Bike (and garden) season

I took a spin on my Specialized Como bicycle to see Mary Ann Hess at The Shop on Porter Road late afternoon Friday. She offers political wisdom, whether you want it or not, gives a quick, good haircut and sells chocolate as a side gig. As an added bonus, Fox is on the telly spewing right wing propaganda, my only exposure other than its Website. She is genuinely kind and compassionate even if there are things about which we don’t always agree.

I bought a bunch chocolate for our upcoming Memorial Day Holiday including some left over from Easter. Pedaling toward home, I decided to spin up a side street by Hyde Park before turning on Ontario Avenue. I slowed a bit passing Ken Johnson’s front yard, not realizing where I was.

“You look like you have questions” he said from the porch steps, welcoming me.

His “yarden” was torn up by the city because a noogie neighbor rumored to be related to a city official complained repeatedly. They did the deed on Dyngus Day.

I turned around, dismounted and took a look around.

The space between sidewalk and street is turning back to grass.

The rest of the yard is lined with bricks, seedlings and plants in various forms of growth.

First, he said, a neighbor objected to a Father’s Day backyard bonfire and called police. When he moved the pit out front, she objected to the garden he built there as well as the fire pit.

He rose slowly from the step with the gait of a man with a stiff back and sore feet whose eyes and voice share a kind heart as a pair of toddlers wondered with and chattered curiously.

He is regrowing, replanting and recovering, with lemon trees, tomatoes, sunflowers and more. In the street, a gaping hole rests adjacent to the storm drain. Two doors away rests a home in desperate need of a mow. A few doors away is another. The city is dotted with neglected lots its clean team can never get to. Somehow his yard became the priority.

First, Mark Scheer reported about the city’s action in the Gazette after it blew up on Facebook. Ken Cosentino has been writing endlessly, further exposing things.

What really tipped me to think the family was likely wronged was the length the administration went to plead its case after the mistake was made.

It was a voluminous Facebook status from Council Chairperson Jim Perry, who keeps any disagreements he ever has with Mayor Robert Restaino out of public view, that started the overkill. I shared it via the Express. Then it was a 9-page press release from the city about how it had rectified an egregious garden. 

In the end, it felt like Arlo Guthrie’s trip to Alice’s Restaurant with public works as the punchline and Jackie Gleason playing the part of Kenny Tompkins.

The whole episode makes me want to never mow our front lawn again. We need more flowers, and edible landscapes and less chemically enhanced suburban monoculture.

Johnson chatted amiably about his blueberries and raspberries and community support.

“I could see you are a cool dude,” Ken said. “Thanks for stopping.”

I asked if his kids like chocolate. He answered affirmatively. I gave his daughter a rabbit and rode off. My grand nieces and nephews like chocolate but so do the Johnson kids and I am pretty sure Mary Ann would not mind.

What happened to that family’s garden was unfortunate and wrong. A Josh said, “Do good. Be Good. God Bless and Go Bills.” Love is the answer. I wish Jackie Gleason was around to play that Tompkins part in a remake of "Smokey and the Bandid" called "Kenny and the Garden". Tompkins is a nice guy but in this instance, he ended up as the punchline.