The Great Leaf Blower Debate

 

A faint memory of an old-fashioned black and white film flitted through my mental movie theater as I watched the latest neighborhood dustup unfold on our Yahoo Group.  The film was for primary grade children.  It depicted all the sights and sounds of a suburban community awakening from its peaceful slumber to forge ahead into the excitement of life: crossing guards tootling on whistles, trucks varooming their ways to the new superhighways, car horns blaring from carpool drivers going house to house to pick up their precious cargo for transport to school.

Back then the sounds of progress and daily chores were celebrated, for it represented the American ingenuity we touted every chance we got.  Car engines got bigger and bigger and louder and louder.  Teens added special mufflers to their souped-up cars to mimic the sexy sounds of Harley Davidson’s piloted by leather-clad bikers.  Little kids used clothespins to clip the Ace of Spades or the Queen of Hearts to the spokes of their trikes and bikes in order to simulate that same sound.

But this is now.  The word sound has been transmuted to noise in some quarters.  What was once the fodder for a delightful instructional movie is now regarded as toxic, polluting cacophony, the scourge of peaceful porch-sitting and afternoon nap times.

This weeks brouhaha started with an oft-repeated lament from a certain resident who despises his neighbors’ efforts to keep their property tidy using power lawn mowers and those tympanic-membrane-shattering gas leaf blowers favored by professional landscapers and zealous property owners with things to do and places to go.

The opinions proffered in the email stream on the subject ranged from deadly serious to downright funny.  One woman opined that she welcomed the sound of gas leaf blowers because they drown out the sounds of incessant barking from dogs left outside by their thoughtless owners. The man who originally stirred up the dust stated that people could close their eyes or otherwise choose not to look at the unsightly weeds or piled leaves in his yard, but he could not find earplugs effective enough to drown out the racket of gasoline-driven power tools.

Inevitably, someone on the listserv becomes annoyed by the rapid-fire give and take that lands in his or her inbox and hurls a high-level, but scathing insult into the ether, suggesting, for instance, that those of us existing on a higher plane of life would prefer the “whiners” take their less-than-trivial mindless banter to, say, Twitter. 

While I find these predictable flame wars amusing, at least for a minute or two, I seldom join the fray.  There is no way to win and I’m not into losing.  But I do have an opinion, as difficult as that must be for you, gentle reader, to believe. Despite the fact that our little community is an historic district and is called Atlanta’s First Suburb, we live smack dab in the middle of the City of Atlanta.  Helicopters chop, chop, chop overhead whenever the Atlanta Police Department takes to the air chasing bad guys, which is frequently.  Buses spew their noxious diesel fumes and ambulances scream their warnings regularly on their way to Grady Hospital or Atlanta Medical Center. 

There are more dogs in this part of town than there are people, or so it seems, and there definitely are owners who do not find their own dogs’ endless barking the least bit offensive.  That’s what dogs do, they say. Mine doesn’t.  I taught her not to continue after one or two arfs. 

My point is, maybe the city is not the ideal place to settle for people who are hyper-sensitive to noise.  I’m told that the rural parts of America are famous for their peace and quiet; well, except for the tractors and reapers and balers and pickup trucks and neighing horses and braying asses.