Attack of the Grab-grass-people and the Yard Nazis
One day I was watching TV when an ad came on by a nursery
telling me how to prevent crabgrass. This was an urgent problem because, as the
young lady said, “crabgrass can spread quickly if you don’t act fast to kill
it.”
To me crabgrass looks like other grass except it has wide leaves
and crawls on the ground. If it is such a problem to get rid of, it must be a
tough as other grass that we walk on. I got to thinking of all the wars,
poverty in the third world, poverty in our world, our economic troubles, people
without jobs and then wondered—“who has time to worry that their grass is not the
acceptable for their neighbors to see?” And yet people will complain if your
yard has too many weeds or the wrong kind of grass. I have a friend who calls
them the “Yard Nazis.” I just call them “crab-grass-people” because they have
this intense fear of crabgrass and apparently no real worries to get upset
about.
Dee Brown, in her Book on Native American Indians, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, points out some
where that the Native Indians noticed that White people hate nature. Yes they
do. As I deal with my new neighbors I can easily get that feeling. This was a
little neighborhood with an actual downtown, a few stores and a local “Kwik-E-Mart” as they say on the Simpsons. They have
been replaced by larger mega-stores.
When
I look around today, I see large houses for the middle class and McMansions
that look really expensive, but also they are all the same as if stamped out of
a factory mould. Even the colors seem uniform. They very from off-white, to grey
or greyish-green.
In
the film Crumb, 1994, Robert Crumb explains a series of cartoons that
show a natural surrounding. Then, frame by frame, civilization takes over and
by the last frame there are buildings, fences and lots of electric wires on
telephone poles. He explains that we have created all this clutter and we just
learn to ignore it all.
Indeed,
as we progress, we make use of roads, electric poles and rely on gasoline
stations to refill us. Gas and electric meters are found on every home lot and
no one really seems to notice how they look. But there is more. We need lights
and lots of them. Mostly we are afraid of burglars or other criminals using the
cover of darkness to do something harmful to our estates. Businesses, such as
Kwik Shop, needs to attract people from the highway so they have what a friend
of mine called “airport runway lights” that can be seen for miles around.
At
one time I could see the stars and planets in my back yard. I grew a lot of
trees to provide my yard some privacy. In the dark part of my back yard I could
see the stars. Now I can only see the very brightest. I once took this woman I
knew to a party at my brother’s old house in the country. She could not believe
all the stars in the sky that can be seen out in the country.
There
are fine cut lawns in the suburbs. No one wants their grass more than six
inches high and a person can get fined for letting such a thing happen. I was
once told that people started cutting grass thousands of years ago to prevent
their enemies from sneaking up on them. If I ask people today, what short grass
protects us from, they will say rats or even snakes. So the fine looking lawns
are a product of our fear of nature’s dangerous beasts. Snakes are probably the
most fearsome animals to white people. In Maize we have an ordinance that says
a person can’t have a piece of property where snakes can live. There aren’t
many snakes in Maize and the only place to find them would be a place where
rats live. Rats are banned in the ordinance also, but who ever wrote it up did
not consider that snakes eat rats. And poisones snakes in Sedgwick County,
where I live, are extremely rare. Snakes are rare now also.
The
suburbs and businesses of Wichita
are now right up to the city border of Maize. A Waterfowl Preserve, that was
privately owned, is supposed to be moved to make way for more development. Wichita builds mega marts
that take up almost a square mile and carry everything from hardware to food
items. No one there working at minimum wage can really specialize in explaining
all this junk they sell, but we just put up with it because the county planning
commission decides this is the way to go and to hell with those who disagree.
When
I was a child I often took walks in the woods, nearby. We build small forts of
sticks and tree houses as children. Later we swam and fished the farm pounds
that were near our house. Today, those ponds are surrounded with homes and “no
trespassing” signs. I wonder how many children today spend any time in wooded
areas. Between sports, computer games and social networking, do kids ever
really see the wild out-doors near them? In this area, parks are the only place
that could happen. Those have to be mowed partly because some joggers fear men hiding
in tall grass will grab them. We not only hate nature, we hate each other as
well. Some Children probably go with their parents, boating and maybe swimming
at the large recreational lakes such as Cheney or the lake in El Dorado State Park. They are artificially made just for summer recreation and large
crowds. There are trees and weeds, but the only wild life is in parts of the
lake.
Today
I get complaints about my yard. Some are understandable if I let the grass go
for too long. Others make no sense to me at all. I had a complaint that I had
sticks lying around in my yard. I have large trees and falling sticks are a
part of that. Why are sticks a problem? I’m not alone. Other home owners I know
have had similar complaints, about sticks, a car parked too long in the same
place, or certain weeds that, even when cut, offend certain suburbanites.
I
used to have a large wooden turtle pen with water turtles, a small fake pound,
and some box turtles. We used to see the turtles all over the road in the
summer. They are now gone, along with toads which have lost their spring pools
to breed in. Opossums are disappearing as they are seen as a nuisance. Also
gone are racoons, skunks and we are probably the only people in the neighbourhood
who don’t run off rabbits and squirrels. The Native Americans were right. White
people hate natural animals. We have an ordinance for the city that pretty much
bans local plants (weeds). Again, if it didn’t come from Europe,
it doesn’t belong here.
The
ponds had plants to clean the water and fish to eat the mosquitoes. One neighbour
complained that my ponds stunk up the whole neighbourhood. I found NO-One who
could smell that water from more than one foot away. Eventually all the development
drove coyotes into the town and my water turtles disappeared one by one. I
found plenty of evidence these animals had been there. I left a chicken that
was too old for us to eat, but the box turtles might nibble on it. It was
completely gone the next day. It had been carried off.
And yes—I am a white man. I just doesn’t hate nature and I
spell my name in Khmer.
សតិវ អតុ
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