It’s the last mow. In other years I’d say the last mow of the season, but if we go ahead with plans to sell the house, it’s my last mow, period. It is a taxing job and you’d think I’d be glad to be done with it for good.
There are three components: the north hill, the main hill, and the back yard. The warm-up for the north hill is the boulevard, a strip that takes three passes, and then it’s back and forth, up and up, on the 35 degree angled hill. The mower is “self-propelled” in a way that a burro is self-propelled. Doesn’t mean he can make it up Everest.
After the north hill, the long boulevard strip, then perhaps six passes on the main lawn. Break. Then I head up the hill and start working my way down, side to side. Because of the nature of the slope, it’s an alternating series of up-and-down stripes. Always the same: “this isn’t so bad it’ll be done soon” on the down stripe, “God help me I’m going to die” on the up stripe. Why not get a riding mower? You say. Because I would topple over and roll down the hill and get hit by a car.
The lawn is all hills. In some areas I swear it is uphills both ways. The topography, I believe, was caused by glacial runoff. I would’ve loved to see it in the original days before the land was etched with wandering streets, when the rains thundered down into the creek and the great torrent threw itself over Minnehaha Falls on its way to the Gulf.
When the front is done, I push the mower up to the house, lift it over the wall by myself, and push it to the back yard. Ah, the wonderful back yard. Piece of cake. Labors soon will be over. Including breaks, it’s about an hour and a half job.
I wrote the above on Saturday morning. I did not do the lawn. I continued to power wash all the stone walls, a job complicated by lovely vines that will soon turn an autumnal hue. I don’t want to rip them off. But I did the back steps and half the wall and the smaller wall and the medium wall and the stones. The house just gleams. Should I do the patio? All those bricks? For someone else who buys the house?
Nah.
Meanwhile wife was using the leaf blower to hoover up the sand left by the patio job. The bag got a tear, because of course the bag got a tear. (This is a more interesting story than it sounds and will be the basis of Monday’s column at the Substack.) Then the leaf blower cracked in two - not broken, necessarily, but along a seam that indicated it was supposed to fit together in a certain way.
I could not get it back together. Because this is 2025, I took a picture of the serial number and model number, pasted it into Grok, and asked for the manual. It took a few seconds, but it popped up. I learned how to reassemble it, but it refused. I am not particularly bothered by its possible future uselessness, because I hate the device intently and realized the joy I will feel when I heave it into the trash.
Then I took a shower and laid down for a nap, and when I woke I made a decision. The moment I woke up, I knew it. We weren’t going to move. Period. Sorry. It’s not going to happen, not now. We’re not going to get this place perfect, then leave. No. This place is perfect. We're going to spend money to better the things that could be better, and then leave it? No. Also, I am going to go to church tomorrow.
And I felt the first true surge of happiness I’d felt in a month.
Well, there was that joy after last week's game. This week - oy, cholera.
Anyway, I got up on Sunday, put on a suit and tie, shined my shoes like my dad always did, and went to the 10 o'clock. Mind you, I am strictly a Christmas-and-Easter guy. which says everything, but between all the news and the mental and emotional house-related contrusions of the last month, I just wanted to be in a good place, a happy place. It was all that. I even stayed for Lutheran Coffee, still as pallid as ever. It was a beautiful day, all warm, all green. Then I went home and powerwashed the bricks on the patio, for us.
Tomorrow: the nightmare of the sand and the promise of the shop-vac. You'll be up to speed if you read the Substack column, and if you subscribe at the paying rate - cheap! - you'll get the full five pieces a week. I appreciate it, as I am "retired." I hate that word. I am not.
It's remarkable how that place has receded from my thoughts and emotions. I don't even read it anymore. I get it free through Apple News + and I rarely give it a look. I feel bad for the old dedicated print subscribers, especially since the local printing plant will be sold, and the paper printed in Iowa and trucked up over night. That will push deadlines forward and make the print product even more irrelevant.
I got out at the right time.
We continue with a small amount of manufactured enthusiasm to explore the trademarks of 1925, because no one else is. NO ONE!
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That's possibly the worst trademark we've seen yet. Could be her. |
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I knew nothing about this, and thought it might be one of those mild “comedy” movies concerning a murder. Who-boy no.
It’s based on a play, a SHOCKING play, and about 30 minutes in you gather that the shocking element was incest. Poor Uncle Harry (The always fine George Sanders, playing a non-cad here) lives at home with three women - sister, aunt, housekeeper. Genteel, but the money’s gone. Into town blows a brash bright New York woman, and she and Harry become an item - whereupon the sister does everything to keep them apart and ruin it. They don’t play it icky or creepy - she’s just attached to him, that’s all.
It’s a good watch, as is anything with Sanders. I spotlight it here for a few reasons. It begins in a mill town, and it’s not a real town.
But that’s a real place. Took a few minutes, but it wasn’t hard.
Ponemah Mills - Norwich, CT. Okay, well this early shot . . .
Might be found in the town as well? I can't locate it.
I thought . . . this is the wrong year for Angela Lansbury to look that old.
Usually I don't show boring end credits, but . . .
It has a twist ending. It wasn’t in the play, and was grafted on after audience testing.
I’ve never seen this in recent memory:
I actually suspect that people refrained from telling the twist so their friends could be just as WTF did I just pay money to see. It's remarkable.
Have a look, if you've the time and curiousity.
It's the Diner!
That will do for today. Matches and a free Substack await; it'll be up around eleven. Thank you for your patronage, as always. Oh - the Matchbook link will take you to the last week's last entry, because today's batch includes the inside of the book.
