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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 27, 1994                   TAG: 9408180009
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SOME LAWN FANATICS SEEM TO BE A LITTLE AERATED IN THE HEAD

His daughter has never found a weed.

There was a picture of this guy - George Robinson by name - posed on the most wonderful lawn I've ever seen. He had enough equipment and supplies parked in front of him to suggest the Second Armored Division has gone into the lawn-maintenance business.

This kind of grass makes you want to have a lawn party - with the men in blue blazers with regimental crests and white ducks and the women in flowing, gauzy floral print dresses. Punch. Little cucumber sandwiches. Perhaps a bit of croquet.

My lawn makes you want to call the federal government to see if it's eligible for disaster aid. It also tends to make you sick if you look at it too much.

George appears in the picture as a tall handsome fellow - confident in a golf shirt and long pants. You can tell he uses all that equipment without sweating and that he would never wear a cap advertising a certain brand of liquor when he cuts grass.

He wouldn't be caught dead wearing my little red swimming trucks with the lambs and wolves on them, and he would never drink beer in front of his lawn.

I hope you can see by now that George - although he is a Great American and an example for us all - is a clear and present danger to those of us who don't love our grass the way he loves his.

For example, he advocates aerating your lawn every fall. I don't know how many of you have rented a gasoline-powered aerator and let it drag you screaming across your yard at 25 m.p.h. I can only say that those of us who have been there have forged a fraternity in blood and tears and have taken a vow never to do that again.

Maybe George gets the Jolly Greener Acres people to aerate his lawn. If he does, he must be a highly paid brain surgeon or something. Of course, it's folly to think he would let anybody else do anything to his yard.

I don't knock George. I just want you to think about what would happen if you offered your grandson five bucks a weed.

In my case, the kid would have enough loot for four undergraduate years at Harvard and graduate study abroad by the time he got to the new weed patch that has grown up around the water meter cover.