The Weirs 

July 24 2006

I’ve always claimed that Don should write a memoir titled “Winnipesaukee Gardens.” This is the name of the old dance hall in the Weirs, but the two words also sum up a childhood spent in a unique place and time. I thought of this again this summer when we attended the first reunion of the “Weirs Gang,” the group of kids, almost all boys, who grew up in the Weirs during World War II. To the reunion some of these men brought photographs over which everyone exclaimed, laughed, became pensive. Everyone, of course, brought memories. 

Because Don has declared that one writer in our twosome is plenty and he isn’t about to write a memoir or anything else ever ever ever, I’ve used fictional versions of his memories in various novels, mixing them in with my own experiences of the Weirs. Readers of The Cheerleader know the place as “the boardwalk.” In The Cost of Living, I wrote:

“A ghost resort town until next summer, Aquedoctan seemed haunted not by the Indians but by tourists and by Polly and me as kids buying Karamel Korn at the candy-hot-dog-souvenir store that Viv’s folks owned on the boardwalk. On the walls of the store there were spread-eagled sweatshirts saying AQUEDOCTAN BEACH and CORBRIDGE, PLAYGROUND OF THE LAKES REGION, and on the shelves the salt and pepper shakers and shellacked cedar boxes said the same, and there was the smell of steamed hot dogs withered in their damp buns, and the smell of hot candy was thickened with the smell of popcorn butter. (photo, below: "Main Street") 
“Eating, Polly and I would wander back outdoors to the night and the lake. The boardwalk then was crowded with people. In the bowling alley the pins crashed backward, and outside the jewelry store the silhouette man furiously snipped black profiles of exhausted children, and there was always the smell of sweat and French fries, there was always the chant of Beano and the crack of shooting gallery rifles.”

Yes, the Weirs is the honky-tonk town on Lake Winnipesaukee.

But its name comes from the distant past, when Native Americans built rock weirs near the channel between the lake and Paugus Bay. Then in 1652 explorers for the Massachusetts Bay Colony discovered that Lake Winnipesaukee was the source of the Merrimack River and chiseled a marker on a big rock near those weirs. When we were young kids, there was only a relatively small beach at the Weirs, and in it was this Endicott Rock, protected by a monument—a granite cage. I remember shivering in a towel after a swim and looking at the rock, trying to imagine Indians and intrepid explorers here instead of sunbathers.

-You also had to imagine the Hotel Weirs across the main street, a grand old hotel with 230 rooms and 50 bathrooms; it burned down in 1924. Still standing, however, are a row of big boarding houses and a group of cottages known as Veterans’ Grove, where veterans have been vacationing since the Civil War. (photo, below: "Veterans' Grove Headquarters")

When we were in our teens, we watched amazed as a much larger beach was actually made, built alongside the old beach. I think we’d only known natural beaches before. Some of the local business owners dreamed of rivaling famous New England beaches such as Old Orchard Beach, Hampton Beach, and Revere Beach. Don remembers how aghast he was when the town’s name was changed to Weirs Beach and a garish big new sign was put up at the Weirs Bridge. 

Don’s maternal grandparents, Julia and Perley Avery, had moved to Laconia from Rumney, NH, as newlyweds, and from Laconia they eventually moved eight miles to settle in the Weirs. In their home on Andrews Avenue, Julia began renting rooms. Don’s mother, Marion, and her younger sister, Barbara, helped Julia run the boarding house. Just as in stories (and jokes), the landlady’s pretty daughters attracted attention, and they married two of the boarders. Don’s father, Jim, had come from Somerville, Massachusetts, via Concord, New Hampshire, to work in the Weirs for Irwin Marine and The Winnipesaukee Times. Marion and Jim were married in 1933. 

Julia had a true entrepreneurial spirit and bought the house next door in which to serve meals. Don recalls that this was always referred to as just “the white house.” Then Julia forged onward, bought some land on Lakeside Avenue, and got her brothers, Philip and Dana Chapman, to build six cabins. These were the “housekeeping” variety, with a kitchenette and, on the porch, an icebox; the iceman delivered a chunk of ice (cut from frozen Winnipesaukee during the winter) whenever the guest put up a sign requesting one. Each cabin had the luxury of its own toilet. Later there was a communal-shower building. 

Julia named her new business the Green Arrow Cabins, because the check-in office was inthe boarding house, with a green arrow pointing to the cabins. The business succeeded so well that she had more cabins built and began buying neighboring cottages to rent. 

-During all this, Don lived in the Weirs for a spell before his parents bought the house on River Street in Laconia that Cheerleader readers know as “Snowy’s House.” Then came the War. Don’s father joined the Navy’s Seabees (c.b. = construction battalion) and eventually found himself in the Philippines. Don’s mother rented the River Street house. She and Don (officially, Donald Keith) and his brother (Richard Kirk) moved back to the Weirs into a rented house on Foster Avenue right behind the roller-skating rink on the main street. Across Foster Avenue from this house was the back driveway to his grandparents’ house. As Don puts it, he could run from cookie jar to cookie jar. (photo, below: "Don's House on Foster Avenue") This is the time he remembers so vividly, these war years and a few following years, until the family moved back to the River Street house in 1948. 

In the summer, despite wartime gas rationing, the Weirs still teemed with tourists. Their presence was both exciting and annoying, but the local kids stuck to themselves and their own pursuits, diving off the dance-hall deck, swimming until waterlogged, searching for redeemable soda bottles and dropped money under the boardwalk, hitching free rides on the M/S Mount Washington (during which they usually read comic books in the upper deckhouse instead of looking at the boring scenery). Don would only return home from his busy lazy day when he heard his mother calling him and his brother to supper, the sound ringing out across the Weirs: “DONALD! RICHARD!” (photo, below: "The Dance Hall")

There was sometimes work to be done. Don remembers helping with the Green Arrow’s laundry when he was too small to reach the clotheslines and later raking out a load of gravel in front of the cabins. -What with wages from his grandmother, found money, and his weekly allowance of twenty-five cents, he could buy an occasional treat on the boardwalk. He did envy the summer people buying greater treats, ice cream and hot dogs and—inconceivable extravagance!—fried clams, but sometimes in the evening his grandmother would give him the money to run down to the boardwalk and buy ice-cream cones for the family. He would run back clutching a fistful, melting. (photo, below: "The Boardwalk") 

He fell asleep at night listening to the recorded organ music of the roller-skating rink. 

After the War, his father ran Winnipesaukee Gardens, the dance hall, in addition to other jobs, so Don got to go there free. In The Cheerleader, I wrote of this place in the 1950s:

Back in, say, 1947, Don was still too young to be interested in the dancing; it was the music he wanted to hear and see on these summer nights. Up into the balcony he would climb to sit and watch. Big bands came then to the Weirs, and Don was a rapt audience for Cab Calloway, Jimmy Dorsey, and such. He was even inspired to take trumpet lessons—briefly. 

In the winter, the Weirs became almost as isolated as an island. For entertainment, the kids built snow forts and played war. They sledded down Tower Hill’s street right into the main street, empty of traffic. They perched on the Coke cooler at Tarlson’s General Store and read comic books. They took the train in to Laconia to the movies. For education, they rode schoolbuses to elementary schools in Lakeport and Laconia. 

Then came the time for Don and his parents and brother to return to Laconia for good. At the reunion, Don’s brother remarked wryly that he hadn’t felt any wrenching emotions about the move, whereas kids nowadays would probably have to have counseling. Don too remembers taking it in his stride and thinks that’s probably because his grandparents and aunt and uncle were still there in the Weirs, and it was only eight miles away. He knew he’d always be going back. 

Indeed, at age fourteen he was on the boardwalk working at the Karamel Korn store, cooking hot dogs in the front window. I know I must have seen him there, before I finally met him in high school three years later. 

© 2006 by Ruth Doan MacDougall; photos © 2006 by Don MacDougall; all rights reserved

Frost Heaves

April 30 2006

Back when Don and I were young and thought ourselves awfully witty, we translated the “Frost Heaves” signs on roads as “Poet Pukes”and made jokes about Robert Frost’s “Road Not Taken.” 

These signs go up during spring thaw to warn of the changes in the roads’ underpinnings caused by winter. In our childhood the signs were simpler and more direct: BUMP. Nowadays we do occasionally still see a “Bump” sign, and we wonder how the road crews differentiate between a bump and a frost heave. The effect is the same for the car and its passengers, a downward plunge and an upward lunge, or vice versa. 

The British, who are usually accurate about labeling things, call frost heaves “subsidences.” When we were living in England in the 1960s, this was one of the road signs for which we weren’t prepared by all the British novels we’d read. (Other such mysterious signs included “Tipping Lorries.” Lorries we knew, but tipping? Oh, aha, dump trucks!) We decided that this choice of words, “subsidence,” was evidently based on the principle that when frost melts, the roadway settles down, leaving high spots or bumps, which we Americans call heaves, which of course they aren’t. (Heaves result when freezing, not melting, occurs.) 

Until recently, the bumps have appeared in late March and April. Last year the frost-heaves season came early, and this year it started even earlier, in February. Is this another sign of global warming, like the early arrival of migrating birds? The frost heaves these past two years have also been the worst we can remember. At the general store, everybody exchanges news of conditions on various roads, sort of an informal traffic report without the helicopter. There are jokes about having to take Dramamine before getting in the car, and indeed, when we’re on a bumpy road and see another car coming toward us, it reminds us of seeing a boat bobbing through a heavy chop. 

Don and I have learned where all the treacherous spots are on our various routes, and we have separate ways of dealing with them. For instance, Don avoids our usual route from our house to the main highway and takes a different road. When I’m driving, I refuse to do that because it passes a new subdivision that breaks my heart, and I go the usual way but very cautiously in the bad sections. We’ve memorized all these bad sections on all our roads, but sometimes when there’s something interesting on the radio we forget and find ourselves jouncing and flying. 

On one such occasion I was reminded of Mark Twain’s description of his stagecoach ride to the Nebraska Territory in Roughing It. When we arrived home, teeth jarred, bones shaken, I got out my copy of the book and found that I was wrong; his ride was smooth in comparison: “Our coach was a great swinging and swaying stage, of the most sumptuous description—an imposing cradle on wheels.” 

I read on, however, and came to what I’d remembered, an anecdote that Twain was told over and over about Horace Greeley. The stagecoach driver says to Twain, “I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like to listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was leaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an engagement to lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go through quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the buttons all off of Horace’s coat, and finally shot his head clean through the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to go easier—said he warn’t in as much of a hurry as he was awhile ago. But Hank Monk said, ‘Keep your seat, Horace, and I’ll get you there on time’—and you bet he did, too, what was left of him!” 

So that’s what we feel like during frost-heaves season, except that we do have seatbelts that nearly cut us in half while keeping us from going through the roof. 

2005

Where In the World is Esther Williams?

October 20, 2005 

Despite their apparent tranquility, ponds are busy places teeming with activity seen and unseen. This spring and summer, the beaver ponds that enclose our place on two sides were busier than ever.,/p>

The beavers made their usual early appearance as soon as the ice began to melt into floes. The largest beaver, whom Don has named the Admiral, steamed along through the slushy water to investigate the fifty-yard dam. When he disappeared around a bend, we soon heard the familiar grating-carrot sound of a beaver dining on tree bark.

Then new visitors began to arrive. In addition to the usual mallard ducks, we spotted a twosome we couldn’t identify until we grabbed our wildlife encyclopedia: hooded mergansers. Two Canada geese, instead of just flying over the pond on their course north, landed and stayed a while, sailing majestically around and climbing up on the beaver lodge to survey their surroundings. It was at this point that Don remarked, looking out our kitchen window at all the various swimmers in the pond, “Where is Esther Williams?” 

Instead of Esther, we next saw a moose in the woods across the pond. He didn’t swim, but we knew he didn’t need to, because a couple of years ago we watched one walk crunching across the dam and then stride onward, splash splash, across the pond. 

Spring peepers shrilled and pulsed, and wh/en they subsided after their torrid romances, the sounds of frogs and toads kept us company as we read in the evening on the porch, along with the grating-carrot sound and the occasional slap of a beaver tail. 

One morning, as I was about to step outdoors, a young bear, probably a year old, appeared in front of the toolshed and meandered along the lawn to what we now call the beaver path. It- used to be our path; years ago I named it the Panama Path because Don hacked it out along the brook during the height of mosquito season. The brook is now the pond, and this year the beavers have been using what’s left of the path as their route to something watercressy that they find luscious at the edge of the lawn. Here the bear stopped and then slid into the pond and swam to the opposite side. The sight of a bear swimming in the pond was new to us. 

Turtles sunned themselves on rocks. Frogs chugged and glugged. An otter frolicked a la the Mother West Wind Stories. Kingfishers dived. Herons stood immobile in the pond, wide wings folded, pretending to be tall thin reeds. 

The beavers were busier than usual. In the past, we’d never seen any up and about until seven o’clock in the evening, but on some days this summer we saw them as early as two-thirty in the afternoon. They were apt still to be around at seven a.m., working on the dams or towing a leafy branch across the middle of the pond (the latter sight we referred to as Birnam wood coming to Dunsinane). 

We discovered that a friend had an old canoe for sale, and we couldn’t resist. For years we’ve been talking about buying an old rowboat or Don’s building some sort of Pogo-type raft so we could explore the ponds, but it’s one of the many things we’ve never got around to. At last, we now had a canoe, albeit in bad shape. Don propped it on sawhorses in the backyard and started fixing it. Then he began working at clearing a launching area in a little inlet that we call Beaver Bay because the beavers can be seen there so often, working on the dam or eating a twig. I imagined how the beavers, nature’s engineers, must be puzzling over what this human being was attempting to do. They did appreciate the branches he left for them after chainsawing. He used a crowbar and a come-along to move rocks, and finally there was room to moor the repaired canoe.

And at last we went canoeing around the beaver ponds, seeing what we’d never been able to from the bank, and getting a water view of the mud-and-branches intricacy of the dams. It was even lovelier out there than I’d dreamed. I paddled carefully as I looked and looked. But if I tipped the canoe over, could I be Esther Williams? 

The Toolshed

January 11 2005

When we moved to this house in 1976, in the backyard there was a ramshackle old shed (complete with outhouse), too dilapidated to save, beyond rescue. A phoebe family nested in an eave, so Don waited until they were gone for the winter before he tore the eyesore down. He built a little shelf in the eave on the corner of the house’s ell, hoping the phoebes would set up housekeeping there when they returned. And he said, “I’ll build a new toolshed one of these days.”

Did I mention this was in 1976?

It took a couple of years for phoebes to decide to use the shelf instead of whatever other spot they chose when they came back the following spring. It took Don until last year to build the toolshed.

During the ensuing twenty-eight years, we stored gardening tools in the cellar, and in exchange for some handyman work we stored larger equipment in an elderly neighbor’s barn for the winter. When that neighbor’s house (and barn) were sold, we squeezed the tiller and wheelbarrow awkwardly under our back porch. A few years ago we acquired a secondhand snowblower too large to fit under, so Don had to wrap it in that blue heavy-duty plastic that’s seen so much in yards nowadays.

I said, “That plastic stuff is hideous.”

Don said, “And it’s a pain in the ass, wrapping and unwrapping.” Then he added what he’d been saying since 1976. “I’ll build a new toolshed one of these days.”

-He had once built a beautiful toolshed. In 1964, my parents moved from our Gilford Avenue house (partly the inspiration for Tom’s on Morning Street in THE CHEERLEADER) to a cute little old Cape in Sanbornton, low-ceilinged, crooked-floored. It was charming, but by 1966 they knew they needed elbow room. My father said he needed a toolshed; what he really wanted was a place to write that would be more remote than the office he’d set up in the guest bedroom. My mother wanted a porch. So Don designed a 12’ x 16’ building that was more like a small cabin with a front porch than a shed. My sister, Penny, and her husband and two-year-old daughter were visiting when the location in the backyard was decided upon, and wee Thane toddled over with a large rock to place the first of the foundation stones.

Don and my father worked on the “toolshed” throughout the summer and fall. Neither of them owned any power tools then, so when it was finished they decided it was probably the last building ever built in New Hampshire using only hand tools. It was indeed beautiful, with white clapboards, windows, the screened porch, and indoors there was a woodstove, which my father said was invaluable to a writer because feeding a stove gave you an excuse to stop writing.

Maybe, I thought as the years passed without our own toolshed, that toolshed in Sanbornton was too much to live up to. Maybe that’s what daunted Don.

But during the years of procrastination, he did do some accumulating of materials, all salvaged from various projects. Far from reassuring me, however, this hodgepodge of boards and shingles made me fearful that if Don ever did get around to doing any actual building, the result would resemble a kid’s treehouse made from scraps.

This worry made me say, a couple of summers ago, “Let’s see what the Home Depot has for sheds.”

Don said, “I know what they have, and they’re ugly.”

I nagged, “Let’s just look.”

So we looked at Home Depot and other places, and Don didn’t change his mind. Some of the sheds seemed adequate to me, though I had to agree when he pointed out that the roof lines were wrong, too flat for beauty and for New Hampshire snow.

But all this looking showed Don the challenge. Lo and behold, he took from his bookshelves the same book he’d used when building my parents’ toolshed, HOW TO BUILD YOUR CABIN OR MODERN VACATION HOME by Harry Walton, published in 1964. He began doing math and drawing designs for a shed about a third of the size of my parents’. After assessing all of that accumulated salvage and deciding what else he needed, he went to the lumber yard and bought some new (thank heavens) materials.

Then one afternoon I heard the chainsaw and hurried outdoors to see him cutting a clearing in the woods at the edge of the lawn behind our house. When that was done, I helped him lug the debris away and raked the duff smooth. We had a construction site! Don built the platform, and suddenly something was where nothing had been before.

Which surprised a moose. Early one morning there was a tremendous thud outdoors and the house shook. In the backyard stood a moose who had just jumped over the platform it had found in its way when it emerged from the woods. The platform was as far as Don got in 2003. And that was how things remained throughout the next May and June and July. Chipmunks scampered across it. I despaired.

Then suddenly, at the end of August, Don was galvanized by the approach of autumn, which meant winter wasn’t far behind. He realized he did not want to spend another winter wrapping and unwrapping the snowblower in blue plastic. More lumber was bought, stacked in the backyard, and then began going up vertically. As the structure took shape, I remembered how I had longed for a playhouse when I was little. This toolshed was going to be adorable, even if Don fretted over using rough siding instead of clapboards because of expense and ease. While he worked, chipmunks dashed past him, and the two guinea hens from the nearby farm, who spent their days strolling around the neighborhood, stopped each morning to observe his progress, twittering and pecking up seeds scattered under the birdfeeder.

He did, with flourishes: a lean-to for cordwood on the rear, a house for bats under an eave, and a ramp for the snowblower!

© 2005 by Ruth Doan MacDougall; photos © 2005 by Don MacDougall; all rights reserved

2004

Sandwich Fair Parade

October 10, 2004

It usually takes five minutes to drive from our house to the village, but wary of Sandwich Fair traffic on this Sunday Don and I gave ourselves fifteen, and it was a good thing we did because we ran into a traffic jam on the Squam Lake Road as fairgoers converged on Center Sandwich. In Don’s pickup we joined the other vehicles creeping along in the warm sunshine, beneath trees bright red and yellow, with glimpses of mountains colored like tapestries. A perfect Sandwich Fair day!

Because the fair takes place on Columbus Day weekend (it used to be just on Columbus Day, October 12, back before holidays were shifted around to make long weekends), each year the weather is an adventure, varying from sun to rain, from Indian summer to blustery winterlike cold. Don and I still recall a very chilly day when the enterprising and improvising owner of one lemonade stand switched to selling hot lemonade, which warmed our hands as well as our insides.

By quarter of twelve, the time we’d been asked to arrive, we reached the field in the center of town, behind some houses opposite the town hall, where the parade participants were assembling. It was like being backstage. We left our pickup in the crammed parking area and went searching for the Over the Hill Hikers amongst the people milling around in various uniforms or costumes—Girl Scouts, high-school bands—there, there were the hikers, wearing Over the Hill sweatshirts, hiking pants, hiking boots, and there was the decorated pickup truck that Don was to drive.

Although I’ve been hiking with the Over the Hillers since 1992, I’ve never been one of the members who marched in the parade, partly because the timing always falls on or around our wedding anniversary and we wanted to leave the time free to take a trip, and partly because Don said he’d die of embarrassment if I did march and he wasn’t kidding all that much. How ironic that this year the Over the Hill leader had asked him if he would drive the pickup so that its owner could march instead of drive! This is a special year for the Over the Hillers, their twenty-fifth anniversary, and in the back of the pickup those founding members still alive would ride to celebrate the occasion. I was asked to ride in the cab with Don and run the tape recorder, which would play over a loudspeaker a tape of members singing the Over the Hill song, “Crazy Hikers,” set to the tune of “My Darling Clementine.”

I am not making this up.

Amid much laughter and chat, Don got acquainted with the pickup and I was shown how the tape recorder worked. From his experience with audio-visual aids during his years as a high-school librarian, Don has concluded that they always break down, so I was worried that this would happen and I fretted over my awesome responsibility. Don had a more serious worry and responsibility; there were just regular folding chairs in the back of the pickup, which wasn’t high-sided, and if he had to stop quickly, what would happen? Two of the people sitting back there were in their nineties!

I looked around and remembered marching with my Girl Scout troop in Memorial Day parades, particularly the year I had the responsibility of carrying the flag. The last time I’d ever been in a parade was at Christmastime in high school when the cheerleaders escorted Santa Claus downtown, giving out lollipops to kids, an experience that readers of THE CHEERLEADER will recognize.

Rehearsal began. I pushed the Play button, and the hikers worked on their drill routine, gesturing outward and inward with their trekking poles, clacking, turning in a circle. Around us were antique cars, a “Get Out and Vote” float, the Sandwich antique fire engine with someone in it wearing a Smokey the Bear costume, and people hurried back and forth, judges, organizers, a girl in a milk carton lettered Girl Scout Cookies, a band member in a kilt, a bunch of kids in dalmation costumes (but I didn’t count a hundred and one of them). Miss Winnipesaukee, wearing her crown and, instead of a gown, an aqua top and white pants, stood on the trailer hitch of the Miss Winnipesaukee pickup truck, holding onto the tailgate—in high heels, so she was perched there just on her toes.

Near the Over the Hill pickup, the general store’s float of hay bales and pumpkins sat ready to be towed by a John Deere tractor driven by Buddy, a high-school classmate of Don’s, a lawyer.

“Hey, Buddy,” said white-haired Don to white-haired Buddy, “want to drag?”

The judging is done before the parade, and the Over the Hillers performed and won a blue ribbon. Then at last the parade started. We were directed into our place behind an antique car. Walking ahead of our pickup were the two tallest hikers carrying an Over the Hill banner between them. Walking on either side of the pickup, at Don’s suggestion, were two hikers, spotters, keeping an eye on the passengers in the back, ready to alert Don if any problem occurred. The rest of the hikers marched behind the pickup. In first gear, Don gently, ever so carefully, eased it across the bumps of the field, and when we reached the street I pushed the Play button again. 

The Over the Hillers and their routine, which they repeated all along the way, were a big hit, a tremendous success. The applause and cheers got louder and louder as the crowds lining the street grew larger and larger the closer we got to the fairground, and when we entered, the crowds were near, not on sidewalks, and although they were happy, appreciative, I felt the fear I’ve felt in crowds long before “terrorism” was an everyday word. I also thought that this must be what it’s like for a celebrity or a politician. And of course I thought of President Kennedy riding along the street in Dallas.

We circled through part of the fairground, inhaling the aroma of French fries, back along streets to the field, across which Don again maneuvered without tipping out his cargo. I had turned the tape often, without mishap. We’d both fulfilled our responsiblities successfully.

Today we shared a peppersteak sandwich, lemonade, French fries. It’s a well-known fact that food shared does not contain calories or cholesterol. As we ate, the tune of “Crazy Hikers” reverberated in our heads.

Copyright by Ruth Doan MacDougall © 2004
All rights reserved

Lawns

June 21, 2004

“The customer is always right,” Don and I told ourselves when we started our little caretaking business back in 1988. And the customers wanted perfect lawns.

As my sister, Penny, a landscape designer, has pointed out to me, lawns are mainly suited to the climate in Britain, so we colonials in our varied climes have to struggle to create a luxuriant greensward. At our own house, Don and I have never bothered doing anything to our lawn. We like seeing the fresh early yellow of dandelions after the long bleak winter; we wouldn’t dream of killing them. Don remembers digging dandelion greens with his grandmother, and once I made a batch of dandelion wine (more successful as research for The Flowers of the Forest than as a delicious beverage). When we mow our lawn, we’re apt to take pity on patches of bluets, violets, or clover and avoid them. We let the ferns encroach in the shady spots, and the daisies in the sun.

So when we started our business, we had to learn to be (oh, pun!) ruthless with our customers’ lawns. In hardware stores we studied the instructions on bags of lawn-care products; we bought stuff to combat crabgrass, grubs, and other hostile elements; we rented aerating and dethatching equipment. One year we had to buy a long strip of turf itself, to replace the grass a skunk had dug up searching for a nocturnal snack. Homogeneous perfection still eludes us at our customers’ places, but we keep trying, while at home we let our motley lawn take care of itself.

A few years ago when I was organizing my father’s papers, I ran across this note he had made:

Copyright 2004 by Ruth Doan MacDougall; all rights reserved