7/12ths of a cheer for our Grand Old Flag …
How off-key, our Glorious July 4th, 2020.
Start with the calendar. I couldn’t get used to the Friday holiday. Isis explained it: “Friday the 3rd is closer to the actual date than Monday the 6th.”— “I understand that. But still, long weekends have the luxury of paid Mondays off . . . for union and gov’t workers anyway. Friday before the holiday weekend is already half-way to the pool, the barbeque, the grands, the parade, boat, beer and fireworks . . .”. —Isis listened kindly to my plaint, not mentioning that COVID-19 had changed all that . . . that our stable bubble is three, including Nick.
So I spent . . . “invested” is more accurate . . . I invested the morning hours of Friday and Saturday finishing up the fuelreduction mowing of Dry Acres, 95470. During real estate season, it’s a gracious spot, green & cool & breezy. I think r.e. brokers describe the terrain as ‘gentle to rolling,’ which translates to ‘Be very, very cautious when traversing it on your secondhand vineyard tractor.’ Mostly I use a walk-behind, 15 horse DR brush cutter. Marlin called his older model of the machine Dr. Death, and he died behind it one day. So far, mine is Dr. Ankle-twister. It tosses me around my ridge’s gullies and stumps pretty well, and hanging on to the handle- bars I’m on the long end of a lever. I travel—am pushed—farther off-course than the blade box when it jostles left or right. Each time I hear a rock strike I stop and look for wisps of smoke, more visible than the tiny sparks of doom.
As I mow close to the upper uneven edge of the Potter Valley Road cut I repeat what I’ve learned by experience: “If the Doctor wants to go down, let him go! it’s only money.” When I’m in a tight spot of nasty, down-slope brush I say: “Let the machine do the work,” and put it in reverse rather than wrestle it into a turn. DR outweighs me, probably 2.5-to-1. If asked, as I start mowing in the morning, how large is my fire-safe area, I say 4 acres. At quitting time I’m thinking 7.
And I’m also thinking, these blazing July mornings, “Looks pretty neat, this time.” My previous mowing was in May, and looked tufty, to one not versed in Robt. Frost—”a leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared.” Quoted that line often, in May, as I wrenched the DR around, not over, especially the Brodiaea. The DR makes a racket, but my inner ear hears Frost’s (atypically joyous) plainsong, “The mower in the dew had loved them thus,/ By leaving them to flourish, not for us,// Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him./ But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.”
But that was May fuel suppression work. This is July and conscious effort to leave no invasive star thistle unslashed, no tuft of anything that might fuel a spark enough to grow it to a Paradise fire. My mood grows aggressive, and I refuel. The image of my Old Man, scything in New England mornings, his dungaree legs wet, his hands prominently tanned against the faded blue of his work shirt, recedes. I can’t hear the music of his whetstone.—i fire up the DR.
My iphone’s health app tells me that each of these July mowing sessions is around 12,000 steps. Afterward I surprise myself by singing a bit of Josh Billings’ Revolutionary War hymn “Chester” as I walk away from the DR: Let tyrants shake their iron rod,/ And Slav’ry clank her galling chains,/ We fear them not, we trust in God,/ New England’s God forever reigns . . .—I loved to sing that hymn in my unbroken tenor. Pop would follow with Howe and Burgoyne and Clinton too,/ With Prescot and Cornwallis join’d,/ To
gether plot our Overthrow,/ In one Infernal league combin’d . . . and he’d benignly smile as his boy chirped The Foe comes on with haughty Stride;/ Our troops advance with martial noise,/ Their Vet’rans flee before our Youth,/and Gen’rals yield to beardless Boys.—”youth triumphant,” he’d say, opaquely.—
It took me way too long to feel on my pulses the depths of denial expressed by white colonials defying Old King George with a slavery metaphor . . . fits with Jefferson’s final accusation against King Geo III, though.
Back at the house I had an email exchange with my accountant:
Me: “I think a third + a fourth = 7/12s, which is about how I feel on this particular Glorious Day/holiday weekend.”
She: “I like how you do math! It is indeed a very strange 4th this year. Let’s hope this ends soon!”
JM lives & is done for the season on a ridge between Redwood and Potter valleys, where he remembers Jefferson’s accusation against a Prince who “has endeavored to bring on the Inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction of all Ages, Sexes and Conditions”itsallgood1776@gmail.com.