LearningMan

The three giant maple trees in my Michigan yard dropped ten thousand orange leaves overnight. On Sunday morning, I walked outside with a bamboo rake and a roll of brown paper lawn bags, ready to spend four quiet hours raking my grass in peace. I had filled half of one paper bag when a sound like a low-flying World War II fighter plane echoed from across the street. My neighbor Dale, whom the neighborhood calls Two-Cycle Dale because he refuses to own anything with a battery, walked across the asphalt wearing yellow ear defenders and a Stihl backpack leaf blower the size of a jet pack. "That rake is gonna take you till Thanksgiving, chief!" Two-Cycle Dale shouted at ninety decibels because his ear protection was still on. Before I could answer, a second engine roared to life next door. My other neighbor, a retired fire captain named Hose-Line Hank, marched across the property line carrying a Husqvarna blower in one hand and a plastic gas can in the other. "We pushing it to the curb or mulching it with the mower?" Hose-Line Hank yelled over the twin engines. "Curb! Township vacuum truck comes Tuesday!" Two-Cycle Dale yelled back. "Take the left flank by the bushes!" Hose-Line Hank ordered, pointing his black nozzle toward my porch. "What should I do?" I asked, holding my bamboo rake with both hands. "Hold the paper bag open for the wet ones under the gutter!" Two-Cycle Dale shouted. What followed was not yard work. It was a coordinated artillery campaign against nature. Two-Cycle Dale advanced down the driveway in a sweeping arc, creating a four-foot wall of tumbling orange leaves. Hose-Line Hank cut off their escape route along the fence line with surgical precision, driving the entire autumn harvest toward the street in seven minutes flat. A third neighbor, a man named Carburetor Kenny who was walking his beagle, stopped on the sidewalk to supervise and point out missed pockets of leaves behind my mailbox. When the grass was spotless, both men clicked their kill switches at the exact same second. The sudden silence felt like the end of a battle. "You boys need to adjust the idle screw on that Husqvarna, Hank, she's running a little rich," Carburetor Kenny said from the sidewalk. "She's running eighty-nine octane ethanol-free, Kenny, mind your business," Hose-Line Hank said cheerfully. "Thank you all," I said, looking at the six-foot mountain of leaves lined up neatly along the curb. "Buy yourself a backpack unit before December, samurai," Two-Cycle Dale said, lifting one ear cup. "Works on light snow too." I went to the hardware store that afternoon and bought a gas backpack blower. I have not pressed the primer bulb yet, because I know the second it coughs, three men will appear on my lawn to tune my carburetor.