Truesday: This Lawn Is My Lawn...
*The views expressed in Truesday are those of the author and do not represent Austinist as a whole. Thank heavens.* -The Editors
Dearest members of our esteemed Neighborhood Association Board of Directors,
I would like to begin this letter by way of gracious manifest: you are all perceivably noble and considered generally benevolent in all the interest you show toward our collective reputation to outside neighborhoods. I feel that your presence here has been reported as important, historically necessary, and an approximation of what some refer to as “fair representation” for everyone living here. For your prior diligent service to our property values, many believe you should be proud.
Clap, clap. Here, here.
Which is why, with some degree of trepidation, I must recommend that you all disband yourselves as an institution (stop writing me disparaging, demanding letters), renounce any authority over me or my interests (my lawn), and quickly transport yourselves to whatever sort of safe-haven exists out there for non-believers donning your cut of red cloth (perhaps a distant apartment complex, or suburban development).
Here, out of what the local neighborhood news-rag will likely call “self”-righteous benevolence, I will present my case in a more full form than you or your kind likely deserve.
My rub:
It has come to my attention, by way of repeated notices taped to my mailbox, that there have been a whole host of recent complaints against my ongoing campaign to reign in the less attractive, if not Geneva-Convention-violating elements currently being witnessed on my front lawn. These have been listed to include the following (multiple instances in several cases), but this is in no way a complete list:
1. Widely spread display of Whataburger drive-through paraphernalia (8 filed complaints). While these fast-food items are too far beneath me to even be considered my own, I will admit that their original contents were probably quite delicious. However, they were surely deposited there, practically covering the entire Southwest quadrant of the region, by another agent of the area. Perhaps it is my hillbilly neighbors who should be shouldering the weight of this misguided complaint. The foul hillbillies next door. Yes, the ones with more disabled pickup trucks than sense, and further: more unregistered canines than pickups. Their nightly howls during the waning ours of the moon have not gone unnoticed by my authority-dialing fingers. Their dogs are also loud, and likely responsible for the more shredded portions of those food bags which appear with sad regularity, littering the winded air of our streets and sticking to our once-shining-white curbs after a wetting rain has passed. None of these defilements are of my making, they are the result of others’ mishandlings and irresponsibility. Namely, the hillbillies.
2. Overgrowth of vegetation on such a massive scale as to have never been witnessed in the modern age (27, dear lord, filed complaints). While I will admit that perhaps my eyes have been turned toward much more pressing matters than that of the foot-length of naturally growing grass on my property, I must convey to this Board that the natural growth of locally-sourced grasses should not be dismissed as “a hazardous eyesore”, the way it is degraded in all those 27 ill-founded complaints. In fact, I believe it should be considered forward-thinking of me to include such local flavor in my landscape design. I might also bring in the hand of the good lord, as it was his who decided the grass’s length to begin with. Not I. I cannot control the rains or seed-carrying winds. Only He operates such graceful machinery. These complaints should have been fired up into the heavens, or perhaps folded neatly and placed in a local church’s collection plate.
3. Unsightly rusting lawn implement in center of yard (4 filed complaints). Considering the overwhelming number of complaints filed for the “Overgrowth” issue, as previously deflected by myself, I am surprised that anyone would find themselves in a proper vantage point to view any “lawn implement” in my yard through such thick underbrush. Unless they were illegally trespassing without due notice, in which case their complaints should be stricken from the record due to their inadmissibility. Otherwise, I believe these complaints are about my lawnmower, which was left in the yard by my former lawn-keeper, Ramon, last summer, after he and I had a falling-out over the fifteen-foot wall I asked him to build that would have kept my lawn’s Southern border safe from jibberish-speaking intruders. He felt that fortified watchtowers and winding entrails of razor wire were both unnecessary, and “dehumanizing”. I had no idea what he meant by that. So I looked that word up. It is fascinating what his people have learned from ours since coming here to take care of our neighborhood’s grounds. You’d think they’d be more appreciative and respectful of our lawn-care equipment. Obviously not. Which, quite frankly, I view as further proof of the urgent need to complete my wall plan. So, yet again, this lawn besmirching is not of my making and I shall not absorb these misplaced arrows of complaint. Blame the immigrants.
My requirements:
I require restitution of my reputation’s prior state of prim brilliance. I feel, quite rightly so, that these complaints leveled against my broader gardening efforts and my person have resulted in no less than a general vote of “no confidence” from my fellow Street dwellers, and that they are, in ways both overt and covert, undermining my economic efforts beyond these borders. Since I believe we can all agree that our individual station in life is simply the product of where we choose to place each other, I feel it best for everyone to cease this impractical judging at once, and immediately place me at the top of whatever social order is currently being constructed. I offer this idea to everyone, not just to The Board, as an opportunity to extend to me the olive branch I so rightly deserve. I will only extend this opportunity once.
Unless it is rebuked, but I sincerely hope this bridge will not be scuttled by anyone’s explosively devious devices of improvisation.
My recommendation:
Complete disbanding of the current Neighborhood Administration as it stands, with a speedy filling of that void by myself and my cadre of trusted advisors. This cadre will include only the highest of high caliber individuals that my mind can remember as being particularly welcoming to me at the recent Cakewalk For Cancer fundraising event at the clubhouse (what a hoot!). Once this coalition is put into place and order, an honest assessment of our Neighborhood’s strategic position within the larger scope of the city can be calculated and summarily leveraged against all potential (present and future) rival neighborhoods in order to preserve our most noble (ex) Neighborhood Government’s way of life. We will likely choose to use violent force, if anything we find is deemed either: necessary by way of imminent threat, or by way of already-been-planned-so-fuck-it.
I foresee the immediate need to steer all budget monies earmarked for streetlamp replacement and playground equipment repair toward the purchase of explosives and buckets of acid from my cousins outside of Midland. It’s okay, they’re totally cool.
Sincerely, and see your kids at the pool,
Richard "The Man-istan" Afghanistan III
