My Strange, Odd and Almost Eerie Front Lawn

By G. E. Shuman

For many years I have known that there is something, strange, odd, and almost eerie about our home’s front lawn. I know that sounds strange, but like I said, it IS strange. You see, our old home was built on a very busy Barre hillside street, which winds its way around in front of the houses on one side. The street level is actually many feet lower than the homes, as ours, which line it on that side; while on the other side the hill drops off further, even necessitating the use of guard rails in some places. This all makes for great views from high front porches like ours, but also for strange, odd and almost eerie front lawns. The flat portion of our lawn, from the base of the front steps, is only ten feet or so in length out from the house, before it becomes a steep, grassy bank of about six feet in height, extending down to the sidewalk and street below. All of this was no great selling point when the former owners sold the house to us. I remember the man we purchased the place from saying that the lawn was the only thing about the house they couldn’t fix, but that he knew a boy who would mow it for us. I don’t remember my reply, but these two and a half decades of hillside lawnmower pushing later, I wish I had the name and number of that boy. I’m certain that my strange, odd, and almost eerie front lawn will still be no selling point if I ever decide to sell the place myself. And we have thought of selling, off and on, for several years. But selling and buying homes is such a hassle, and lately I have felt somewhat lazy about such things. At this point I’ve about decided to put that work off onto my kids, and just die here. That would be much simpler for me. Let them sell the place; strange, odd, and almost eerie front lawn and all. It’s the least they can do. But, I was telling you about that lawn.


Well, let me begin by saying, I know already that some of you will either not believe or not understand what I am about to tell you about my strange, odd, and almost eerie front lawn. Let me reassure you that every word here is true, or at least contains as much truth as my memory is capable of serving up. Some will choose to not believe. Some will not be able to understand. The thing is, years ago I discovered one particular spot on the lawn, which is just to the left of the walkway, when looking down from the house. It is that particular spot which provides the ‘almost eerie’ aspect of my strange, odd and almost eerie front lawn. Now here’s the part you may either not believe or not understand. The truth is that anything at all which is placed on that spot, will surely, completely, irretrievably, disappear. Call that what you want. I know nothing about other dimensions, black holes, wormholes, or quicksand for that matter, and make no claim to any of those. I just know I have a strange, odd and almost eerie front lawn. We first noticed this phenomenon after a long ago yard sale. Our last customer had been an elderly lady who had succeeded in climbing up the steep granite steps to the flat of the lawn. Before heading back down those steps she said she didn’t blame us for moving. I didn’t bother explaining it wasn’t a moving sale. All I could think was that she must have noticed the strange, odd and almost eerie front lawn. After the lady had left, I took all the leftover yard sale ‘merchandise’ and piled it, coincidentally, (Or was it fate?) on that particular spot. I then made a small paper sign which simply read: FREE, and taped it to one of the boxes. My family and I then left the lawn, and, if memory serves, headed out to spend all the money we had made on the sale. I think we went to McDonalds. When we arrived home only hours later, the leftover ‘merchandise’ was gone. It was simply gone! Only an empty box remained, with my paper sign flapping from it in the wind. I felt bad that no one had gotten to take any of the yard sale stuff, but, as I said, it was simply gone.

Yes, I understand that this is difficult to believe. As I said, we live on a very busy Barre street, and with all the cars which pass by our house you would think someone would have noticed the stuff disappearing. Perhaps it just happens too fast. Now here’s another example, and it’s a good one. We decided we no longer needed a small wooden table which had been collecting magazines and dust for far too long. Now, and I kid you not, I placed the table on the spot on the lawn, added my obligatory FREE sign, and walked back inside. I then simply went to the kitchen, and then returned to lock the front door. And yes, you guessed it. The little table was GONE!
Over the years I have had occasion to test and retest the spot on my strange, odd and almost eerie front lawn, and that spot has never failed me. Although… there was the litter box. Yes, the litter box. You see, we had lost our cat, or it had lost us, and were left with one of those big, covered litter boxes. You know, the kind that looks like a pet carrier, but with no door except for o-dor. I had put the usual FREE sign on the thing, and had gone back inside again to get something to scrape it out. On returning I saw this obviously shaken woman, just as she was nearly hit by a car, in her effort to snag the thing and rescue it from being swallowed by the spot. She succeeded in outsmarting the almost eerie front lawn, and got herself a wonderful, free, litter box, complete with contents.

I decided to write to you about all of this, as I have made good recent use of the spot on the lawn. Last week my son and I put a huge, heavy, rusty, dead air conditioner on the spot. I initially wondered if something of such weight and mass could or would disappear as quickly as smaller things. I calculated that such a two hundred plus pound item might take several days to dissolve, or for whatever happens there to happen to it. I calculated wrong. I taped the FREE sign to the front of it, and within twelve hours, it had also disappeared. And then I added a half-dead microwave oven, and another sign, and it went, nearly, before my eyes. Last night I piled up four old tires on the spot, added the sign which read FREE, and they too are now simply gone. Amazing!

I was just thinking. This is a presidential election year. If word were to spread of my strange, odd and almost eerie front lawn, maybe we could get the candidates to stop by for a photo-op., on a swing through our state. I can see it now: “Okay. John and Barack. Let’s get a picture. How about you two standing right over here… that’s it… rrriiiiggghhht there on that spot. Perfect. Now, could you guys just hold up this little FREE sign for me? This should only take a moment.”

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

By G.E. Shuman

I hope you¢ll forgive me if this column comes across as slightly disjointed, this week. If it does, the reason could be that I am feeling slightly disjointed myself at the moment. As I write the first draft of this piece I am sitting beside my six foot seven inch son, on a shoulder to shoulder flight from Orlando back to good ol¢ Vermont. I can only imagine how Andrew must feel. He barely has room for his knees without poking the person in the seat in front of him. It is only the first leg of the journey, so to speak, but I felt I should use my time wisely, and get some writing done. The sad truth is, I brought no pc, or paper in any form with me on the plane, other than a pocket full of cash register receipts from Disney World. I traded many many many dollar bills for those receipts, but I¢m not sure why I saved them as they don¢t seem to have much value now. A sadder truth is that I am, (This is the truth.) jotting these notes on both sides of the paper barf bag kindly provided for me, or anyone else sitting in my seat, by the airline. I apologize for using the term barf bag here, but I don¢t know what else to call the thing. All other names I can think of actually sound worse to me. I don¢t get motion sickness unless riding the tea cups at Disney World, so, thankfully, haven¢t had to use the bag for its intended purpose. If I should end up using it, that will be evident, as there will be no column from me in this newspaper.

I need to tell you that we had a great time visiting the big mouse in the red pants, and any whining I come up with in the following paragraphs is just that, whining. My nephew Randy and his wife Betsy met us for the last few days of our trip, in the Magic Kingdom, and they are always great fun to be with. You should go to Disney with them sometime. You would love it. Having said that, I must admit that there were a few bumps along our way to Florida. (Here comes the whining.) I believe that anyone who tells you there were no bumps at all in their vacation, never actually took one. Our bumps began when Lorna called before we even left from Burlington, to the Orlando hotel we had booked online and PAID FOR a room in, just to let them know we would be late in arriving that evening. Their response was that the hotel was closed for three months for remodeling. Huh? (Kindly see the words PAID FOR above.) After several moments of panic, only hours before our flight south to a closed hotel, we got word that another hotel had taken all the bookings from ours. That hotel worked our well for us. Disaster avoided.

A "humorous" aside was that our connecting flight from Baltimore was a few hours late in departing. This meant that we would arrive at our new hotel, and would have arrived at the closed hotel, at about 2 AM the following morning. Sounds like fun, right? A nice, restful vacation was in store for us, to be sure. So, to change the subject, or at least enhance it a bit; have you ever spent an extra hour or two sitting in a very busy airport? Well I have, many times, and it is always a treat. Our extended stop over in Baltimore was no exception. It is something to sit there watching the clock, and the passers-by, and actually noticing that people all really do look different. I mentioned to Andrew that if all those people were Pekingese dogs they would, at least, look somewhat alike. He replied that they were not Pekingese dogs. I guess we were all a bit tired by that time. And did you know that, regardless of the time of day, people actually just walk down those endless airport hallways talking to themselves? I don¢t mean some people; I mean most of the people. The talkers all have small pieces of plastic sticking out of one ear, or a piece of it in their hands, held up to their ear, and they just walk and talk, and walk and talk. At least they weren¢t just sitting there watching people walk and talk, as I was. I found that another fun pastime in airports is counting laptops. These days it seems that everybody has one of those things. That is, except for me, and I¢m a writer. There is no justice. Teenagers have laptops. Old people have laptops. I saw one woman sitting in that airport who didn¢t even have a LAP, but, you guessed it, she had a laptop. I don¢t know how she managed that. I also noticed a middle aged Southern Baptist preacher across the way, and he had a laptop, too. (Don¢t ask me how I knew he was a Southern Baptist preacher. Some things are just not possible to hide, like that lady¢s lack of a lap.) If you remember way back to the torturous beginning of this paragraph, our flight out of Baltimore was a few hours late. This was due to a bad thunder storm passing through the area. You would be surprised, sitting in an airport, at the number of people upset at their airlines because they were denied the right to fly at 34,000 feet, in a big metal tube, in a huge thunder storm. Those people must be very brave. But I also don¢t understand the airlines. At one point the intercom announced that a flight was late AND overbooked, and that anyone who would allow themselves to be bumped to the next flight would get a free, future flight on that same airline. Moments later they upped the offer to two free flights. Wow! But let me understand this. You go to the airport, your flight out is two hours or more late, and then you are asked to give up your seat altogether, and wait for the next plane. Why would anyone raise their hand and volunteer to do that two more times, if they didn¡t have to?

As I said earlier, we went to the sunshine state to visit Mickey, Randy and Betsy, and to sweat. We did all of those things, especially the sweat part. And, for that part we were not alone. In fact, I have never seen so many fifty-something, overweight, red-faced, sweaty men in my life. I tried to not stare, but one of them noticed me, and started staring right back at me, from every mirror I passed. He looked a lot like my father, but fatter and sweatier. I found myself not eating much during those humid Disney days, but consumed more bottles of overpriced water than I could probably count. It seemed like I would just guzzle one of those bottles down and it would immediately appear through my sweat-soaked shirt. I could have saved the middle man and just poured the water on myself, I guess. It really was, as they say, hot enough to breed sheep, but I¢m sure nothing could possibly breed down there, this time of year. You know, the Disney people are very smart. It is not by accident that the doors are wide open to all the extremely air conditioned gift shops you pass on a wet walk through The Magic Kingdom, for example. I think I went into every one of those shops, and each time there was another mirror, with that red-faced, fifty-something, overweight man staring back at me a gain. (He was wearing a really stupid looking hat, too.)

Now, do not be misled by my former rantings. Many good things came from our trip to Florida last week, including the wonderful time with my nephew and his wife, with great memories, pictures, and stories to tell. Oh. Emily¢s favorite story is of her mom breaking the bathroom door on one of the airplanes. According to Emi, the no smoking sign on that door went flying and slammed right into the back of someone¢s seat. I¢m glad I slept through that one. One other good thing is this. I decided that if I could walk 5000 miles a day in all that heat and humidity, I could certainly keep walking, and dusted off the old treadmill when we got home. Aren¢t you proud of me? And yes, I used the treadmill after I dusted it off, and plan to continue doing so. I¢ll be ready for Mickey, and that fifty-something man in the mirror next time. I just hope he gets a new hat. Well, my barf bag is full. I mean there is no more space to write on it, so I will close. I wish you all a wonderful summer vacation!