Illustration: Igor Gnedo
Crabgrass—the bane of suburban homeowners. Every year, I dutifully apply the crabgrass-preventer product, as I’ve been doing for the last 40 years. They get my money, and I get the stubborn expectation of a crabgrass-free lawn, filled with nothing but regular, standard, suburban-approved green grass.
I apply it according to the instructions: between 5 and 5:15 am on the day of a three-quarters-full moon, when the barometric pressure is less than 30 inches of mercury, the relative humidity exceeds 50 percent, the sun is in Aquarius, and the hawk flies north. I set my rotary spreader on the proper setting and traverse across my front and back lawns, careful to notice the distance covered as the product is flung out on either side, lest I overspread.
I then clean the spreader and put it away, satisfied that I’ve done my part to keep my lawn in line with the standards set by neighborhood properties and those depicted on the covers of all the home and garden magazines. I’m holding up my end. I feel proud, accomplished.
At this moment, I am always reminded of my paternal grandfather, Jack, who came to the United States from Slovakia as a young boy. He was intelligent, strong and a hard worker, laboring in the coal mines in Northeastern Pennsylvania. When he died in the late 1960s, in his late sixties, the undertaker told my father that Jack was the finest physical specimen he had ever seen. Clearly, the undertaker was not a doctor, as a fine physical specimen tends not to be lying in a coffin.
In his younger days, Jack would drink too much on occasion. He and some friends got arrested once for punching out plate-glass windows in an old, abandoned warehouse, around 1915. But, other than that, he was a good husband and father.
I lived in South River then (I still do today), and the trips up to visit my grandparents were great adventures: through New Brunswick (maybe we’d see a train crossing the Raritan River or the Rutgers crew team paddling in it), up to Route 22 West, to 31 North, and then 46 West, crossing the Delaware at the Water Gap, and into the Poconos. In the winter, we’d see the ice cascades precariously hanging from the rockface to the right, with the Delaware to our left. In the summer, if Dad was in the mood, we’d stop for hot dogs and birch beer in Buttzville.
My grandparents had a great backyard that I used to love playing in when I was little. Jack had fruit trees, vegetables and grapes growing in the yard, and he enjoyed tending to all of it. But he was a practical man. He worked efficiently and didn’t want to spend money when he didn’t have to.
One day, my father was out back with him and said, “Pa, your front and back lawns are 100 percent crabgrass!” And they were. Jack’s response was, “It’s green, and it grows close to the ground, so I don’t have to cut it so often.”
Which brings me back to the inevitable result of the hours I spend every spring, carefully feeding and tending to my lawn. Once again, crabgrass everywhere! I’m beginning to see the wisdom of Grandpa Jack. Maybe I’ll go punch out a plate-glass window instead.
Brian Fenyak, of South River, is a freelance writer inspired by strange ruminations.
