The Joys of Homownership

Once a year I hire a professional tree trimmer to keep the enveloping foliage of our neighborhood from swallowing my house.

Last year, my regular lawn man asked me to hire HIS crew instead. I asked him if he were sure --he doesn't have the cherry picker my tree trimmer owns. Oscar assured me he was up to the task, and would charge me 1/2 of the trimmer.

Well, the rains have conspired against Oscar, until today. He set about with his crew, in ladders, cutting offending limbs. I held my breath against the horror of one of the fellows falling 30 feet to his death or paralysis.

Oscar called me to come to my pool. He was apologetic. In removing a large ficus limb, the worker let it fall, and it smashed the concrete pool coping pretty bad. Oscar says he can fix it. We'll see. All I know is, I'm just happy it's concrete coping, and not someone's cervical spine. Next year I'm going with the experts again.

The episode reminded me of MY lawn cutting business, which I ran from age 12 to age 16. I used my Dad's Lawn Boy, and cut up to 10 neighbor's lawns in the Summer. I'd charge $5 per lawn, and after subtracting costs for gas and blade sharpenings, net about $40/week. It was great money for a young teen in the early 70s.

My next door neighbor, Tom Cunningham, was a great fellow. He looked like Donald Trump, and was some sort of professional in New York City. He hired me, and he was the only customer with underground sprinklers. The heads were brass.

He'd point their locations to me, but it was rare that more than 2 weeks would pass without my hitting one or more. Mr. Cunningham would come out at the unmistakeable sound of a steel blade hitting the brass head. He was very patient. I felt terrible.

Finally, he bought a bunch of orange cones, and put them on top of the sprinkler heads. My job then became more fun --like driving an obstacle course.

Years later, it came out that Mr. C was "working late" in the City with one or more secretaries. His was one of my block's first divorces. It's remarkable how memory works.

I also recall how a week of rain would wreak havoc on my lawn schedule. The grass would be too thick and wet to cut efficiently, and I'd have to stop often to clean out the mower. In hindsight --it's amazing that I survived the business with all of my fingers intact.

IT taught me an invaluable lesson. Manual labor was for the birds! It was great to have the money those Summers, but any thoughts I may have had about NOT going to college so that I could earn money WITHOUT getting my hands dirty --well, Summers of being a lawn man cured me of that.

Oscar's from Costa Rica, and works very hard. I guess I'm going to find out soon how adept he is as a mason, as well as a landscaper...