High Noon

The Human Lawnmower

At our second house in Laos, we had a tiny patch of real grass that needed to be trimmed from time to time. There were no lawnmowers in the country, since no one had a “real lawn”. The patch was about 12 foot by 12 foot and was situated in the middle of the front yard. As was customary in the Kingdom, we hired several servants to assist my mother in housework, kitchen work, laundry, shopping in the Morning Market, boiling water, and yard work. The gardener that we hired wore only white clothes and a little white hat. I did not see him much, because he slept all the day, after partying every night. Since opium was cheap and very available, he smoked it to excess. The side effect was that he had no inclination to do any yard work. At one point during the hot season, the tiny patch of grass started to really grow. So my mother asked the gardener to cut the grass. The next day at noontime I looked out the window and saw a white object on the grass. I looked closer and it was the gardener lying on the grass, holding a pair of hand clippers. About every 30 seconds he would squeeze the handle of the clippers and the distinct sound of the blades coming together could be heard. I stared at him in amazement. He was higher than a woodpecker’s hole, lying on the grass, casually hand clipping the grass. It was about 120 degrees in the sun, 100% humidity, and he must have been baking like a potato. But since he was already baked, in the mind that is, he really did not care in the least about the sun. At the rate he was clipping, it would take him about four or five solid days of “work” to cut that grass. Life in Laos moved at a different pace and the Laotians to a different drummer.

This entry was posted on December 21, 2006 at 10:19 pm and is filed under Laos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.