The Maginot Lawn

Inspired by something Amy wrote in her Beanie confessional.

Where I come from (Rust Belt), when you drive your car across somebody's lawn, it's called a "lawn job" -- don't know whether you have your own terms for it, but, above and beyond toilet-papering was the lawn job -- the tactical nuke in the American teenager's arsenal, along with egging. In our area, muscle cars carried the day -- the land of Camaros and other big old V-8 cars from the glory days of gas-guzzling. This is actually a two-part story.

The first part had this guy who lived on a corner, like a turn in a given road, who had built a great fortress on his lawn -- he'd piled big rocks along the edge of the lawn, and had taken those road sign poles and lined them up along the side of his house and built hedges around them. That was sort of the worst insult to our teen pride -- that this guy had built a hedge deathtrap in his yard, so if you happened to drive through his hedges, you'd get your car shredded by those stealth poles, like some suburban tank trap.

But, I'd divined a weakness in the guy's automotive Maginot Line. His defenses forme an L-shape, which would protect his yard from all normal curb-huggers who came and went on that particular road. However, if you veered off the road and went across his neighbors' lawns, you could access the guy's lawn without any risk.

So, we raced up the road and, about three houses down, went off the road and cut across the lawns, one, two, three, until we reached the Maginot Lawn. Then, having reached the desired destination, we did three donuts with the car, a nice rear-wheel drive 70s car, chewing up lawn with that thumpeta-thumpeta sound, before nosing the car back out the way we'd come. We'd high-fived each other at our juvenile triumph. I wasn't driving; I was riding shotgun, drinking Busch beer (which, on reflection, I haven't drunk since then).

Flush with victory, a buddy and I took it upon ourselves to give our high school a lawn job. This was a long time ago. At this time, it was either very early spring, or else very late winter; I can't honestly remember. But it was during a school holiday, so the school was closed for the weekend.

We drove around on the high school's lawn, going back and forth, noting that there was some snow and frost still on the lawn, there. We decided on one last lawn job, going up a hill, when everything fell apart.

His car got stuck! We went from laughter to frustration to worry -- the car was perched on a hill overlooking the high school. Any cop driving by would see it. Anybody driving to the school would see it. And from the angle of approach, there was no confusing what we'd been doing.

So, I got out and tried to push, but, like most rear-wheel drive cars, it doesn't handle well in slippery stuff. We both got out and pushed, but couldn't get enough traction. We stuffed junk under the tires, tried going backwards, but there was enough of a dip at the base of the hill that we couldn't back out, either. We were stuck.

I'd only been wearing a light jacket, which had been fine in the car, but wasn't any good when we were outdoors. But we were totally stuck, and it was about 1 a.m. There was nothing to do but try to find a telephone.

We left the car and tramped our way from the high school toward the Mall, which was about the only place where we could hope to find anything -- our high school was sort of remote, relative to the rest of the town. We sure as hell weren't going to drop by any friends' houses that late, and besides, we didn't know anybody in that area who was alright.

Crossing the street, we came to a gas station (which was at the corner of the Mall's parking lot), one of those islands where there's a clerk behind plate glass with cigarettes and sodas for sale. The guy was totally asleep. We didn't find a phone, and my buddy noticed a fridge next to the door, full of Pepsi and Cokes and Mountain Dew. We looked at the sleeping clerk and my friend said "We should take some sodas."

And I said "Forget that, we should find a phone. I'm going to the Mall."

So I started walking that way, now definitely freezing, shivering, because it was bone-cold that late. Then I hear my friend call my name, and I look back and I see him standing there, holding two soda bottles.

Then he drops them, and they make a loud crash. I don't understand what the hell he was doing, so I take off running for the Mall, and he runs as well, and I hear the gas station clerk from behind us "Hey, you little sons of bitches!!!"

Now I'm thinking "Nice move, jackass. We're busted for sure!"

But I keep running, and reach the Mall, hiding behind a wall, near a trash compacter. My buddy (who was a smoker) caught up, wheezing, hands on his knees, head hunched forward.

"What the hell were you doing back there?" I asked him.
"I wanted a Pepsi," he said.
"Why'd you drop them?"
"My hands were too cold; I lost my grip."

So, now we were at the Mall, still hell-and-gone from any phone, as far as we knew. I went to the service entrance and tried the heavy steel door, thinking it would be locked, but it was, to my amazement, unlocked. I pulled it open and we went down the hallway, hearing mall muzak blaring, echoing.

We were really worried that we'd run into a security guy; there had to be at least one in the building, since that door was unlocked. We followed the hallway to the entrance to the Mall concourse, itself, and were bombarded by the muzak, which was really blaring. It sounded like somebody, somewhere, was buffing the floor, but we couldn't see them.

I spotted a phone tree and we ran to it, where my friend called his older brother, who was in his 20s, maybe even 30s -- OLD, by my reckoning at the time. Old, and pissed to be called in the early morning by his younger brother in a jam. He asked his brother to pick us up at the Mall, told him where.

Then, he said "We should go run around in here or something. I mean, we have the whole Mall to ourselves."

But I nixed that, saying "No way; there have to be security guys in here somewhere. Let's just go wait for your brother before we get caught."

So, we crept back outside and waited for what felt like forever for his brother to come rolling up in an old green Buick, made as hell, chain-smoking. He demanded to see his brother's car, so we drove back to the school and tried again, without luck, to move it, the brother cursing out his younger brother. By then, it was, I dunno 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning.

He said they'd have to get some chains and tow it out, but that it would have to wait until morning. He drove us home without a word, my friend thanking his brother and making inane chit-chat, while I was thinking how great it was that my folks were in Pittsburgh at the time, so there was nobody at home to catch me coming in so late, but really annoyed at my friend as only a teenager can be.

Anyway, that was it. Friend was able to rescue his car, and the Maginot Lawn guy reseeded his lawn. The surburban cycle of life continued. I never told my folks about that long, long night.