I don't remember anymore why the retired Michigan couple wanted to sell the house on Dailey Ave. What I remember is him showing me around, walking with me across the yard, his yard--kept well, I might add--and telling me, proudly, that because I was from the Midwest I already knew the score when it came to grass clippings. I didn't need to be taught.
I hadn't a clue what he was talking about. I'd mowed my share of lawns during my Wisconsin boyhood, but the relative merits of picking up clippings vs. allowing them to settle into the lawn and thereby offer enrichment was nothing I'd ever taken time to consider. But I knew all of that, this guy said, because I was from the Midwest.
Barbara and I spent the first two years of our married life in a two-room, second floor apartment far closer to downtown Phoenix than where this, our first house, still stands--35th Avenue and Thunderbird Road, what was then the far northwest side of the metropolitan area. There was no grass. We got a break on rent because I kept the pool clean, but I don't remember any grass at all within the fortress complex.
All of that was fifty years ago, a half a century. Back then, people spoke in somewhat hushed tones about water--where it was going to come from if more and more people moved to the Valley of the Sun, which is, of course, desert. I don't remember feeling much then back then, but perhaps I didn't know any prophets either.
Today, 3442 West Dailey Avenue, our first house, the home our first child, a daughter, came home to, a house we lived in for a little less than two years, looks like this.
I don't remember the two palms that appear to be in the back yard, but every bit of landscaping has been become a rock pile. Where it isn't cement, the front yard is all gravel.
My guess is that no one in Arizona transforms landscape in this way for aesthetic reasons, although beautiful desert landscape is achievable. It's undoubtedly prudent to just lay gravel, it's environmentally sound, and my guess is its easy on the water bill.
I can't help believe this kind of landscaping is the future of things in the Southwest.
We celebrated our 50th anniversary this June; the whole family went out to Sedona, where we stayed a few days in a glorious Air B and B that was out on the edge of what's become something of a city. Between us and downtown was a gorgeous golf course we'd drive through every time we went to town. I can't imagine Arizona without golf courses, but I can't help but think that the water it requires to keep up a 18 spacious greens is, on its own, amazing.
Today, out here in Iowa, I know about grass clippings. Yesterday, I mowed again, the shaggy carpet beneath my feet having grown like mad since with mid-summer fertilizer. I picked 'em up because the grass was really thick. I don't, by nature, comfortably wear a prophet's robes, but I can't help thinking that I am among those who spend way too much time and resources on my lawn, even way out here in Iowa.
He's gone now, I'm sure. He was a retired General Motors hand in 1972, when we bought the house at 3442 West Dailey. Today, he'd be 110, maybe older.
If we sold the place today, I don't imagine he or I would have much to say about why or why not to keep up the yard. Turning the lawn to stone is the wise thing to do, the thoughtful thing to do, the ecological thing to do.
But I'm guessing that retired Michigander would miss the grass.
And, I am sad to admit, so do I.
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