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I am of two minds on the subject of yards lately.
One side of me is yard proud. I want all hints of bright plastic paraphernalia hidden away under the safety of porches and behind garage doors. I want all the corners of grass weedwacked tight and neat. I want all the porches swept clean every morning.
Not a weed in sight. Mulched. Hosed. Freshly painted.
I want people to drive by and sigh to themselves, that is such a beautiful piece of property
But my other mind is an unruly hillbilly. This side wants to curate bits of chaos into the composition of our eleven acres.
Just enough mess to communicate, these people are not predictable.
A person who leaves an uneven circle of grass growing up through a 1970’s tractor cannot be trusted to pay the fine of a township complaint. Or the man who lines hundred-pound river rocks as a too-close-to-the-road fence. Old bicycles hoisted up high. Too many chicken coops, one with a tarp for a roof. A half-painted shipping container.
There are levels to a hillbilly yard. The push mower abandoned mid- row, for years. I wonder, did the machine run out of gas, or the person behind it?
The broken-down car that my husband cannot release from his tight grip of nostalgia and send to car heaven? I ask about it once a month, “is it time to call the scrapyard yet?”
No, Rachel. Not yet.
Maybe the yard in question, we don’t call them lawns, is more of an intentional message than you have realized.
Maybe the chaos is a careful warning that too much control is not welcome in these parts.
Or maybe the homeowner is laying on the couch watching daytime tv.
Last year, I rolled two tires from my old Honda Civic across the road, stacked them at the foot of the studio steps, filled them with dirt and planted my favorite geraniums in them. My mother was embarrassed for me and could not be persuaded that it had a certain, subversive charm.
Tires in the yard point to one thing only. Low class. I put them back in the garage.
Watching the great re-ordering of America, especially to the southern states but also to the west, has me thinking about tires in yards. On one hand I am happy for anyone choosing to better their lot by making a geographical move. It’s a free country! or so they used to say.
But have you given thought to the long timers living in that Tennessee or Carolina or Montana town since their grandparents grandparents settled there back before the wars? The people who used to farm the half acre that your new construction now sits. The people whose town you find charmingly Americana might take exception to bringing an HOA state of mind with you from other parts. Tread accordingly.
This is a NO HOA zone here folks. And, in the big picture, we are better for it.
I know some people who have been misplaced into the world of the HOA. Genuine rebels who find themselves receiving fines for misplaced trees and roofs not cleaned in time to meet unforgiving schedules. A kind of Connecticut Yankee or Gulliver in Lilliput. A series of miscommunications and ill-fitting spaces.
Settling a hillbilly in the HOA is not destined to end well.
The freedom to not be predictable seems to be a hallmark of the Appalachian yard. Freedom to mow. And not to mow. Freedom to collect odd things and then leave them in the same spot, forever.
The yard itself is a manifestation of the don’t tell me what to do attitude. Some might argue that it points to laziness or addiction, and they might not be wrong. Both can be true, I think.
To the long timers and old timers of a place, I say keep the carpetbaggers guessing. A well-placed refrigerator on the front porch might be the clearest kind of message to the folks looking to turn your bit of paradise into a well-ordered, predictable, homeowners’ association.
If I had to choose between the freedom of chaos and the ordered perfection, I think you know where I land.
This song captures the Appalachian yard energy in ways that an essay cannot.
Take a listen 🎵
Take it Out Back by Chuck Brodsky
Thank you for being here, dear reader. Your presence in these pages is so appreciated.
Would you like to read more essays on what it means to be an Appalachian?
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I love the way your posts often trigger memories for me.
2 tires? I’m pretty sure you could make 2 types of tire swings outta those 🙃
When my sons were young I recall seeing one made that looked like a horse. It’s hard to cut them tho.
https://www.pinterest.com/zybercon/tire-swings/
And ‘put it out back’ is the historic ‘reuse’ part of reduce-reuse-recycle. We called them “borrow pits’. Watch for snakes, but if you need a piece of something-to-fix-something it might be found in the borrow-pit. Sadly it seems the steeply carved out dry-creek along my property line seems to be where stuff got dumped, including an old washing machine and an upside down turquoise painted car. A few years back I built a ladder at a spot that’s fairly accessible so I could get down there to try to do a bit of cleanup. It’s not as fun as mudlarking but related. lol.
My favorite yard.