Shaping up for the pre-season

Shaping up for the pre-season

By Bobby Neal Winters

NALM, the National Association of Lawn Mowers, has been experiencing some turbulent times.  As you may have noticed, we are living in an era of change and NALM is consistent with the zeitgeist.  For years, NALM was dedicated to the purpose of good lawns and the men who mow them. That word “men” came under scrutiny during the upsurge in women’s rights.  Being forward looking and right thinking, the folks at NALM changed that word to “people.” 

I don’t think any woman actually asked for the change by the way.  I think there were actually motions that it be changed directly to “women,” but people it is and people it will stay until such time aliens land and start demanding the right to mow.

But that was years ago.  The trend more recently has been away from “just mowing” to general yard care.  This encompasses the creation of flower gardens, lawn gnomes, retaining walls, the planting the treats, and the placement of the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Pink flamingos are in there somewhere.

Last year, I did my bit trying to catch the wave by installing a French drain in my back yard. I did this during the intersession between Spring and Summer semesters last year.  There had been a place in my back yard where water had been pooling, and the French drain has worked like a charm.  We’ve not received nearly as much rain since.

I followed this by removing some sidewalk that no longer articulated with our front porch after our renovation.  In order to do this, I spent some quality time with an 8-pound sledge hammer.  Let me share, my friends, my great respect for those who earn their daily bread on the business-end of a sledge hammer.  I told my beloved Jean that, should I ever want to end it all in such a way as to allow her to collect my life insurance, the sledge hammer might very well accomplish that feat, but I digress.

This year Jean and I have begun the preseason by moving our hostas. Our hostas have been one of our great, shining successes in the realm of landscaping, so the wise might inquire as to why we are moving them if they are doing well where they are. 

We are doing this because of our basement, the west wall of it to be specific. To quote from the Gordon Lightfoot song, “The Captain wired in he had water coming in / And the good ship and crew was in peril...”  It was actually a computer science professor cum stonemason, and he didn’t wire it in, but you get the picture.

The water is coming in through the flowerbed which had been the home of our hostas, so we moved the hostas as a prelude to covering the flowerbed with pavers.

This will meet with great approval from the officials at NALM because (1) moving the hostas required creating a new flowerbed which is one of the activities they are encouraging and (2) the covering of the former flowerbed with pavers counts as extending a patio which is also meets with their approval.

  This is all good, because we are going to need all the brownie points can get. Our need for a little slack from NALM comes from the state of our back yard.  Our old dog Buttercup, may she rest in peace, had an irrational hatred of toads.  She listened for them and dug them up from the holes in the ground where they hid.  As she grew old and senile, any spot on the ground was suspect.  The upside of this was that at least she was growing weaker. 

Imagine her being replaced with a dog who doesn’t require a toad as an excuse to dig and is young and healthy to boot. This dog is named Charlie, and our back yard is beginning to look like the surface of the moon.

I wonder if the folks at NALM can be bribed.

(Bobby Winters is Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Mathematics at Pittsburg State University.)

The Lawnmower Man

The Lawnmower Man

By Bobby Neal Winters 

(This is an oldie, posted by request)

I ended my mowing season last year on a perfect note.  I had resolved to keep mowing as long as possible—like my neighbor Joe—so that when spring came my lawn would turn from brown to green instantaneously just like his.  In these parts we judge a man by his lawn, and in these parts, Joe sets the standard.  I had finished mowing all of the front yard and about a quarter of the back when I found a cinderblock with my lawnmower. 

The cinderblock-seeking feature of this mower had not been one of its selling points, and I would have remembered because it was only a year old.  So young, so young.

I come from a part of the world—Southern Oklahoma—where the concept of a lawn is a new one.  We mowed the grass to keep the snakes away, or to make them easier to find and kill.  But I find that I am taking on the color of my surroundings, and my neighbor has been a good influence. I have finally seen that keeping a good lawn is one of the traits of a righteous man. 

So complete is my conversion that I spent part of the autumn doing something that would have made my grandfather turn over in his grave.  I actually sowed grass seed and watered it.

Grandpa spent a good part of his life trying to kill grass.  My grandmother was a woman who feared the Lord—possibly the Lord feared her as well—and took that part of the Bible that says, “How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband?” quite seriously.  She used mowing as a means of grace.   

Grandpa’s theology was a bit different.  His response was to set the mower as low to the ground as possible and make the dirt fly when he mowed.  When this is done to a lawn in mid-July in Southern Oklahoma, that lawn tends to enter into a “dormant” stage, which differs little in appearance from death.  

Some men just won’t be saved.

One of the first things that I did when I moved to Pittsburg was buy a lawnmower.  I bought the cheapest one that I could find with the idea that I would work my way up.  When I got tenure, I would get a better mower.  When I got promoted, I would upgrade again, and when I made Full Professor, perhaps—dare I dream—a riding lawnmower. 

I deliberately abused the machine.  I tried weaning it from oil.  Whenever I became frustrated with something, I would startup the mower and walk behind it cursing lest I teach my children foul language.  That is what we send them to school for, after all.

It lasted for years.  I could never justify buying a new one because it just kept going.  I mowed down small trees.  It kept going.  The frame rusted through on one corner, and one of the wheels came off, but it kept going. 

I mowed with it for two years while it was in that condition, and then out of pure depravity, I bought a new one.  It was a beauty.  Self-propelled.  Sweet.  I was on my way up the ladder as I had planned.  Maybe I was a little behind, but what the heck?  It was self-propelled.

The second time that I mowed with it I hit a stump and ruined it.  I brought the old, three-wheeled mower out of retirement to finish out the season.

Finally—after ten years of loyal service—I gave it away to a needy couple in the neighborhood who divorced almost immediately.  I feel somehow responsible even now. 

Then came the mower that I found the cinderblock with.  The memory haunts me yet: A grinding sound, a pool of blackness forming beneath it, the sound of my own sobbing. Gone, gone.

Perhaps I am seeking to set myself too far above my station. A man should not think himself better than his grandfather.  Grandpa was wise.  He knew that while some might attain righteousness by mowing, it is not for such as we.  The way of the lawn is not our way.

I went today and bought a new mower.  It is exactly like the first one; it was the cheapest that they had.  I will try to destroy it. 

HV/AC Memo

HV/AC Memo
By Bobby Neal Winters

We are now in mid-October.  Summer has spent itself in an orgy of sunburned earth and seared grass, but winter with its cold rain, darkness, and snow is not yet upon us.  We are in a time of year when the weather is rather pleasant...at home.

At the university, by way of contrast, this has traditionally been a time of crisis.  Operating the HV/AC systems in large, institutional type buildings is quite a challenge.  It is a subject about which there are things to be known: beautiful things, difficult things, things about gages and air flow and all sorts of stuff.  It is an area wherein the objective, immutable facts of physics come into contact--nay conflict--the subjective area of human comfort.  

Think about it.  In any given building, you might have huge lecture halls and tiny offices; you might have young men coming in at six feet eight inches, three hundred pounds and women whose gross weight is no more than 75 pounds and don’t break 60 inches in height.

No matter how you slice it, someone is going to be uncomfortable.  

Now consider the situation that a large number of these people have been trained--indeed have doctorates--in being critical.  

In this crucible, it is clear that October (and March by way of symmetry) is not going to be a happy month for the folks who run the heating and air-conditioning on campus.

Over the last 22 years that I’ve been on campus, each October there has been a communication sent out to the citizens of campus: administrators, faculty, secretaries, coaches, custodians, and groundskeepers.  First it went out by campus mail with blue ink on white paper, rolled out of a ditto machine; then in black and white; then by e-mail.  It is a document that carries more meaning than its mere words convey and has survived through several changes of personnel and has accreted nuance as the years passed.  One semester  they didn’t send it out and the next semester, it was out all the earlier.  It’s like the Bible; it is a document unto itself.  

While, I will not reproduce it here, its main points are as follows:

1. We are turning off the air-conditioner;
2. At some time we will be turning on the heat;
3. There will be hot days after the air-conditioner is off;
4. There will be cold days before the heat is on;
5. At some point you will be miserable.
6. LIFE IS NOT FAIR!
7. Does this look easy?
8. Do YOU want THIS JOB?
9. Yeah, YOU!
10. This job would eat you up and spit you out you candy-a**ed bookworm.
11. If you are cold, you might want to dress decently for a change and not like some over-the-hill hooker.
12. If you are hot, bring in a stinking electric fan and maybe think about losing some weight.
13. Did you ever think of anyone besides yourself?
14. Did you ever think of sending a thank you card for the ten months out of the year you are comfortable?
15. Do I look like your mother?  
16. I hope you treat her better than you do me.

I may be over-reading the subtext here.

In any case, I am getting worried because it hasn’t come out.  In recent years, there has been some modernization in our HV/AC systems. We’ve put in some new windows.  We’ve generally become more sustainable.  It may be the case that they’ve figured out a way to take us through the transition seamlessly.  If that is so, I will miss the memo.  It meant a lot to me.

The Charcoal Grill/Gas Grill Paradigm Shift

By Bobby Neal Winters

I have been dragged kicking and screaming into the modern, middle-class, small-town, quasi-suburban lifestyle.  I am hung in the middle between professional university administrator and country boy. This means I still don’t water the lawn, but I don’t hang a snake on the fence to make it rain either. Mainly that’s because I haven’t killed any snakes in the yard lately, but no matter, you get my meaning.

Daddy did not charcoal.  The one time Daddy did any cooking outside, he hauled up a bunch of limbs in the yard, made a bonfire, and we had a weenie roast.  We didn’t use coat hangers for the hot dogs, instead we sharpened tree limbs.  It left a big, black, dead spot in the yard that reminded us of the cook out for years to come.

Daddy didn’t even cook out doors much on camping trips because he didn’t take us camping.  He’d grown up in a house with a dirt floor.  When the family got a house with a wood floor, it wasn’t big enough for all the kids, so the boys slept in the cellar.  This didn’t change until 1942 when Daddy was drafted into the army where he got his fill of camping.  

He took us camping exactly once.  He made a fire of limbs and boiled coffee in the bottom of a coffee can.  Whenever I tell this in front of a group, invariably there is one guy who pops up.

“Oh, yes, I’ve done that.  It’s not bad.  You put an egg in it to settle the grounds.”

Sorry, fellow, no egg for us.  You can pick most of the grounds out with your fingers and the rest will eventually work their way out from between your teeth on there own.

There is a verse in the Bible describing Jacob and Esau: The boys grew up, and Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was content to stay at home among the tents. I figure after his time in the out of doors, Daddy wanted to follow Jacob’s example.

All of this to say, that I had to come up with the cooking out of door stuff from other sources.

Back when Jean and I first married, her folks had got us a Coleman stove for camping.  We lived in student housing on the OSU campus, and we used it to make blackened chicken.  We couldn’t make it in doors or it would set the smoke alarm off, so I set up the Coleman stove on the gate of my old Ford pickup and cooked it outside.

Eventually, we got a habachi and then gradually worked out way up until I got a grill big enough that I could put a whole sack of charcoal in at one time.  My friend Mikey gave me one of those chimneys to start coals in and I thought I was something.  It only took about an hour to get my coals going and then about 20 minutes to cook.

Damn!  I was there.

Then a month or so back we did a cook out and I discovered my coal pan had rusted through.  Well, no problem, I thought.  Just go to Home Depot and buy a replacement when I need it.

Jean mentioned this to me last week because Lydia’s birthday is coming up, and she wanted hot dogs for her friends.  So I made the Home Depot trip last Saturday.

Those of you who are wise to the ways of the world are a step ahead of me.  They don’t sell replacement charcoal pans anymore--if they ever did.  I found myself at Home Depot in the barbecue section at the end of the barbecue season.  There around me were gas grills marked to sell.

What to do, what to do?

I bought a gas grill and spent some quality time in the out of doors putting it together.  On Sunday, I turned on the gas, pressed a button, and had fire.  Ten minutes later there were hot dogs.

Daddy would be proud.

A Shift of Metaphysics

By Bobby Neal Winters

Before I was old enough to go to school, I used to sit on the floor and watch the old TV show Dark Shadows while my mother did housework in the background and we waited for the bus to bring my brother home from school.

Mom always joked that I had to explain it to her.  She meant this as a compliment to my intelligence, but I think it’s actually a commentary on the level of writing in that show.  It was actually written so that a four-year-old could understand it.

That having been said, Dark Shadows was my introduction to Barnabas Collins and the world of vampires.  Let me say at the onset that I am not an expert on vampires.  I’ve never read Bram Stoker’s Dracula nor much else beyond Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. Any knowledge I’ve gained I’ve done so through popular sources on TV and at the movies.  The things I know are this:

1. Vampires feed on blood.
2. Vampires cannot come out in the daylight;
3. Vampires cannot see their reflection;
4. Vampires flee from the Cross;
5. Vampires can only be killed by special means which vary from source to source; a wooden stake through the heart will usually do the trick;
6. Vampirism is contagious;
7. There is a connection with bats.

Apparently, the Vampire Myth goes way back in history into the pre-scientific age, but I’ve seen articles in popular science magazines which have attempted to explain the Myth in scientific terms.  It may have been no less than Isaac Asimov who attempted to connect the Vampire Myth with rabies.  It’s not a bad case either.

This connection by Asimov and others grows out of the modern age.  We cannot tolerate mysteries.  We must have solid, scientific explanations.

But the purpose of a myth is not to be explained away with science.  The purpose of a myth is to teach.

What the Vampire Myth teaches is important because there are vampires.

Okay, you have to take a shift into metaphor to see what I am saying, but bear with me for a moment.  Haven’t you ever been around someone who sucks the life out of you?  Who when you see them for what they are, their power over you disappears? Who cannot recognize the flaws in themselves? Who have no desire for redemption?  Who are terribly hard  to deal with?

Often these folks can be charismatic individuals--until you see them for who they are--and they can convert others to their cause while sucking the life out of them at the same time.

I’ve got everything in there but the connection with bats.

My point is that the Vampire Myth is a spiritual thing. It is based in the supernatural, the unnatural.

But in addition to the efforts by Asimov and others on the scientific front,  the popular media has shifted as well.  Vampirism is viewed in many, if not most, of the popular media on the subject, as a disease.  Movies like I am Legend and Daybreakers view vampires as suffering from a disease that one might attempt to sure. It’s caused by a virus just like a cold or the flu.   

It’s an extension of the arrogance of modernism into the realm of the undead.  If there is a problem we can fix it.  If their is a disease we can cure it.

As movies, I am Legend was better than Daybreakers. Though, as I will expand on momentarily, Daybreakers did a good job in capturing many of the spiritual insights the Vampire Myth offers us, it lacked the umami  to bring those ingredients together.  

Let me now expand.  Sunlight kills vampires.  It destroys them utterly.  They are left as nothing but ashes.  In Daybreakers, there was a cure found. The first man cured of vampirism had been caught on fire by the daylight but plunged himself into water to put out the flames.  From there he was cured.  I am reminded here of the purifying flames of purgatory or the  Uncreated Light that was with God at the beginning of the world which burns away all that is impure in us.

There were also those among the vampires who didn’t want to be cured.  Because of their fear of death, they were willing to subject themselves--and everyone else--to a life of eternal darkness.

So Daybreakers does capture the spiritual message of the Vampire Myth.  What it does is buy into the scientific-materialist notion of mechanism for vampirism.

Bear with me while I tell a story.  There is a man of my acquaintance who has some challenges in dealing with reality.  One of these is that he could go months without paying his rent even though he had the money.

His landlord was a wealthy man who didn’t become wealthy by letting people go months without paying their rent.  Why did he allow this man that option?  The landlord’s father knew the renter’s father.  The renter’s father had been an abusive man whose abuse had led to the renter’s challenged condition.

The scientific-materialist would say the reason the landlord let him go was because of the chemicals in his brain rewarded him for this act of altruism.  The real reason is that his father taught him pity.

Science has some need to try to take over everything.  It’s like kudzu.  It has its uses, but one must be alert lest it get out of its proper place and succeed in taking over everything.

Three little words

My Grandpa Byrd, my mother’s father, had been married in Mississippi to a woman who was part Choctaw. She died in the Spanish Influenza leaving him with two boys, Clyde and Joe, both of whom were handsome and charming but each of whom got into trouble in the way it is easy for handsome and charming young men to do.

My Grandma Byrd, mother’s mother, had been married in Alabama to a soldier who, as near as I can recall, had been stationed at Ft. Leavenworth where he died of the Spanish Influenza. They’d had a baby together who’d also died of the flu.

The two of them, Grandma and Grandpa, had married afterward. I know nothing of any love story between them. I do know that she referred to him as “Byrd,” which is not the greatest sign of Romantic love. Together, in addition to Clyde and Joe, they had Jack, Faye, Ona, and Tommy

My Grampa Sam and my Grandma Lora got married when he was 22 and she was 15. She lied about her age on the marriage license; I’ve got a copy of it. If a 22-year-old ran off with a 15-year-old daughter of mine, I’d have him put in prison. Seriously.

But.

But were it not for these circumstances, tragedies included, lining up, I would not exist.

I am the product of lies and tragedy.

I meditate on this in particular because as I grow older I am becoming judgmental and grumpy. I have certain dearly held beliefs. You shouldn’t lie on your marriage license to get married. You should get your inoculations against the flu. Delay gratification. Spend the interest; invest the principal. Buy low; sell high. Keep right except to pass. Always be specific when you lie.

If you’ve got a rule, I am ready to follow it.

But the rules get broken all the time. The people we love die before their time. People let hearts (or other organs) overrule their heads. Tragedy befalls us either randomly, through design, or through our own bad judgment.

Life goes on. Three little words. I prefer “I love you,” but these three will do.

Weed eaters, sex, and batteries

By Bobby Neal Winters

As some of you may have guessed, some of the little details of life that make the world that much more beautiful aren’t really all that important to me. I have now evolved enough in my development to appreciate this level of detail, to realize that some consider it to be very important, but, as of yet, I’ve not set attaining this level of detail in my own work to be an immediate, high priority.

Take for example lawn care. I mow my lawn on a regular basis. My family, who got into the detail thing even less than I do, gave me a high value on mowing when I was a child. We mowed the lawn for the snakes. This had a double effect, as Aquinas might say. The first of these was to keep the snakes away, as snakes prefer tall grass and will eschew mowed areas in favor of cover. The second is that if a snake were to come into the mowed area he would be rendered easier to find and kill.

It’s a practical thing: life and death.

A detail like weed eating, i.e. trimming and edging does not come into this. Mowing is for safety; trimming and edging is cosmetic.

But, as I am continually reminded, I am no longer a country boy. I live in town. A lot of town folks take what was once just an activity done for personal safety and turn it into a sport. It is a sport in the sense that they practice it themselves and observe--and criticise--the efforts of others.

While I like to think of myself as immune to peer pressure because I never did drugs (didn’t inhale because I’ve never even been in the room with a joint) and never drank a beer until the day after my oldest daughter was born (a St. Pauli Girl: you never forget your first girl), the peer pressure of weed eating has taken root.

I suppose this is because there is a certain amount of cool-looking equipment involved. Weed eaters extend our powers. One could say they are phallic to a certain degree. There are the electric ones, but with them you are tethered to the nearest electrical outlet and require electricity as an outside power source. It totally mutes the feeling of independence.

A gasoline powered machine makes you free. The gas-powered ones also require a special petroleum product to be mixed with the gasoline because of the 2-cycle engines. I find this to be an activity that separates the sexes.

To explain this, I have to be very careful. Women certainly are capable of creating the special mixture of gasoline required for 2-cycle engines. Indeed, as they have some much practice mixing up stuff for cakes and other women-stuff like that, one would suspect they would be far more adept at this than the male of the species. My point is they don’t choose to do it. It could be they leave it to us because “men ought to be good for something.” In any case, it seeming to be a male-only activity makes it more attractive; kind of like writing our names in the snow.

The trouble with gas-powered weed eaters is that they are incredibly tedious. Most only work well the first time they are used. The rest work well for a season. There is a tiny minority that work well for more than a season. These are the few who are lucky enough to be owned by men who know how to take care of things.

My father-in-law was such a man. He preached to me the gospel of draining gasoline from engines over the winter. He was a good man. He left me a well-taken-care-of Homelite weed eater. It always started on the first pull. It always ran as long as you needed it.

He then passed-away and I inherited it. It lasted one season with me. I left the gas in it over the winter, and it wouldn’t start this season. After I’d pulled on it long enough to give a convincing impression of a man having a heart attack, I began to hear his voice. It was gentle, with a touch of humor.

“Didn’t drain the gas over the winter, did you?”

“No,” heave, heave, cough, cough, sweat, sweat, “I didn’t.”

“Having trouble starting it, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” gasp, gasp, drip, drip, “I am.”

“Maybe if you drained the gas now, made up a new batch, and put a new spark plug in it would help.”

I rested for three days and tried this. The weed eater started but couldn’t sustain. I thought about my earlier analogy and all those Cialis commercials that are on, but I decided there was such a thing a pushing a metaphor too far. I also tried fixing my Weedeater brand weed eater, but to no avail.

While I was at Home Depot getting my new spark plug, I noticed something new. It was a battery-powered Ryobi weed eater. It didn’t cost all that much and it combined the freedom of the gasoline version with the ease of use of the electric one.

It’s an eight-teen volt machine. It starts every time.

Having written that just now, it strikes me that maybe, having removed my last excuse for not weed eating that I’ve out-smarted myself.

Such is life.