Dear Dad

My Dad has always been a little fanatical about his lawn. When I was young he was so obsessed that he fertilized bi-weekly- with the hand dispenser, not the push kind, to ensure even coverage. He was the man who mows in January even though grass does not grow in winter.

When I was maybe eight, the Fairwood Ranch Homeowner's Association began a neighborhood beautification campaign known as Yard of the Month. Suddenly my dad's obsession became the concern of his wife and three children. Compelled by the prospect of a shiny plaque that might occupy a prominent position in the front yard my dear dad made lawn slaves of his offspring.

Cartwheels and soccer cletes were to be confined to the backyard. We were to discreetly injure (or at least scare) neighbors' household pets seen making a latrine of his grass. We started taking family walks to analyze whose yard might have the edge that month. We were a council of critics, albeit uncertified.

A few years later Dad upgraded. An entire acre of forest was cleared to make room for a house and a GIANT LAWN. At the start of my eleventh summer we three wee soldiers were promised 200 dollars each in cash in exchange for hard work, work that would not cease until the yard was planted.

Our eyes wide with the promise of a major payday ($200 = 1 walkman 12 tapes, or 12 Babysitter's Club and 6 Judy Blume books), we walked foolishly into a battle against a field of tiny rocks and roots. Massa Trent, in his Denver Broncos hat, surveyed the field daily, grunting at the sight of an under-combed area. That's when we would trudge back wordlessly with our five gallon buckets and pick out more debris from the dirt. Any sign of weakness was seen as a sign of complaint resulting in deduction from the final paycheck.

By Summer's end my earnings had been pared down to a paltry fifty bucks, though I had the buffest back in the history of eleven year-olds, which was nice. I knew my dad to be the sternest of all men.

But, like every man with children, my dad softened with age. He planted hundreds of azaleas around the perimeter of the lawn one year- "It's going to look like the Masters' course!"- and they all died. He seemed okay with it. Despite his protestations that it would leave treadmarks, within a few years we had a riding lawn mower in place of the old push mower, though if you put the gear more than one click above "turtle" he would make you mow it again. He listened to my once impassioned pleas about the ecological terrorism that is fertilizing and cut back. He seemed healthy, balanced.

Then, this past Christmas Eve, fully twelve years after my father's final tyrant phase, Massa Trent was awakened. My brother John- on an impulse inspired, I think, by Andrew W.K. and maybe the beer I'd bought for him- took a post-brunch joyride around the backyard in his car. My dad was out on the deck screaming before John had even completed one lap.

John no longer has a car.

Good old Dad.