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Grass Roots: after my father died I made a decision that would have greatly disturbed him: I hired somebody to do my yard work.

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It was a game I played when I was little and wasn't allowed to be outside while my father was working in the yard. I remember watching him from the front window and then following him from window to window inside our small house as he pushed the mower to the backyard, around the bougainvilleas, then the ebony, then the orange tree, disappearing for a moment behind the grapefruit tree, then reappearing next to the mesquite and his work truck. I used to knock on the windowpane when he was close by, but after awhile I realized the machine was too loud and he probably wasn't going to look up, considering how Latent he was in maintaining the razor-sharp lines across the lawn. Still, I followed him, just in case. My father didn't have the biggest house on the block or the newest car in the driveway, but he did have a yard he took care of every week, and somehow, when he was plowing one way and then another under that merciless South Texas sun, this seemed to be enough for him.

Other than watching the Astros lose, my father had no real hobbies. The yard was it. After mowing he would kneel down on a rectangular strip of carpet and cleave the grass along the edge of the sidewalk leading from the street to the front porch with a fourteen-inch knife. Then he'd do the grass along the curb. To him, the world was divided into two kinds of people: those who took care of their own property and those who hired other people to take care of their property. For a man who owned one suit and had few occasions to wear it, the yard was a chance to present another part of himself, if only to those neighbors who...

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