An ode to beer drinking and cutting grass

by Chris Aaland
 

The first mow is always the hardest. I looked out at my back yard from the deck Saturday afternoon and realized that the back 40 could use a springtime trim. Last week’s much-needed drenching saw to it.

So I dusted off the old Craftsman with a Briggs & Stratton engine and fired her up for the first time this spring. She was low on oil and had last year’s gas still left in the tank. No worries … after a dozen pulls, she fired up.

My first job was back at Applewood Golf Course in Golden. I was 16 and family friends with Dale Messerly Sr., the old head greenskeeper there. I began on the night watering crew. Three of us were tasked with setting the sprinklers each night and rotating them every half-hour. It required knowledge of the course’s geography and skill on an ATV. At 16, I possessed neither, leading to an inadvertent jump over the irrigation ditch, bent forks on the ATV and a dislocated shoulder that still bothers me 30 years later. Dale Sr. decided the day shift was my next stop, and I moved to safer tasks like running a weed eater, picking up garbage and, soon enough, mowing greens. Riding greens mowers – the big time. First, you get a helluva tan. Second, you get to sit down for a few hours instead of lugging around a weed whip. And you get to play God. If a guy out on the course was an asshole, you could mow curves to suggest putts break the opposite direction. Mowing greens was a coveted job … almost as coveted as collecting “empty” Wine-in-a-Boxes on Ladies’ Day during garbage pickup – and let’s face it, they were never really empty and worked quite well in teaching teen-agers how to binge-drink. Especially fruity zinfandels.

I figured out early that the buzz and the blades go hand-in-hand. Fast forward to May 3, 2015: after finishing the two side sections of grass out front (the middle, thankfully, is xeriscape), I gulped my 32-oz. Nalgene water bottle and explored the downstairs beer fridge for a more suitable thirst quencher.

I discovered that it takes exactly five 12-oz. cans of ice-cold microbrew to finish the back lawn. I started on the light side, with New Belgium’s Shift lager. Soon, I’d moved on to Ska True Blonde. Rudie Session IPA followed. So far, so good in terms of ABV. Beer No. 4 was one of my six remaining Euphoria Pale Ales from my winter stash. I closed with Ska ESB. Sixty ounces in the belly and my work here was done.
This should be no surprise. One of my favorite ways to spend a weekend afternoon in the past was with a 64-oz. growler of Carvers’ Razzy Wheat nestled in a bucket of ice and a lemon cut into four fat, perfect wedges. I’d mow a swatch down the middle of the back lawn, set the growler in the ice bucket and take a pull from a pint glass with each pass.
If the planets align and the grass grows long, I may even get my chance at the Sunday mow with a growler of BREW’s Gwendolyn: Queen of the Wood.

So embrace the suck of lawn chores. Sublime may have sang that you’re “40 oz. to Freedom,” but my backyard math says it’s closer to 60.
Diavolo Dance Theatre brings its unique, modern, acrobatic dance program, “Architecture in Motion,” to the Concert Hall at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. An internationally renowned modern acrobatic dance company, DDT reinvents dance, re-imagines theatre and redefines thrills. “What we do on stage is like a live abstract painting,” said Jacques Heim, who founded Diavolo in 1992. “There is no narrative, but strong themes pervade the work such as human struggle, fear, danger, survival, chaos, order, deconstruction, reconstruction, destiny, destination, faith and love.”
Theatre comes to the Hank the next two weeks in the form of “Eurydice,” a retelling of the classical Greek myth. The production is brought to you by Artists Community Theater and directed by recent Fort Lew grad Erin O’Connor. “Eurydice” will be staged at 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday this week and next.

Fresh off their Durango Bluegrass Meltdown appearance, La La Bones fires up some mighty fine grass on Moe’s patio during Funked Up Friday from 7-10 p.m. Other highlights include dancing to DJ CK and Imperfect from 9 ‘til close Saturday.
BREW Pub & Kitchen has some of their tastiest suds yet on tap … namely, Rye Can’t IBU, a dark, irresistible imperial rye lager brewed with rye malt. Hear my words: don’t miss out on this one because supplies, as they say, are limited. I believe I heard angels and started glowing when I took my first sip of it.

Elsewhere: Robin Davis spins original yarns and picks bluegrass at the Diamond Belle Saloon at 5:30 p.m. tonight (Thurs., May 7); Kirk James does solo blues at 6512 Restaurant & Lounge at 6 p.m. Friday; trumpeter Mark Reed and friends perform at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Durango at 7 p.m. Friday; and Pete Giuliani is back at Mesa Verde’s Farview Lodge from 6:30-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
In honor of spring yard work, this week’s Top Shelf list features five of my favorite tunes about lawn mowing:
 1. Buck Owens, “Who’s Gonna Mow Your Grass?” 1969. Psychedelia meets country music, complete with a heavy dose of fuzztone distortion. The Derailers later covered this nicely on their “Under the Influence of Buck” tribute.
2. Genesis, “I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe),” 1974. From the album, “Selling England by the Pound,” Peter Gabriel sings an ode to a groundskeeper pushing a lawnmower.
3. Widespread Panic, “Coconut,” 1988. Jackie likes the smell of cut grass in this feel-good summer ditty.
4. Los Straitjackets, “Lawnmower,” 1998. “Viva! Los Straitjackets” is an excellent collection of surf instrumentals and a must-own for any alt-country/surf nut like me.
5. Drive-By Truckers, “Talkin’ George Jones Cell Phone Blues,” 2009. The Possum was famous for once driving his 10-horsepower riding lawnmower 8 miles to the nearest liquor store after his wife, Shirley, had hid all the keys to the cars. The Truckers paid homage to Jones’ antics and a later near-fatal car crash in this tune.
 
Who’s gonna jump when you say frog? Email me at chrisa@gobrainstorm.net.