Tuesday, 11/7

I know what’s wrong with this country these days, and I can sum it up in two words--

Leaf blowers.

Probably not the two exact words that popped into your mind, right? And I’ll admit I AM being a little facetious, although I'm not the only one. My “Weird Fact of the Day” yesterday was that 68% of Americans wouldn't mind if leaf blowers were banned. I can sure see why so many people think that way--leaf blowers consume finite, non-renewable resources. They spew pollution, both environmental and noise. And because people using leaf blowers use far fewer calories than people who rake, they also add to the country’s exploding obesity problem.

Leaf blowers. . .the all-American problem-causing device!

I don't know about the rest of the 68%, but I've always thought that way, especially on those weekends when one of my neighbors stands in his yard and spends an hour or so using one of the machines to blow several hundred leaves around his yard. I didn’t think it actually took that long to put all those leaves in a pile; after all, when I’ve raked a small yard like the one he has, it sure didn’t take me an hour to do it. I truly believe he just liked the noise the machine was generating and ending up moving the pile of leaves from one side of his yard to the other.

At least that would explain the hour of noise, right?

I know I’m not the typical American these days. If I’m outside enjoying myself, I use a bike or skis; I don’t hop on a 4-wheeler or snowmobile. If I need to go to a store three blocks away, I don’t hop in my SUV and drive there. And if I have to rake leaves, I actually use a rake, and not a pollution spewing noise machine.

Obviously, there’s something seriously wrong with me, right?

Sorry if I’m sounding like a cranky old man in training here, but as I contemplated the noise my neighbor was making I just had this epiphany about leaf blowers and pollution and obesity and how it just typically. . .American it all seems to be. And I’m not saying in any way that everything that seem to be ill these days is the fault of leaf blowers; I can think of at least a dozen others off the top of my head. It’s just that at the moment my neighbor’s leaf blower started up, something clicked in what’s left of my brain, and I knew right then and there--

Leaf blowers are, if nothing else, a symptom of what’s wrong with things these days.

(jim@wmqt.com)