Work Day Weeds and Withered Dreams

This past Saturday, I rekindled an ancient Hartzler family tradition. Each Saturday, for centuries, bribbed with doughnuts and threatened with belts, Hartzler kids have turned off saturday morning cartoons and reluctantly gathered in tidy lawns for family huddles. These huddles, usually headed up by a panting, sweaty, and obnoxiously eager patriarch, served to A: detail and assign the various tasks that would make our tidy home tidier, and B: to dispell any foolish hopes that a boy might have of salvaging his saturday, perhaps building a bicycle jump, or digging a hole. This dispelling of hopes was a tactic used to keep dissidents from forming alliances, and for squelching mutinous rumblings. It was an effective tactic. It was also a litmus test of sorts, a tool for gauging which Hartzler needed an attitude adjustment, and which Hartzler needed more baseball cards. I almost never needed more baseball cards, and my attitude was constantly being adjusted. And so, foolish dreams of fort building having withered into weeds, we bent our grim faces and pulled those weeds, then raked them all into piles, put them into a lawn cart, and wheeled them out to the burn pit. Several weeks later, we burned those weeds and withered dreams, as well as some brush and kindling, and then we roasted hot dogs and marsh-mellows, food forged in the furnace of our withered dreams. They were delicious.

Now, so many years later, with Spring springing and birds and crap, I decided it was high time for another Hartzler Family Work Day. So, I bought myself a box of doughnuts, and threatened myself with the belt, then trudged outside into a less than tidy lawn. Being the only Hartzler in LA, it was a lonely crew, and the family huddle was a bit awkward. I tried my best to dispell hopes and adjust attitudes, but my attitudes remained largely unadjusted and my hopes refused to be dispelled. Perhaps it was the low attendance, or perhaps it was my being obnoxiously eager, but my speech didn’t pack the whollop it should have. Also, I was talking to myself, which may have undermined the inherent potency of the traditional work-day speech. It certainly wasn’t a morale booster. And so, the mutinous rumblings continued, but subsided when, finally, “fed-up,” “sick-to-death,” and “getting on my last nerve, Buster” I asked myself if I wanted an attitude adjustment young man, or if I wanted something to cry about. In the end, I didn’t want either of those things, so work day forged ahead.

And as I mowed my tiny yard in Los Angeles, felt the sweet sting of sweat in my eyes, and nursed a blister on my thumb, I couldn’t help feeling a strange sense of nostalgia, a certain pride growing through the generations of Hartzler’s and work days and blisters, and a peculiar sense of empathy with that panting and sweaty patriarch who was always adjusting my attitudes. I am my father’s son. And so, work day lives on, as it has for generations. Next week, however, I’m watching cartoons straight through noon, then I’m going to build a bike jump.