If Grass Could Run:

Why did they put Fathers Day next to the longest day of the year? Is it the yard work thing? My father (more than ten years gone now) was a terror in that department, haunting yard sales to secure the most decrepit mechanized gear imaginable, which he would bubble-gum and baling twine into fitful operability. One of these hybrid devices, employed as a favor on a neighbor's yard, gave it such a mowing as resembled the haircut given WWII collaborators. Who knew a lawn could bleed? After that, the neighbor volunteered to cut ours. I now hire a guy to mow our yard--but watching him out the window, up in the catbird seat, cheerfully destroying everything in his path, I remember Dad.