Get Off My Lawn

‘I’m 100% anti-lawn,” said some guy on Twitter the other day. Over 100K followers, so not some random blurt from a crank. No, a highly specific blurt from a crank. “The lawn exists,” he went on, “because some rich dude said ‘I’m going to show the neighborhood that I’m so rich I can afford to just not use this land.’”

Someone chimed in with “hella rooted in classism / white supremacy,” linking to a New York Times video called “The Great American Lawn: How the Dream was Manufactured.”

Yes, it’s a turf war. If you have a lawn, it is a problematic colonialist bastion. When they say “Do the work,” they don’t mean weeding. They mean salt the earth, or plant anti-racist fescue, perhaps. (It’s a grass that grows on every continent except Antarctica, which is the whitest of all land masses.)

I have neighbors who do not have traditional lawns. Bushes, flowers, natural grass, rocks. Now and then the menfolk gather and talk about the weird neighbors. The freethinkers, Harvey calls ’em. And he always spits on the ground when he says it.

“You know what goes on in there, doncha? I talked to the mailman, he says they get The Nation magazine. Course that’s no surprise, since they got one a them rainbow signs out front, you know, in this house we believe in science.” Spits again. “Science. They wanted to believe in science, they’d be hosing down the cracks in the sidewalk with a broad-spectrum herbicide to get rid of the weeds, but no, I see the missus out there plucking them by hand like they’re the whiskers on an old Italian grandmother’s cheek. No offense, Tony.”

“None taken.”

“You know they’re using organic herbicides” — the men mutter, shift from foot to foot like horses in a barn upon hearing distant thunder — “and you know they think those natcheral prairie grasses are better, I don’t know, I guess they think the bison’ll be along any minute in need of a snack, but I’m here to tell you I ran into him and the missus at the Whole Foods the other day and they had a cart full of nothin’ but produce. So we don’t just got us some eco-freaks, we got vegan commie eco-freaks.”

(Brief silence.)

“What were you doing at Whole Foods, Bob?”

“Ahhh, they got this soap the wife has to have. Regular stuff gives her hives. And don’t give me that look, Stan, I seen you at the Trader Joe’s. Anyway, point is, we got ourselves a problem. We don’t do something, they’re gonna put solar panels on the roof. They’re gonna start petitioning for a compost pickup. Then one of us’ll sell out so we can move to a place where lawns are lawns, and one of them moves in, and before you know it every roof has solar panels and every lawn looks like a vacant lot. So are we going to do something about it, or just lose our country?”

Kidding! Here’s what actually happens: No one cares. You pass the house and think nothing of it. You might walk past the lawn that’s a bit patchy and brown, and think, “They could stand for some diligent watering,” but they just had a baby, and they’re busy. You pass the perfect lawn, and think, “There’s something to which we all can aspire. I should get an edger. Electric, not those gas-powered things that rival the CO2 output of a Mao-era Chinese coal-fired plant.”

You suspect that the people who have different lawns are secretly hopeful that normal lawn people judge them. Or even better, hate them. Like a hippie in 1967 who sews an American flag upside down on his jean jacket and walks past the VFW post, thinking, This’ll really screw with the squares, man.

The War on Lawns, if there is such a thing, is one of those telling debates that remind you what the tribe of tolerance would ban if they could. It’s not a matter of saying, “We should have more dense housing, and you should not pour industrial poisons on your lawn.” It’s, we should have only dense housing, and all lawns should be public fields as unkempt as the libido of a college teaching assistant. The hatred of lawns is the hatred of suburbia.

Of course, they’ll insist they don’t hate suburbia; “hate” is not in their vocabulary. Why, hate is the defining aspect of the feral Right, always hunched in the corner with a gun, waiting for imaginary enemies. They simply want to eliminate the choice to have something that is Wrong.

Anti-lawn progressives: “Your private property is rooted in colonialism and whiteness, contributes to ecological degradation, perpetuates a harmful narrative about mastery over the landscape, and bolsters a culture of individualism that constitutes actual violence against non–property owners.”

People who do not agree: “Have a nice day. If you’ll excuse me, I have to fire up the mower and shave the veldt. Stick around if you want to smell some of that sweet two-stroke perfume.”

Anti-lawn progressives: “Lol so fragile why are you afraid of people who don’t want to own a house and a lawn?”

People who do not agree: “CAN’T HEAR YOU OVER THE MOWER.”

So much of the modern debate on the role of the state can be reduced to “Get off my lawn.” But it’s not the “lawn” part that annoys. It’s the “my lawn” part. Puritanism is the suspicion that someone, somewhere, is playing in the back with his kids on the bluegrass and feels not a jot of shame.