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Friday, November 6, 2009 10:34 PM CST
COLUMN: Taking the revolution to the streets this fall
By HERB MEEKER, Staff Writer
hmeeker@jg-tc.com
A Mattoon city employee asked me the other day if I’d noticed how many people were raking leaves into the street this fall.
I had to bite back on the sarcasm because it’s happening all around me this year.
Go down the street and you’ll see someone in gaudy shorts leisurely blowing leaves into the street. Or they might be bundled up and methodically raking a huge pile over the curb.
I’m expecting one day to see someone with one of those mini-backhoes (the ones with backup beeps that sound like a horn a circus clown honks) to be moving a huge pile down the slope of a driveway to a street.
Of course, this is not the way to get leaves collected in this town. And neither is leaving them in huge piles along the curb. The city ended its leaf-vac program last year. But the piles are there at many homes this fall and not going away because only leaves stuffed in recyclable paper bags will be picked up by city crews from the curbside.
This is a zero-sum game being played by many homeowners. So what’s going on?
I believe it’s a political movement called “I’m-Mad-As-Hell-And-I’m-Not-Going-To-Bag-’Em-Anymore!”
The big question is how neglect of simple instructions produced this political phenomenon in Mattoon. Let us consider a simple scenario.
Someone gets up in the morning. They see all the leaves in their yard.
Having been frustrated by the latest news from Springfield or Washington they start to place blame for the leaves being there. After several minutes of profanity first aimed at Mattoon City Hall, the governor’s mansion, Jon Stewart and Tibetan monks, finally, the ultimate destination for political rage is reached. It’s all Obama’s fault because he and those terrible tree-hugging environmentalists won’t let Americans burn their leaves.
Naturally, it is hard to counter this leap into illogic. The protester’s spouse might calmly point out how the next door neighbor years ago used to stink up the neighborhood when leaf burning was legal in town. This happened because the neighbor’s two good-for-nothing stepsons would pile old tires on the leaf pile (mainly because they had shot too many holes in their burn barrel one New Year’s Eve). And then there was the year when another neighbor used to get rid of his dogs’ droppings on the leaf piles.
And who can forget the Halloween party one year where some of the spirited celebrants discarded portions of their costumes while dancing around a smoldering leaf pile.
Some spouses, God bless them, have photographic memories.
But that doesn’t matter to the truly-dedicated leaf insurgent. It is time to “make a stand against the forces of repression through an act of rugged individualism — That’s what Teddy Roosevelt would have done!” he shouts as he charges into his garage.
Thirty minutes later after some banging and clanging plus a good share of cussing, he finally has the leaf blower at full blast sending the multi-colored array past the boulevard and onto the street.
Soon, a friend from work drives by and becomes convinced he won’t buy leaf bags this fall either. And his brother-in-law does the same, followed by this neighbor and the neighbor’s son. And soon you have a political movement in Mattoon that will send the leaves into some people unfortunate enough to own corner lots or into the storm drain outlets where there may be hell to pay later. Sometimes, the orphaned leaves end up in the yards of the elderly or disabled.
As for myself, I will continue to rake, shovel and bag the leaves for weekly collection at my humble estate in Mattoon. I might even try mulching some of the leaves on my lawn with my mower. And when the weather is too wet for bagging I will use our spare trash cans from the garage to dump the soggy mess at the city yard waste site. Last year, I did the dumping while it was snowing.
Fortunately, I am not alone. And the people able to bag or dispose of leaves the legal way should be proud of their efforts.
Ours is not a movement. It just helps make the leaves actually disappear from the neighborhood.
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Danny Boy wrote on Nov 7, 2009 4:23 PM: