The Answer’s (Not) Leaf Blowin’ in the Wind

September 1999
The Answer’s (Not) Leaf Blowin’ in the Wind
By Bob Coskrey

If I were to list the 100 most ridiculous invention of the last 25 years—and don’t worry, I’m not going to—but theoretically, if I were, at the very top of the list would be the leaf blower.

Whenever I see someone using one, it never fails to amuse me, very often to point of uncontrolled, sometimes inappropriate laughter.

Why do I feel this way? Because of the machine’s basic, nonsensical function: it moves unwanted material from the user’s property to someone else’s property.

If you cut down a 60-foot oak three and, using a tractor, dragged it from your yard to your neighbor’s, do you think he or she might be at least minimally displeased with your actions?

It’s a rhetorical question, of course, but you would be well-advised to check out whether the neighbor has a gun collection before attempting anything like this.

So then, why do people allow their neighbors to blow all their grass clippings, leaves, and miscellaneous other bits of trash into their yards? Simple. Because all they have to do is blow it into another neighbor’s yard, along with their own unwanted material.

The next logical question wrenched from this totally irrational scenario is, where does all this stuff go? Well, unless a neighbor, without benefit of a leaf blower, breaks the chain, this landlubber’s flotsam and jetsam keeps getting moved about ad infinitum. It could even end up back on the property of origin one day.

A slightly different event happens with commercial property. Dirt, trash, animal droppings, etc., are simply blown into the street, where it is hoped, I guess, to be washed by rainwater into drains, but of course what actually occurs is that most of it gets blown by the wind or passing vehicles onto someone else’s property or, as with the homeowners, back onto the property of origin.

Now, you must admit, this whole thing is quite ludicrous. It’s sort of like “The Emperor’s New Clothes” story. Everyone just pretends that they’re doing a splendid job with their leaf blowers and simply ignores the fact that nothing is actually being cleaned up, it’s merely being redistributed.

And what makes this whole self-sustaining bizarre world even more absurd is that the leaf blower operators themselves carry out their duties with such purposeful solemnity. On the homeowner’s level, these guys stand there blasting everything that’s not fastened down to the earth into the street or the neighbor’s yard, not once looking up from their assignments.

I would expect that if a female walked by and made a laudatory comment, the response would be something similar to “doin’ muh job ma’am,” followed by tipping his cap, if he had one.

The commercial operators are even more ridiculous, since they often wear uniforms and with these menacing machines strapped on their backs like flame-throwers, or sometimes resembling the team from “Ghostbusters,” these armies of the absurd attack parking lots and sidewalks with a futile vengeance.

I know that if these things had been prevalent 25 years ago, Mel Brooks or Monty Python would have made movies around them. In fact, occasionally upon seeing these regiments of ludicrous landscapers, I imagine them as jousting knights or castle storming medieval soldiers wielding their wicked wind machines.

And I haven’t even mentioned another inanity: that these people are actually paid for this, sort of like hiring someone to featherdust the Sphinx.

What do we do about this, my fellow Americans? And I limit my audience to Americans because we seem to be the only ones who purchase these kinds of goof ball items, just as we gobbled up moon rocks, hermit crabs, mood rings, lava lamps, and those grotesque little trolls. And I rank the leaf blower with these other awful artifacts, not just on their mutual goofiness, but because they also share another characteristic: total uselessness.

Do we continue this neurotic charade till one day we discover we have such a leaf, grass, and trash buildup that we can’t go outdoors?

I’m sure you’re growing impatient awaiting my remedy for correcting this situation, so I’ll get right to it.

I have two recommendations. We can all decide on which one might be more effective.

My first one is to make the leaf flower into a leaf vacuum with a large bag attachment, of course.

This way you’re not simply blowing away the same leaves, grass, etc., until they day you pass on, or as we centipede centurions say, become one with the mole crickets. Instead, you can create a mulch pile or put it in lawn bags. Like normal people.

The only possible drawback I see would be if some of these young horny leaf blower—I mean leaf sucker—operators might want to, er, “experiment,” as they say, as young hormonally saturated guys are inclined to do. Then we might have an epidemic of severe “groin pulls” or even worse, although many of the latter could find work in the exciting field of harem guarding.

Of course, we could only pray that our supercharged president might get hold of one, which he more than likely would nickname “the Monica.” From the beneficial perspective, it might just straighten out his Peyronies disease problem and Hillary could concentrate on her Senate race. But I digress.

My second recommendation is that we all keep our leaf blowers just as they are, but that we get seriously organized. Rather than continuing this endless cycle of reblowing your own trash, we make sure that the unwanted material moves towards one egress point out of your subdivision, neighborhood, or business district, then out of your city and county, state, and finally out of the country. You would have winding phalanxes of leaf blower operators stretched out along highways and roads moving everything along in one direction. We would not want to pollute the oceans with it, so we’d have to decide on either Canada or Mexico as its final destination. Frankly, I think Mexico is the more viable option, since we might have a little more leverage, considering the NAFTA agreement. Basically we tell them:

“If you want our factories then you’ve got take our leaves, grass, and assorted trash.” If they refuse, we simply build a huge mulch and trash wall all along the Mexican border to keep out all the illegal aliens.

My God. I’m starting to sound like Pat Buchanan, so let me close with a benign third suggestion for the use of a leaf blower.

The amazing hurricane dissipater. The next time a hurricane is heading for us, everybody heads to the coast packing his leaf blower. When its winds are a few hundred yards away, everyone, on cue, flips on his machine and the storm is blasted back into the sea. In fact, if each state cooperated, we could blow the whole thing up to Canada, just so Mexico wouldn’t think we were singling them out.

Well, I guess it’s true what they say about good old American ingenuity, even if I do say so myself.

Please let me know which remedy you favor. And although I don’t even own a leaf blower, as a concerned citizen I want to do my civic duty.

Unfortunately, I will be unable to get this program cranked up right away. I’ve got urological surgery coming up next month. I had this really freak accident with an Electrolux.