"Bruce Holland Rogers - Green Lawns" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rogers Bruce Holland)

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6.
Bob Evans, the guy next door, had hardly introduced himself before he started to tell me how
important it was for me to water my lawn. Letting the lawn go wasn't something I could choose to do, he
told me. What I did affected my neighbors.
"Property values?" I said, prepared to smirk.
But it went beyond that, according to Evans. It was something very important about the character of
the neighborhood. Certain things had to be just so.
Evans had just come from work. Under his dress shirt, I could see the outline of his white sleeveless
undershirt.
"Look," I said. "Next year, if I have a little money, I'll tear out the lawn and landscape with rocks and
gravel and drought resistant plants. It'll look great."
"It won't fit in," Evans said. "Don't you want to fit in?" He was smiling as he said that, but there was
something artificial about his smile. Or about his face. He was balding, and I could see the shape of his
skull. Somehow, his face looked like a mask painted over it.
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7.
The cars. I don't know why I hadn't noticed it earlier, but everyone in the neighborhood drove a
vintage car. But they were all about the same vintage. Bob Evans drove a maroon Rambler sedan, and
his wife had a baby blue Rambler station wagon. The Waxmans had a T-bird and a station wagon-- a
Chevy with wood panels. Larry and Theresa Smith, across the street from me, an older couple, had an
old-style Buick Roadmaster.
In fact, my car was the only one on the street made after 1963.
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8.
I'd walk around the neighborhood after lunch, thinking about my current project, and I'd catch
snatches of what the kids were shouting in their back yards. Things like, Gee Whiz. Neat-o. Boogerface.
Shazam. Gosh.
Never: Far out. Rad. Kowabunga. Shithead. Asshole. None of what I was used to hearing from
children.
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9.
One evening, I heard this sound of tinny, canned music. And voices. Angry voices. I looked out my
window to see an ice cream truck, the kind I was used to, stopped on the corner.
My neighbors were all around the truck. Some were shaking their fists. Some were yelling at the
bewildered driver.
"Get out of here!" I heard Bill Taylor yell. "We don't want your kind around here!" But there was more
to this than a matter of competition. The other people out there were yelling the same sort of things.
And they all kept looking, as they shouted, from the ice cream truck to my house. To my lawn.
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