The Great Lawn Ranger

One Father's Day dad wanted all of us to help fix up our yard while he supervised with a toasted cheese sandwich, a root beer float, and a pack of Lucky Strikes.

My pimply brother, Walkman jamming Too $hort (that's still how he rolls), was busy making long, crooked lines over two acres of browning grass freckled with molehills. My sister was on back-breaking weed-pulling duty in The Diplomat's 'naturalist' style rhody garden.

Being nearly a decade younger than my siblings, dad told me my contribution would involve a really fun game.

'It's called 'Pick Up Sticks'

'Pick up what?'

'You see all these sticks laying around the yard here honey? Well, your brother can't mow this part of the lawn because there's too many sticks in the way...'

A wailing screech of rocks grinding against the metal blade of the John Deere interrupted his sale of the 'game', followed by a puff of dirt blowing over our heads as my brother ran over yet another rocky molehill, chuckling with destructive teenage glee.

'Godammit son, don't break the goddamned thing! Gawd!' He sighed, rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to me.

'But I want to ride the lawn mower,' I whined, accustomed to getting my way as the youngest, cutest, daddy's girl.

'You're 9 - you have to wait until you're a double-digit to operate industrial machinery. Just do it. It's going to be fun!'

Coming from dad, master of sarcasm, purveyor of pessimism, I suspected this false bit of cheer right away.

'Is this a real game?'

For the record, no, Pick Up Sticks is not a real game. It's more like a lesson on the diabolical nature of, um... nature.

With every stick I was enslaved to drag to dad's pyro-tastic bonfire, the alder above watched its former self pile as a collection of shattered, dead limbs - a symbol of the lack of strength (and lets face it - willpower) the tree had to retain its own branches against an enemy as pithy as wind.

'You're pathetic, tree.'

An early retiree, dad spent the majority of my growing up years covered in wood chips and grass stains with the dog lapping close behind. The Buddha is to enlightenment what dad was to the weed whacker.

The last Father's Day card I bought him read, 'Happy Fathers Day to the Great Lawn Ranger'. Heh.

I meant to give it to him 5 years ago, but decades of Lucky Strikes wouldn't allow him the extra week for another Father's Day. One extra week and we could have cussed out the tree playing the game.

I miss you so much, dad.