Desperate To Stay One Step Behind the Neighbors
The air is turning crisp, the leaves show the first hint of color, the shadows are a little longer on the lawn; it is a time of year when the homeowner embarks on major improvement projects around the house or yard.
From caveman to king to today’s suburbanite something about the turn of the seasons sparks an impulse to build, to improve, to modernize.
The trick is to find a way to dodge that impulse.
As to the rest of the fellows on this block, don’t look to them for solidarity. They’re lost. They’ve given in. They’ve surrendered.
They are hammering and shingling and sawing and digging and standing in the driveway with a craftsman of some sort who has helpfully gone to the credit card style of payment and if that doesn’t do it there is always the indentured servitude route.
They recruit these fine people from the helping professions, and you can see by the kindness in their eye and the supporting arm they place under the elbow of the staggering homeowner as he sees the final bill that they have an understanding of the fundamental dark shadows underlying life, however bright and shiny it looks on the surface.
There is only one thought in the mind of the neighbor observing this spectacle. You turn your head away and give the man his privacy, and resolve to yourself: I am not going to be that man.
It is surprisingly hard not to be that man as it turns out.
There are forces in the world that no man can name but which direct the currents of human events nonetheless.
The ladies walking their dogs in the morning look over at your house, completely absent of workmen, piles of lumber, or large trucks bearing sod or bushes or mounds of dirt imported from the Amazon or perhaps from Mars and quickly turn their heads.
There is disapproval in their eyes, maybe even disappointment. They had thought better of you.
They give the impression that there was a lot of uncertainly about letting you into the neighborhood at all but they had stood up for you when it really counted, and now look at how you repay them.
The schoolchildren note the complete absence of vans, workmen, and empty checkbooks discarded in the driveway and whisper together and make jokes that you can’t quite hear but which you somehow know are not flattering to you.
There is a sign posted at the end of the street declaring that a special session of the Neighborhood Association will take place at a near date, well out of the usual schedule of those meetings.
This group of fine people have about the same relationship to the errant or unbelieving homeowner as the panel of judges in Salem, Massachusetts had to the witch population in that municipality, so the careful homeowner wonders if there is a special topic for this special session and if that topic is himself.
These and other forces require the person who has no interest in projects of an improving nature to nonetheless act like he does.
He needs some visual reminder or proof that something great is underway within the confines of house and yard, however hard it may be to identify and gaze upon it directly.
In these circumstances nothing is more useful than a wheelbarrow.
It is entirely transportable, it is reasonably affordable, it is large enough to be seen from the street, it gives evidence of some hard work underway, and even when used honestly, as I don’t intend to, it is most ordinarily empty.
I wish to instill a line of thinking among these fine people that has them saying: “You know, that fellow doesn’t have a lot to recommend him. He seems aimless and woolly-headed. He lacks the old school spirit as regards neighborhood gatherings. He gives no indication of knowing a 120 volt outlet from a piece of shingle roofing when all the rest of us counts this as common knowledge. But he’s trying, He’s trying, my friend. Just look at that wheelbarrow sometimes out front and sometimes to the side of his house. Does a man who does nothing as often as he can and who seeks to keep it that way have a wheelbarrow right there every time you look? Does he?” And at that point I want them to stop and cease thinking altogether and walk their damn dog or whatever.
And thus a personal reputation is snatched from the lion’s den.
You might ask how a wheelbarrow got the call.
Well, a crane or cement mixer, these are large objects and rather unmovable and tend to overshadow the other items in the scene. Too, they seem to advertise their unemployed status and make it too easy to conclude that they are not being used at all.
At the other end of the spectrum a single screwdriver is too small, and the fact that a single tool such as this screwdriver seems to move itself from the top of the driveway to the bottom or from the front porch to back escapes the notice of the casual observer, and as we have discussed, getting noticed is the whole point.
It is a simple matter to work out a schedule whereby you take the wheelbarrow from its current placement along longitude and latitude and then wheel it to an entirely other spot. And then, you know, walk away. Leave it there. Your work here is done. Your contribution has been made.
This should be done about three times every two days, and twice a day on weekends.
If it is overturned in the first instance I have always had a liking for putting it right side up once it has reached its new destination,and vice versa, but this is a personal preference only.
There are those that say a ladder serves much the same purpose as a wheelbarrow in terms of cheery false advertising but the problem with a ladder is that sooner or later people are going to expect to see you up on it.
I concede there is a good deal of useless behavior that you can get up to when you have climbed some way up a ladder – I have a liking for scraping small fragments of paint from various spots along the side of the house into a small box, as though collecting specimens of something.
Nonetheless there is the inescapable fact that you are clambering up a tool that makes no guarantees that it is devoted to seeing you get back down to the ground safely.
No one, as far as I know, has ever fallen off a wheelbarrow.
Tarps I have a fondness for as well. Draped over a random set of items in the garage they give the impression of great effort underway or about to be underway.
On occasion I have even draped them over a stretch of bushes and explained to the passerby that I was getting ready to paint the other bushes and didn’t want to splash paint on these.
But all in all, for compactness, utility, and an empty show of brawny, humble, and honest determination, there really is no beating the simple American wheelbarrow.
I mean, why else was it invented?
Use it for its intended purpose, man.
The poet says that good fences make good neighbors, but the same can be said of wheelbarrows. In the current writer’s case I’m part of the neighborhood crew again, a good fellow, no longer ostracized.
Now, if you will excuse me, the timer on the stove just went off, and I have something to do outside, something to move. I promise though it won’t take long.
