wind moves the
bulk of our leaves off our lawn and on to our
neighbors, especially our next-door neighbor to the
south.
It is mortifying. These neighbors, an elderly couple,
are the most decent folks, responsible and always
neatly dressed. I do not understand why God has
punished them by putting us next door. Both in their
eighties, the gentleman is a fanatic about having a
perfect lawn. He removed the original two trees that
the developer planted at the front of everybody's
property so sunlight could reach the grass. My
parents, many years ago when this house was theirs,
added two trees thus making four. As it happens,
following a windy day our front lawn is nearly bare,
while despite the absence of trees, our neighbor is
inundated with leaves - our leaves! Having in recent
years abandoned the battle, he has hired a champion
to attack the yard, a better landscape service than
we have. His yard has been cleared several times
while we were still waiting for our service to show
up. I won't do the work. I would rather read a book.
Ms Keogh has suggested we should offer to pay for
their lawn service. "Can we afford it?" I
wondered to myself, while telling Ms Keogh, "The
offer would probably embarrass them." With
regards to embarrassment, we have been avoiding eye
contact with them when chance happens to find us both
outside in our adjacent driveways.
Well, our service did finally show up and remove all
the leaves, as well as clean the gutters, but that
was a week ago, and since then the holdouts have
finally forsaken the branches to begin new attempts
at fertilizing our patio and driveway and moss. In
the meantime, Ms Keogh bought something she was
hiding in the trunk of the car. She wouldn't tell me
what it was, but eventually it had to come out. She
had purchased the Black & Decker Leaf Hog High
Performance Blower Vac Model # BV4000. It cost almost
seventy bucks. I still prefer books. That money would
have gone a long way towards the Naxos recording of
James Joyce's Ulysses, unabridged, on twenty-two CDs!
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