The Green, Green Grass of Home

When I was growing up, it is always seemed unfair to me that the only house on the block with a sizeable green lawn—a lot in and of itself—went unused by its inhabitants. Utterly! The family who lived there were brainiacs—father, mother, daughter, and son—whose intellectual pursuits, livelihoods, and hobbies didn’t include gardening, barbecuing, or playing Wiffle ball. From my youthful perspective—and adult one, too—this rare residential green space in the neighborhood merited a better fate.

The house in question was for sale in 1946 when my paternal grandfather—an iceman until refrigeration downsized him to a milk factory line worker—shopped in the area for a piece of real estate to call his own. He loved the property because of the lawn, which he saw as prime garden space. But, alas, my grandfather required a home with a rent-paying tenant or two to assist with the mortgage. Relatively speaking, houses were affordable in those days for lower middle-class families, but not affordable enough to go it alone. And so, my grandfather had to pass on the house with the enviable lawn and settle for a three-family dwelling with a concrete backyard down the block. Fortunately, in those days, empty lots existed in the Bronx’s Kingsbridge and my grandfather planted considerable gardens in a couple of them.

My first paying job, as a matter of fact, found me cutting that coveted lawn with a primitive electric mower. Powered via an extensive cord, we mowers dragged it up and down and then down and up the lawn. My friend Johnny accidentally ran over the thing during a mowing. Embarrassed and concerned of the consequences, he neglected to inform his employer of the incident. Quietly returned to the garage, the mower with the gnarled cord eventually was discovered and a lecture ensued. “Johnny, you done me dirt last week,” said the aggrieved party as he pointed to exhibit A. He then proceeded to explain how important it was to own up to one’s mistakes. Given a second chance, Johnny also learned a valuable life lesson in the process.

In my nearly six decades of living, the lawn has remained a reassuring albeit somewhat lonely constant. No wafting aromas of grilled hot dogs and hamburgers ever originated from it. No fun and games were ever recorded there. No tomato plants sprouted up from its earth. A fence on its north side has long sported grape vines that—surprisingly—annually yield grapes, which we kids sampled once upon a time. If memory serves, they were better suited for the local bird population. Gracing the lawn for years were also several small cherry and pear trees, which clearly were there before the brainiacs assumed ownership of the property. They reliably bore fruit that were, again, humanly edible but only barely. The cherries were invariably sour, and the pears were always hard and more suitable for baking—if even that. Still, as wide-eyed youths, we enjoyed picking grapes, cherries, and pears—and eating them. Sometimes we snuck into the yard and made off with our bounty. As far as we could tell, the owners never harvested the fruits of their lawn.

One day, as I recall, my friend Johnny and I rang the front doorbell. The youngest son—who would have been in his twenties then—answered. We politely asked him for permission to “pick some pears.” He said that we could but added rather robotically, “You have five minutes!” And, lo and behold, the man with the off-the-charts IQ timed us to the second and came charging out of the house loudly bellowing: “Your time is up! Your time is up! Your time is up!”

Fast forward a half a century and the youngest son—now a septuagenarian—is the last one standing in the house with the super green lawn. In fact, it’s greener than ever. New sod was recently laid, and a sprinkler waters it daily. Through the years, the pear trees died of natural causes. The last remaining cherry tree and a miscellaneous tree were cut down a few years ago, leaving just the forlorn lawn.

Well. everything must end in this thing we call life. The news is out that the Bronx house with the ample lawn alongside it is up for sale. The last of the brainiacs is moving on to greener pastures, or less greener pastures, as it were. And considering the present climate in New York City, I suspect whoever buys the property will not regard the green lawn in the same detached way, nor in the way I’ve looked at it for all these years. Bet your bottom dollar that the green lawn will be seen exclusively through a green lens, and something bigger than a lawn in the Bronx will be lost because of it.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)