The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank by Erma Bombeck Read Free Book Online

watering, mulching, and clipping.
    Lyle started out with a hand mower, but eventually bowed to neighborhood pressure and got a rotary mower. This led to a lawn sweeper to pick up the grass, and an electric lawn trimmer to get close to the walk, and a spreader to evenly distribute new seed and fertilizer.
    Every week there was some new gimmick to buy that sent everyone racing to the garden center. One evening .is Lyle was tooling around in his riding mower with the reclining bucket seats and the console dashboard—his automatic sprinkler creeping along silently over the green carpet, his hedges topped perfectly with his electric hedge clipper, his trees being fed automatically just the right amounts of iron and nitrogen—his neighbor dropped by and said, “Too bad about your lawn, Lyle.”
    Lyle shut off his motor and paled slightly. “What do you mean ,'Too bad about my lawn'?”
    “The whole neighborhood is talking about it. I thought you knew.”
    “Knew what? For God's sake tell me.”
    “Your lawn has root rot nematode.”
    Lyle's eyes misted. “Are you sure?”
    “Didn't you see the little brown spots that never seemed to get better when you watered them?”
    “And it's such a young lawn,” said Lyle. “How long does it have?”
    “With no bicycles, sleds, or kids running over it, I give it about a year.”
    “Well, we're not going to give up,” said Lyle, squaring his shoulders, “they come up with new things every day. We're going to fight!” he said, heading out toward the garden center.
    “Hey,” yelled his neighbor, “maybe this isn't the time to bring it up, but I heard your wife is getting remarried.”
    Lyle turned slowly, disgust written plainly on his face. “What kind of an animal are you?” he asked, his voice quavering with emotion. “First you come here and tell me my lawn has root rot nematode and there's nothing anyone can do to save it and at best it only has a year to live, and then you babble on about my wife remarrying. Who cares? Don't you understand? If my lawn dies, I don't want to go on living any more. Leave me alone.”
    As his neighbor retreated, Lyle got down on his hands and knees and sobbed, “We'll travel. That's what we'll do - just you and me. We'll visit the White House lawn, the grounds at Mt. Vernon, maybe upper New York State where the grass is green most of the time and you can make new friends ...”
    Barbie and Ken
    Tho real lifesaver of the economy was a pair of teenage i lolls who appeared ironically one Christmas stacked (excuse the expression) among the baby dolls who burped, ate, cried, wet, walked, and were as sexless as a stick of gum.
    My daughter picked Barbie up off the counter and exclaimed, “Look, Mommy, here is a doll that looks just like you.”
    I checked out the two-and-a-half-inch bust, the three-inch hips, and the legs that looked like two filter tips without tobacco and said, “She looks like she just whipped through puberty in fifteen minutes.”
    “I want her,” my daughter whined.
    Barbie cost $5.98 in the buff, so we purchased a little dress, a pair of pumps, a bra, and a pair of briefs that came to $6.95.
    “Aren't we going to buy her a girdle?” asked my daughter.
    “Let's wait until she eats and see if she needs one,” I said.
    If any of us believed for a moment that Barbie was going to be happy as a simple housewife, we were in for a surprise. Barbie was a swinger and she needed the wardrobe to do it.
    Within a week, she had three lounge outfits ($5.95 each), an entire pool ensemble ($4.95), two formals ($7.95 each), a traveling suit ($6.95), and skating outfit ($5.00).
    One afternoon as I was on my hands and knees fishing Barbie's beach ball out of the sweeper bag, my daughter announced, “Barbie's lonely.”
    “Terrific!” I said. “Why don't you mail her to Camp Pendleton. And send her satin sheets with her.”
    “I think we ought to buy Ken.”
    There was something weird about Ken, but I couldn't put my finger on