My aunt and uncle lived for most of 40 years on Juanita in south city, between Spring and Gustine. Unlike his brother (my dad), my uncle wasn’t a yard guy. Still, every week or so he broke out a weird stick with a rubber wheel on the inside and sharpened steel teeth on the outside. With great effort, the rubber wheel rode the edge of the sidewalk while the teeth cut away grass trying to encroach.
In today’s big box hardware stores and many places on-line they have electric and even gasoline powered edgers.
Yet, despite the improved technology, my night time walks show me that today’s suburbanites care much, much less about sharply defined sidewalk edges.
Oh, a few (mostly older) homeowners still have razor straight grass next to the sidewalk. And, many – probably using the weedwhacker – maintain much of the sidewalk width. An increasing number, alas, let grass cover part of the sidewalk. A few inches here, a foot there. At one home east of mine the visible sidewalk maybe measures 20 inches.
Yes, the edgeless usually still cut their grass and trim the shrubbery. They are largely not heathens.
We are closer to the 2060’s than we are to the 1960’s. And, nostalgia for sharp looking lawns or AM radio overlooks systemic segregation and persecutions that marked the era of the Beetles and the space race.
That’s why I’m concerned at an increasing number of Facebook posts and other reminiscences of the good old days.
Yes, I ate at the Parkmoor and enjoyed Mister Softee ice cream. I also remember a swimming pool in Jefferson County that became a “private club” to keep out black families, a campground in the Ozarks which handed out John Birch Society tracts, and, being told while on vacation to not mention that I was Catholic.
Just as folks no longer feel compelled to edge their lawns, most embrace (often unconsciously) our different world. Americans fill their homes with Chinese made stuff, even as we’re repelled by treatment of Hong Kong residents. World travelers have become common, allowing a novel coronavirus to filter everywhere in mere weeks. Move about the St. Louis region and by the end of the day you’ll probably see at least one Hijab or Sari – and several really ugly haircuts.
In other words, Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean other lives don’t. Calls for social justice, such as the Fight For $15 or Medicaid Expansion, help families despite being called – incorrectly – socialism.
Yes, it’s tempting to recall sepia memories of the Leave It To Beaver world. Yet, the past needed to be improved. Perfection is not a human virtue.
Our community, our state, our nation, our world evolves. We must too. We must all try to make everyone’s life better, even when that feels uncomfortable.
In these stressful times it’s alright to recall the Parkmoor’s onion rings or long for well edged sidewalks. It’s okay to have a street taco too.
Glenn