Back garden, our house, Milford 2003
[from FB post: May 5, 2010]
I mow my lawn with a push mower. You would think I was burning a flag or something given the comments I get from people nearly every time. People walking by I don't even know say "why don't you get a riding mower?" It takes me 2 hours to mow the lawn and it's good cardio. Should I get a riding mower so I can save time to watch TV and be less active? Don't we watch TV cuz there is nothing else to do anyway?
Small town living is a fish bowl. Nothing I did on or around our house escaped the ever-vigilant residents of Milford, PA. We used to laugh that we didn't need a security system. What with everyone always scrutinizing our renovations and the bored, second-floor residents of the nursing home next door looking out over us - no criminal stood a chance. With this vigilance came a lot of advice, whether we wanted it or not.
We caved to this town peer pressure at times. When we had to pick the color of the stain on the siding of the house, we put samples on the front porch of the Laurel Villa Restaurant across the street and ask the owners to take an informal vote of diners since they looked directly at the house. That served two purposes - first and foremost, Brian and I absolutely could not make up our minds about a "house-defining" choice like exterior color. As a by-product, it included our ever-advising neighbors in the process. That little stunt made us the talk of the town (for 30 seconds), but did improve our relations with the neighbors.
The Historic and Architectural Review Board chair, Beth Kelly (roundly despised in town, but I loved her Victorian mansion up the street) stopped by after the house was stained and gave us her "approval". Take note, the house was built in 1960 and was neither architecturally unique nor in the "historic zone" of Milford. She was just letting us know that those she represented approved of our renovations to date. She did come with some advice as well, but luckily I tuned her out the moment I found out who she was. Milford made me want to become a raging libertarian at times.
Lawn care, however, that was another animal all together. I had the Chief of Police, Gary Williams, stop by my house in the early days to let me know that his son had a lawn mowing business. I politely declined and told him I did my own work. I later found out later the man had strong-armed a lot of residents into choosing his son (who, if a chip off the old block, probably would not have done a good job) for all their lawn maintenance needs. I mowed slightly under an acre by hand. It took some time, yes, but the grounds were heavily landscaped with lots of things to mow around. A riding mower was yet one more thing for me to maintain. The burden of taking care of that huge property alone made me averse to taking on anything additional to look after. Thus, I had push-mowers and in the decade-plus that I lived there, I went through three or four of them. Our lawn should have been some laboratory testing grounds for Black & Decker or Toro - those push mowers were beaten up before they gave up the ghost.
And so I became legend for being that crazy old rich guy who push-mowed at that big house at the end of Ann Street. (they must have been such skin flints because they were just trying to save money). I did save on a gym membership at least.