“That dead, dried grass,” my dad would say intently. “We’ve to get the old stuff out and give the new a chance.” He was no lawn care fanatic, but appearances (at least in regard to the front lawn) were critically important to him for reasons I still can’t fathom.
Now, all grown up and a father myself, I lean on a rake on my own lawn (a worn expense of anything that gamely volunteers to come up) and gaze out across the valley of corn stubble and marsh in front our house. An April wind slices through my sweatshirt, and I allow myself a few minutes to reminisce some more, back to a similar morning when I was only 12.
Twelve seemed to be a watershed age in our house. At 12 you stepped from the brink of kidhood into the shadow of the valley of adulthood. You could no longer cower under the covers if there was a bat in the house at night, but had to grab your own badminton racket and join the fray. Sleeping late on Saturdays was no longer allowed. There were now “chores,” and you weren’t just “helping Dad,” you were out there in the elements by yourself, shoveling snow, mowing the lawn, turning over the garden, raking.
Spring raking was one of those chores I was always going to do next weekend, but on this particular Saturday morning I was trapped. I had slept in past nine, enough of an excuse to make my mother pour on the guilt.
“You can do a few things around here, you know.” My mom’s inevitable understatement. Didn’t she realize I was doing just about everything a 12 year old boy could do? Who was going to watch Mighty Mouse save Krakatoa Katie over a bowl of soggy Frosted Flakes? Who was going to crawl back under covers and finish reading Booth Tarkington’s Penrod and Sam or go down to the river and throw rocks at carp?
“And drink your milk, all of it.” My mom said, noticing my forlorn face. “It’ll help you in the long run.”
That was hard to swallow. Evidently this “long run” loomed somewhere far ahead in my future. Could this single, rheumy glass of milk really make any kind of difference? I had a vision of my friends’ cleats in my face as I pitched headlong into the cinder track of the long run. They all drank their milk.
After a suitable, leisurely hour of preparation, I went out into the cold April wind to face the front yard. Rake the dead grass in the spring, cut the live grass all summer long, rake the elm leaves off the grass in the fall, and pile the snow on the grass in the winter. The grass and I were tired.
No matter how much of the full candle power of my 12-year-old ingenuity I brought to bear, there apparently was only one way to get that damn grass. With a stupid rake. This was an implement Neanderthals probably left leaning in a corner of some French cave. I begn to rake with a vengeance as I fantasized huge, jet engine-powered lawn vacuums, or gleaming metal robot lawn workers, outfitted with rocket packs and gattling guns. Anything would make raking more interesting.
I wasn’t getting much dead grass that day because as soon as I had a wispy little pile it would start to blow away. What I did get I would put in our old red wagon and haul to the back yard to be burned later. My family actually believed in torturing the grass.
As I toiled away I wondered, was this really necessary? Or was this just some task my parents had dreamed up to teach me the value of honest labor and responsibility? Possibly they were just aiming for one Saturday I wouldn’t be looking for trouble with my buddies down by the river, where I’m sure my dad figured it was only a matter of time before I fell in and drowned myself. Were they afraid I wouldn’t be ready when it was time to strike out on my own? As far as I was concerned, at the crusty age of 12 I knew pretty much all I needed to know, except for maybe how to drive a stick shift.
When I finally got a wagon’s worth I started to consider taking my first break. My fingers were pink, my nose was running. It seemed justifiable. I started to pack the grass down on the pile in the wagon when suddenly it happened: the rake broke.
Now, this could have been great, since we only owned one rake, and I could have rejoined Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, and Pepe Le Pew free of parental reproach; however, when the rake handle broke, the force of my push made my body pivot sharply. This would have been okay, too; however, my left foot, planted firm on the frozen turf, did not pivot. My foot stayed exactly where it was, leaving my knee to wrench with a sickening crunch I heard as much as felt.
In a second I was on the ground, dying, I thought. The pain was incredible, practically paralyzing my leg, and my brain was caught in a tornado of swirling thoughts: “EIGHTEEN MONTHS IN A CAST!”, “STANDING ON THE SIDELINES ON CRUTCHES!”, and, in Doctor Johnson’s solemn voice, “He’ll always have a limp.”
But after 20 minutes of solid agony and not a little self-pity, I realized I couldn’t just lie there. Cars were driving by, some possibly containing girls, I looked ridiculous. So, with Spartan courage, I grabbed what was left of the rake handle, and, driving it into the unyielding ground, I started to drag my crippled body toward the house. The scene was heartbreaking, but I soldiered on, the runny nose and tears results of grim determination, not crying.
Luckily, I had left the door to our screen porch on the back of our house open. I groped up the two stairs and then rested. The pain was still terrible, and for some stupid reason I kept thinking I would never walk again. Destined, I thought, to go through life pulling myself along with a broken rake handle. I tried to call my parents. “Help” at the top my voice seemed appropriate for the situation. It was crazy. By pushing myself up, I could just see my parents through the living room windows, my dad consumed in his daily mound of newspapers, my mom ironing pants I would probably never need again while she listened to the TV blaring The Wide World of Sports. I feebly tossed the rake handle at the windows and missed. Now, without my trusty stick I was helpless, so I started to squirm infantry-style to our kitchen door on my own.
We had a funny kitchen door. Through some architectural miscalculation, probably on my dad’s part, the porch addition left the kitchen door’s threshold raised about 14 inches from the porch floor. If you ever find yourself with a broken leg at a funny inner door like this, you’ll have to do what I did to be heard. Raising myself up on two hands, I began to beat my forehead against the door. One caution: this cannot be done very long.
I’m positive a conversation then went on in the living room, something like this:
Mom: “Is that someone knocking at the kitchen door?”
Dad: “Who would knock at the kitchen door? ”
Mom: “I don’t know. It sounds to me like someone’s knocking.”
Dad: “No one knocks at the kitchen door, they’d knock at the back door.”
Mom: “It stopped. No, there it is again. Somebody’s knocking. Can you answer the door, Dick?”
Dad: “Where’s Ron?”
Mom: “He’s supposed to be raking the front yard.”
Dad: “I thought he was going to do that last weekend…”
etc., etc.
For some strange reason, my Mom finally put down her iron and came to investigate. I had just discovered that banging your head against something hard does make you forget any pain coming from somewhere else.
“What did you do?” my mom asked.
“IT HURTS!” I cried. I admit wasn’t very articulate at that age.
“What hurts?” My dad had now joined the scene.
“MY LEG!”
“Your leg?” Though either were my parents.
“MY LEG!” Were we speaking the same language?
“What were you doing?” What was I doing? What did it matter what I was doing?
“THE RAKE BROKE!” Okay, that was a mistake, because I knew then the broken rake would immediately become the main issue.
“You broke the rake?”
“I FELL DOWN!”
“I FELL DOWN!”
Finally satisfied, my parents retreated for a consultation. “I’m worried—Should we call Dr. Johnson?—Do you think he broke it?—the rake?”
I was by then lying half in the house and half out, but actually I was feeling a little better. I knew somehow I would soon be back in the safety of my family. I could relax, Mom and Dad would take it from here. Dr. Johnson would make a house call. I might even be lying on the couch, watching Looney Tunes again shortly. There might even by a new copy of Mad Magazine in it for me.
Back in the present, my son rouses me from my reverie by scratching away at the sparse grass in front of me with a little tin rake. He pulls intently at the grass for a few moments, then pauses. “Why are we raking now, Dad, there aren’t even any leaves.”
I look back across the valley and think of my mom and dad. “The dead grass, we’ve got to give the new stuff a chance…but, be careful.”
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