Over the course of my life, I have traveled rather extensively around the country. Nearly coast to coast and border to border. I haven’t traveled as much as some people, but certainly more than most. I have seen many of the beautiful sights that this great land has to offer and I have seen portions of its seamy underbelly.
Fortunately, our country is filled with more beauty than ugliness. There are wonders to behold in all shapes and sizes, both natural and man-made. The places that I have seen in my travels have given me a great many things to think about and speculate on. Many of the images that remain firmly planted in my memory leave me wondering how something was made or how it came into being. Many more make me wonder why they were made.
There is one sight that I have seen countless times in all of my travels. It is a sight that can be seen on nearly every street and highway in this great country of ours. It is the sight that I wonder “why?” the most about. It is a question that keeps me up at night. Well, not really, but it sounds more dramatic to say that.
Lawn ornaments, why?
Why do people do such things to their yards? Some lawn ornaments serve an obvious purpose, such as birdbaths and planters. Some perform a decorative function in the form of various wildlife and statuary, thanks to modern plastics.
A small sprinkling of this sort of item I can understand. It’s many of the homemade lawn decorations that have me really puzzled.
There is a fine line between folk art and tacky lawn ornament. Okay, maybe the line isn’t all that fine. Maybe it is a broad line.
Hobby-horse ponies hitched to a full sized covered wagon and mounted 10 feet in the air on posts can be considered folk art. A plywood cut-out in the shape of the rear end of a an old lady bending over is not.
I don’t quite understand what possesses a person to put such a thing in their yard. When plywood was first invented and someone first had the idea to make such a thing, it was funny. But it’s like a visual version of a comedy album. After you’ve heard the joke a few times it really isn’t funny anymore; you already know the punchline.
Do the people who make plywood silhouettes of cowboys leaning with their backs to the wall really expect me to believe that there really is a cowboy leaning against their garage, especially here in the Upper Peninsula? Am I to really believe that there is a grossly undersized moose walking across my neighbor’s yard?
What is the real purpose of a shiny mirror ball on a pedestal?
I myself am not totally innocent when it comes to lawn ornaments. I have had a decoration in my yard. I called it yard art, but I’m sure that if it had been visible from the road many people would have called it a yard nightmare.
Please, let me back up a bit here. Over the years my big sister and I have made it a point to comment on tacky lawn ornamentation. Perhaps this fact has made me a bit hyper-sensitive to the items that people festoon their yards with.
We have sort of decided that things that are completely out of the ordinary and totally unexpected, perhaps even shocking, are the only forms of acceptable yard decorations.
My sister is a bit twisted (actually, both of my sisters are, but that’s a story for another time). No offense intended to the Catholics out there, but my sister has always wanted to have a plastic Mary standing in a bathtub with a shower cap on instead of burying part of the bathtub in an upright position to create a do-it-yourself Madonna in a grotto.
I was helping my sister move to a new apartment many years ago, and she wanted to donate some of the stuff she wouldn’t be needing to a charity-operated second-hand store. I am a sucker for thrift stores and had a look around after we dropped off her donations. I noticed an old mannequin standing in a corner of the back room. I asked the clerk what they were going to do with her. The clerk told me that they were going to throw her in the trash. I had instant visions of her standing in the middle of my yard out in the woods, like some kind of surreal Venus de Milo (her arms were missing). I asked if I could have her, and the rest is history.
When I returned to my cabin in the woods, I stood her next to the doghouse that sat at the end of my driveway. I didn’t have a dog, but the doghouse came with the place when I bought the property. I kept it because it was a great cover for my generator.
She is my one contribution to the world of lawn ornaments. I’m sure that she gave the creeps to anyone who trespassed on my property. There she remained until I sold the place. She may still be there, for all I know.
I can understand and appreciate it when a person does something that is different than what everyone else does. I don’t understand people who want to be just like everyone else. I don’t understand painted tractor tires.
No comments:
Post a Comment