Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - At long last, firepower for gumbo wars

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Brooks Peterson

Brooks Peterson's column is published Mondays. Brooks also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at petersonb@caller.com

Monday, March 13, 2000

At long last, firepower for gumbo wars

I'm not sure all you nice people out there really understand just how hard we work to provide you with good, nutritious, low-maintenance, high-fiber copy in this space.
   All that notwithstanding, I have in recent weeks experienced a certain unease about what goes on here - an unpleasant, insistent little voice that rebukes me for not doing a better job of giving you what you need.
   When it isn't working me over with the usual abuse (variations on a theme of If You're So Smart, Why Ain't You Rich?), it's excoriating me for not giving you what you need.
   Oh, I retort, and just what is it you think the readers need?
   Simple, the little voice hisses: news they can use.
   Wait a minute, I splutter: Haven't we explored such cutting-edge stuff as the phenomenology of duck phones, the progress of the grammar wars, and the sad decline of nostalgia in a philistine era?
   You sure have, bud, the voice chuckles nastily. I rest my case.
   Well, all right: I can take a little constructive criticism. Maybe we should stir up the mix a bit. How about . . . hey, here's a concept. How about an occasional piece on something that hits us all where we live? How about . . . Stuff that works?
   Think about it. Our lives are plagued endlessly by stuff that doesn't work. Three-way light bulbs that go pfft and demote themselves to one-way light bulbs (if that). Mulching mowers that . . . don't. Computer programs that flash APPLICATION ERROR on your screen and eat your copy at precisely the worst possible moment.
   But why not accent the positive? There is, after all, stuff that works. We encounter such things every day, but scarcely give them any thought. Is that sensible? Is that fair? 'Course not.
   In meditating on the things in my life that work, I find, not surprisingly, that most of them are very, very simple. Like, say . . . the Ground Hog.
   Are you familiar with the Ground Hog? Perhaps not. What it is, is a gardening implement.
   I know, I know: The very thought of the NewsWretch wielding a garden implement is risible. For sure, my neighbors would agree. My philosophy of landscaping and gardening boils down to a single word: triage. When the situation, vegetation- and weed-wise, becomes utterly untenable, then I begin my forlorn efforts to get at the worst of the problem.
   It ain't pretty - but without my Ground Hog, it would be downright horrific.
   A bit of history: Ever since we moved into our house, I have been doing uneven battle with the gumbo that passes for soil in these benighted climes. Some people call it Victoria Clay. I call it other, more colorful names. I'm sure it has its good points, but for my purposes it is an affliction and an abomination.
   I bought one garden implement after another. I acquired something called a Hula Hoe that would supposedly break up the clods. No joy. Tried a sod-chopping thing with two prongs on one side and a hoe-like blade on the other. The gumbo turned it into a pretzel. Oh, and remember the Garden Weasel - the thing with three little multi-spiked rollers that went round and round, clearing out those nasty weeds? (Hey: I saw it on TV. It was supposed to change my life.) It slunk away with its tail between its legs.
   Ah, but one day I found myself in a hardware store - remember hardware stores? - and as I meandered down the aisles I happened to spy the Ground Hog. Amid all the other tools, it radiated Purpose. Integrity. Substance.
   About the same length as a hatchet, it has a really heavy-duty head consisting of a single-bladed chopper on one side and three nicely-spaced tines on the other.
   What it it? Titanium? Carbon steel? Dunno, but it rocks - even in the hands of an artless tyro. Not quite like a knife through butter, but in comparison with all the junk I've toted into the garden wars, it is an M-1 Main Battle Tank in a world of popguns.
   Consider this: If the Ground Hog works for me, think what it could do in the hands of someone who actually knew what he/she was doing. So: There's the news. How about you do your part, and use it?


Brooks Peterson

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