No heads-up, no warning:  In late spring and summer the lawn blowers launch their attack.

GASOLINE POWERED GRASS-CUTTING NOISE
REPRESENTS UNWELCOME SIGN OF SPRING

Who decided rakes and brooms should be obsolete?
 
By David Maril
 
How often has this happened to you?

Arriving home early from work and a little weary, you find the house empty and decide to take a nap to catch up on a couple hours’ sleep.

But just as you begin drifting off into a peaceful dream, the Attack of the Lawn Blowers begins.  If you live in the suburbs, you know what I mean: it’s the unwelcome sign of spring.

There’s no heads-up, no warning. The maintenance crews and gardeners who launch the attacks never fire any short volleys before turning these noisy landscape weapons on full blast.

You hear them roaring away outside, blowing around leaves, dirt and grass, and try to get back to sleep. Even turning on fans, the air conditioner and burying your ears in a pillow won’t drown out the noise. Once your frustration turns to anger, a nap becomes an impossibility.

Perhaps the worst part is you never know when you’re going to be attacked. If there was a set-time when you knew the torture was going to take place, you could run some errands or plan to be away from the house or apartment for that part of the day. At the very least, you could mentally prepare for the disturbance.

Frequently, these noise-pollution assaults will occur early on Saturday mornings when you don’t have to get up at the crack of dawn and head in to work. The deafening buzz will begin a few minutes before 8 a.m., just late enough to not be considered an illegal noise disturbance by the police.

You can rationalize roaring lawnmowers and the grinding and screeching of wood being cut. Certainly it would be impractical for people to cut big spacious lawns with old-fashioned push-mowers or cut wood planks with hand-saws.

WHY THE NEED FOR GRASS-BLOWING NOISE MACHINES?

But why the need for noise machines that blow grass and leaves around that could be effectively raked? And often instead of just one or two of these noise blowers, the crew will have several going at the same time. It’s the landscapers’ answer to Operation Desert Storm.

Too often these assaults occur when you are sitting around listening to music. No matter how powerful your stereo speakers may be or how thick your walls, the whining and buzzing racket from the blowers creates a distraction that, by comparison, makes glass shattering seem like a Beethoven symphony.

Sometimes the invasion occurs while you’re in the yard or on the back porch, preparing burgers or steaks for a cookout. As you are applying barbecue sauce on the meat, your neighbor is revving up one of these infernal noisemakers and spreading dust in the direction of your dinner.

Consider yourself an extremely tolerant person if you don’t complain about the stench of gasoline from these machines overpowering the pleasant aroma of flavors from the grill.

The noise is hard to describe. Perhaps you could duplicate the irritation the blowers cause by combining the sounds of a power saw, jackhammer, beeping car-alarm horn, and fingernails scraping on a blackboard.

The noise level is so bad, most of the people who operate these “weapons of mass sanity destruction” wear earplugs to protect themselves from the gasoline motors as they roar up and down a tuneless scale of notes driven by how much dirt, dust, leaves and debris they are blowing around.

GOOD LUCK GETTING THE OPERATOR’S ATTENTION

And good luck trying to get the attention of the blower operator when particles from these machines form a cloud that threatens to pollute the air you are breathing. They can’t hear you hollering threats of what you intend to do if they don’t retreat immediately out of earshot, at least two miles away.  Most operators are so wrapped up in their forehands, backhands and sweeping motions, they don’t ever notice you shaking a fist.

Some communities, most notably in California, have banned these infernal noisemakers.

Strong cases have been made about noise pollution, especially near hospitals and schools. There have also been questions raised about air pollution caused by the gasoline motors and the spreading of grass and leaf particles in the air.

Results from some research projects even question whether gasoline powered blowers actually save on manpower, speed and efficiency in comparison to rakes and brooms.  In many cases, the rakes and brooms are actually faster than the blowers. And some tests have shown that rakes and brooms leave less debris.

Maybe it would help if fitness centers and personal trainers added rake and broom routines to workouts. Fitness experts would be doing us all a favor if they endorsed the benefits of working out with rakes and brooms instead of using gasoline blowers.

In the meantime, these noise machines will continue to threaten peace and quiet.

The absence of gasoline blowers is one advantage winter has over spring and summer. Besides, with the lack of snow the last two years in Baltimore, we seldom hear snow-blowers anymore.

It’s been a quiet winter these past two years. However the prospects for late spring and summer are noisy.
 
davidmaril@hermanmaril.com
 
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