The Druids

I used to have some neighbors whom I thought were crazy. Now, to be fair, I have thought all my neighbors were crazy at some time or another. But these people were the wrong kind of crazy. I think they are both dead now so I feel safe using their names; they were the Smith's.

The Smith's were Millers. It seems I've lived next to members of the Miller clan my entire life. Millers are people who spend all their spare time in their driveway or front yard. They just mill about. Hence the Millers. So, the Smith's were Millers.

But they weren't just Millers. They were also Druids. What I mean by that is that they seemed to worship the trees and grass and shrubs and flowers and just about anything with chlorophyll in it. I think they set up a shrine to a grasshopper who ate itself to death one summer. OK... I probably made that last part up. But, my point is, they were completely obsessed with their YARD.

They were both retired and had all day to mill around their yard. I was a traveling salesman who was very good at his job and I had more time on my hands than I knew what to do with. So I had a number of free days to watch the Smith's be crazy.

She was a little more spry than he was. He didn't need a walker or anything but he couldn't do the five yard dash in under two minutes, either. But they would spend the entire day in their front yard, snipping and picking and arranging. Milling from here to there and there to here. And nothing they ever did ever made anything look any different.

Here's something else you need to know about the Smith's. They paid for a lawn care service. About every five days these trucks would pull up in front of the Smith's place and six guys would unload a riding mower, a push mower, a hedge trimmer, a leaf blower, a leaf sucker and a clipboard. There would be this crazy-ass flurry of activity while the guy with the clipboard walked to the front door. By the time he got there, the other guys were already loading the equipment for the next job and he was collecting a signature and a check for $70.00. Pretty nice racket, huh?

Then the Millers (Smith's) would come outside and spend the rest of the day arranging the leaves in the freshly trimmed shrubs. My wife used to say to me, "Leave them alone; they are retired and have nothing else to do."

I would scoff and say, "Phuh!" Or maybe, "Phryxtz!" Something like that. And go back to watching them.

I have a fairly fertile imagination but I was having the damnedest time figuring out what drove these people. It didn't look to me like they were enjoying themselves. They had that old people scowl and their movements weren't casual, like they had all day to just kill in the yard. They were jerky little moves. They would poke and jab at things like they were angry about something. And nothing ever appeared to change. They would be there from dawn until dusk and I could never detect one thing that they accomplished.

They spent so much time out there I began wondering if they even owned a TV set. They just weren't normal. I've seen her so obsessed that she would come out in the morning in one of those flannel nightgown thingies and not get dressed until noon. They probably ate salad for lunch.

I finally came up with a theory, though. I think they did something to piss off Mother Nature. I also think Mother Nature can be a vengeful bitch and somehow She was making the Millers (Smith's) work off some kind of supernatural community service kind of deal. I mean, they worked slow, didn't seem happy about it, never seemed to get anything accomplished, and took all day to do it. If you gave them a shovel and a hard hat they could pass for highway construction workers.

It is hard to figure some people out, though. I would stand at my front door or sit near the front window watching those people waste hour after hour. Day after day. Like they had nothing else to do. I mean, what were they thinking?