Autumn is the season for reflection on the mysteries of change within constancy and constant change. Days of contemplation on youth, life, mortality. On these sparkling clear fall mornings, sun streaming unfettered through bare trees, one clearly sees the unalterable cycle of Nature. And hears the unbearable two-cycle of Man – the leaf blower.
Leaf blowers are a modernity that definitely separates the XXs from the XYs. Of course there’s no way to prove this, but - no woman ever saw a need to blow leaves.
Perhaps a scolding wife somewhere demanded her hapless husband spend his fall mornings blowing leaves. But her underlying motive surely was punitive, perhaps revenge for a marital transgression. She wasn’t nagging because leaves, dust, and fungus actually need to be blown about at 200mph.
Many an observer has noted that men will do just about anything if they have the right power tool to keep them company while they do it. Women like power tools, too. However, women generally buy a tool only if they really need it. Men, on the other hand, will buy a nifty gadget just because it’s nifty. It’s an appreciation thing, much like art collecting.
Professional gardeners claim that the leaf blower has made their work more cost effective by cutting down manpower time, thus reducing landscape maintenance fees for their clients. Maybe But along with the reduced cost of manpower comes the extra expenditures for equipment storage, safety equipment, fuel, liability insurance, health insurance claims, and in some cases, legal fees.
Even the most intelligent of MANkind is falling under the spell of this modern Siren. Perhaps the dome of noise produced by the leaf blower has some mesmerizing effect that isolates the male from the troublesome world. Sort of a moment of Zen with pain.
For all we know, this leaf blowing madness is being transmitted to our young sons and brothers at special male only gatherings and watering holes. No doubt we could find sheds full of leaf blowers at Augusta National Golf Club, if only they would let an inspection team in.
Leaf blowers were obviously invented by a man, most likely a back doctor with an outstanding student loan. If a woman had done it, she would have invented something more substantial. Her invention would not only remove the leaves – quietly - but also would mulch them and mix them with some friendly bacteria and send them on their way to composting.
She would not have settled for a smelly, heavy, noisy gizmo that drones on worse than an infomercial host just to blow a carpet of leaves into a pile of leaves so that Mother Nature can blow the pile back into a carpet.
A gasoline-powered leaf blower can produce more than100 decibels of grating intrusive noise. The World Health Organization recommends ear protection for noise levels above 75dB.
But it’s not just the noise that is troublesome. Leaf blowers produce considerable air pollution. The American Lung Association of Sacramento claims a two-cycle gasoline powered leaf power produces as much smog as 17 cars. This is a statistic that is hard to believe and many landscaping associations dispute it. Nevertheless, forty-four California cities have enacted leaf blower restrictions and/or bans.
Other cities such as Scarsdale, NY and Winnetka, IL are following the example and restricting leaf blowers also. There’s so much anti-leaf blower activity across the country that the leaf blower industry now employs a full time activist to lobby against antiblower legislation.
The leaf blower popularity might be an indication of man’s attempt to control his environment against enormous odds: the never-ending struggle of man against nature. Or maybe this leaf blower phenomenon is more psychological.
Sigmund Freud is famous, among other things, for not being able to answer the question, “What do women want?”
Dear Doctor, here’s the answer. What do women want, especially during this time of year? Earplugs.
