Ernest Smedley, the Bay’s iconic geezer, wrote us recently to share a major enlightening discovery: that the Greater Des Moines, Iowa area is the green grass capital – not of the U.S. – but of the entire world! Here, without exception, every roadside and median, every shopping center and mall, every public building and park, every business park, and each and every home or apartment complex – has for its landscape – a football field size carpet of robust, weed-free, beautifully mowed and trimmed – rich dark green grass! The only exception was the occasional rock bed set around some fast food joints like McDonald’s or Culver’s. That’s it. Even vacant lots are given this same glorification of magnificent swaths of green grass. Without a doubt, central Iowa is the Kingdom of Almighty Grass!
Smedley, coming from Arkansas, the thin soil capital of the U.S. (actually tied for first place with the Gobi Desert), and being so accustomed to rock lawns, was thunderstruck by the contrast of Iowa’s superabundance of green grass as compared to the paucity of the same in Arkansas. The reason for the overwhelming preference for rock lawns in Arkansas is that it is impossible to grow decent grass in Arkansas because of the nutrient deprived native soil and also because rocks are notoriously cheap and abundant there.
Smedley pondered what made these Iowans tick to be so enamored, so devoted to their oceans of green grass while most other people elsewhere can take it or leave it. Certainly, Iowa has an abundant supply of very suitable landscape rocks from its rivers and fields, but other that the few setting off islands for trees, bushes, and flowers, rocks are not used here at all for lawns. Why do these Iowans esteem their grass landscape as the most wonderful, the most beautiful than any other? And this done not by simply allowing nature to take its unguided course, but by tremendous expenditures of their time and treasure.
After exploring every possible explanation, Smedley concluded that these central Iowans have been swept up into a cultic worship of nature deities identified as Queen Grass and King Mower who reign supreme in the Divine Kingdom of Heavenly Grass! These mesmerized Iowans worship their deities with an elaborate ceremony featuring the presentation of the bladed children of Queen Grass to the cruel spinning sword of King Mower.
Worship services are held almost every three or fours days and follow a precise, ritualistic format. First, usually a young boy or girl, with scooper and a plastic bag in hand, walk the designated grass area looking for and removing the droppings of critters, which are for the most part left by their or their neighbors’ dogs. After the area has been sufficiently cleared, a head of the household – usually a woman on weekdays or a man on the weekends and both dressed out in Farm & Fleet bib overalls and the ubiquitous green and yellow John Deere caps – begin the mowing of the grass, with some celebrants riding green and yellow motorized chariots while others are using the more mundane push mowers. Upon completion of the decapitation of the grass, the edgers and the trimmers, then the rakers, and finally the baggers perform their anointed tasks ending the worship service. It is at this point that all the worshipers – men, women, and children – fall into a sublime, ecstatic trance seeing that their elegant grass is now so divinely humbled into neat, evenly trimmed, angled rows as it has bowed down to its sacrificial mutilation!. The worshipers’ joy is complete as they march homeward singing U.S. Senator Charles Grassley’s great hymn, “Oh Happy Day when the Grass has turned to Hay!”
But what of the rare non-believer homeowner, the one who is overwhelmed by the costs attaining to having a grass lawn, and who desires to have the economical benefits offered by a rock lawn? Smedley’s nephew, Sylvester Smedley, recently transferred here to Des Moines from Pottsville, AR, found out what happens when a person deviates from the entrenched religious fervor of the Iowan Grassworshipers. Sylvester bought house number 47 out of 117 homes in a new subdivision named “Friendly Green Acres,” and before moving in, he hired Acme Budget Landscape to install a rock lawn on his property. This choice wasn’t cheap but after figuring all the costs of maintaining a grass lawn, Sylvester figured he’d be money ahead by going with rocks.
Next Week: Smedley turns yellow.