The first snow of winter had fallen on my not-yet-frozen lawn and I could hear a pick-up truck with a snowplow blade on the front, hustling back and forth, cleaning the parking lot next door. I went to the door and looked out. My jaw dropped to the floor when I saw the truck pushing a skiff of snow onto my lawn and in the process, peeling back the sod from my property like it was taking off a bandage.
Before I could make it out to the truck to stop this madness, he’d torn off another strip or two, leaving raw earth behind. I finally managed to wrestle the truck to a halt and lit into the driver, pointing pitifully at my once beautiful landscape, now torn and tattered.
The driver didn’t apologize but he seemed pretty sheepish and radioed his boss to find out the next step in this little drama. His boss crackled onto the two-way radio. “Hey Frank,” said the driver. “A neighbour says I tore up his lawn with the plow and he’s upset about it. What should I tell him?” Frank, ever in search of a nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize, replied: “Tell him to go f–k himself!”
“Ah, Frank, the neighbour is standing right beside my open window,” came back the driver. “Oh,” said Frank, cheerily, not the least bit concerned with the suggestion he’d just made. “Tell him I’ll be right over.”
In a few minutes another pick up truck came screeching around the corner and across the lot to me, and out jumped the ever chipper Frank. He and I surveyed the damage and he was so sorry about everything.
“Hey, tell you what,” he said. “I will be back in the spring to fix this up good as new.”
More than 20 springs have come and gone since that day and every year I wait for Frank but he never shows. But I am sure he’s just been a very busy guy these past two decades and one of these days, he’ll appear, ready to get to work fixing my lawn.
I have to believe that because I can’t imagine a sweetheart like Frank would ever let me down.
©2011 Jim Hagarty
