The Sound Signal to Blowing Off a Day

There’s nothing quite like a retreat to the beach. Warm sand between your toes, the smell of coconut oil, crashing waves and beautiful scenery. A routine get-away to find yourself while tuning out car sounds, jackhammers, barking dogs and the rest of the nauseating noises of our world. Of these noises the biggest culprit to me is the gas leaf blower. The new age gardeners first mate; the tool that comes on Mondays, or on most days of the week throughout the neighborhood infiltrating serenity enough to drive a guy out of his house, out of his ‘hood. I love the calm of the beach. The beach is definitely the place to go to escape leaf blowers.

Can you imagine a leaf blower on the beach? No, of course not. The last thing you hope for at the beach is blowing sand. They’re so everywhere else though. They aren’t just used to blow leaves anyway. I practically started hating trees. All those falling leaves. But it’s not their fault. When used responsibly the leaf blower is an essential tooI. You can clear away tons of light debris in what seems like no time at all, unless you’re listening to it . Or breathing it. While driving down the main drag close to my house a man is blowing the sidewalk dust out into the street. Now, I’m in my car but the dust still comes through. That’s not so much the problem as the noise. I appreciate the scrape of the ‘antiquish’ rake a lot more lately. Or the ‘swoosh’ of a strong push broom. I appreciate a clean sidewalk and driveway too. It wouldn’t be so bad if everyone just used electric blowers. They’re much quieter. The tone of the gas ones is plain obnoxious.

I’m a frequent homebody. I’ll work from home, or work on my home. Or stay at home to take care of my kids. There’s nothing like a quiet home to kick-it during the day. But the constant hum of the dreaded leaf blower (LB) plagues my nerves. Once after taking care of my sick son for a couple of late nights I tried to doze off the following day. After my son finally blinked hard I attempted to follow suit only to be awakened minutes later by the irritating LB hum.

I’m not uptight or wimpy when it comes to noises and dealing with them. I can handle the freeways constant parade. The neighbors never ending loud music was more about music selection than frequency. I was able to nap just fine while the tree-trimmers grind large branches all day. The trains and train whistle wake me sometimes but they don’t last and are tolerable. Jets en route, helicopters circling above are loud but fall by the wayside to the never ending nerve ending wrenching of the leaf blower.

The relationship with the noisy leaf blower wouldn’t be so bad except that Joe has the gardeners coming on Thursdays, and John’s across the street come on Tuesdays, and so on for the better part of every day of the week. As soon as one stops up starts another. Wouldn’t it be prudent to blow the whole block once a week from top to bottom and go on to the next neighborhood? I guess that would take too much neighborhood planning. Neighborhoods in general just aren’t that way. Maybe they used to be, but not anymore.Maybe

Maybe it only matters if you stay at home during the daytime. The 9-5 worker probably doesn’t give it a second thought. But I have a hard time believing the leaf LB isn’t causing a headache or two there as well.

And then I see her long slender legs galloping along the soaked shoreline and I follow with an intrinsic gaze. The powerful waves seem to wither as she introduces them; the same way men do when they meet a beautiful woman the first time. I love finding myself on the sandy shores. Ahh, the beach.