Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 14, 1993                   TAG: 9307130097
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IT WAS TRULY A STRESSFUL PHONE CALL

The Scotts fertilizer people have this 800 number you can call and get counseled about your lawn.

Don't think these people aren't busy. It's kind of like waiting to talk to someone on the Social Security 800 line.

Apparently, there are a lot of people in this country who are worried about their grass. I know there are a lot of people worried about their Social Security.

These grass people are very nice.

It makes me nervous to call 800 numbers, but I forged ahead and asked this obliging young woman if it was all right to fertilize lightly when the temperature is consistently in the mid-90s.

No, she said. Grass at temperatures like that becomes stressed, and even the most well-meaning, well-formulated fertilizers might burn it.

Since it was 91 outside and you have to push a fertilizer spreader up and down a lot of hills in our yard, I smilingly took off my tube socks because I could stay inside.

I make it a policy to wear these socks when I appear in public in shorts. Some of you young hotdogs may not know it, but tube socks cover up a awful lot of varicosities in one's lower limbs.

Yeah, you people are going to have varicosities one of these days, too. Trust me.

Anyway, the fertilizer people inspired me so much that I began thinking up other 800 numbers that you could call for counseling.

Wouldn't Ann Landers love it if there were a national 800 number for people who are too fat and need counseling badly?

Right. You call 1-800-444-LARD. And I think you had better be prepared to wait a while for a counselor to come on the line.

There are an awful lot of people out there who worry about their weight more than they do their grass, I can tell you that.

Or an 800 number for all of those people who tell Ann about their domestic problems and are told to get counseling.

Call 1-800-888-SPAT and tell the nice young woman you finally get that your husband keeps ogling the well-shaped woman next door who wears practically nothing when she mows her grass - too short as a rule, thereby overstressing it.

Ann Landers is right. There's nothing like counseling.

I stopped worrying about my grass the instant I hung up.

I'm going to live a little now that I don't have to push the fertilizer spreader.

Maybe I'll make a rare appearance on the City Market.

You can't miss me. I'll be the old guy in tube socks with the Redskins' colors on them.