I’m not a yard guy. Never have been. So for years, I was happy to live in apartments, because I didn’t have to bother with a yard. They hired guys to do that. Granted, I wasn’t building equity, but at least I didn’t have to mow a lawn.
Back in high school, I once went to work with an illegal alien from Mexico. My family called him Joe The Gardner. He was a dark, blocky guy with no front teeth and didn’t speak English. He needed a place to live, so my parents let him stay with us, so he wouldn't have to sneak across the border every day. He helped Mom and Dad with a lot of their yard work instead of rent.
One night, we’re all watching TV with Joe, and somehow I get dared work the Joe the next day. In my teenage bravado, I say, “hell, I can do whatever Joe does, no problem.” My dad laughs. Tells Joe in Spanish, and Joe just smiles, “I’ll take him, Señor Medina.”
The next morning I’m up at 5AM, bleary-eyed, riding a bus in El Paso. Joe and I had to walk at least half a mile to our first job. It doesn’t take an hour for me to tell that I’m way out of my league. I had to trim a lawn with a pickaxe as Joe cleans the yard. And it’s summer in El Paso, so by 9 AM it's already getting warmer.
Joe finishes mowing and cleaning up both the backyard and front yard and I haven’t done a third of the trimming. I’m slowing him down. So he kindly tells me to move the garbage bags while he finishes trimming the yard. By the time I’ve moved a couple bags to the trash from the backyard, Joe is finishing up the trimming.
Whew. My back is already sore and I’m ready to go home. Nope. Joe has another job. The lady whose yard we’re working on feeds us a couple of eggs and drives us to another house in El Paso’s East Side. We go into the back yard and there’s this five-foot pile of dirt. Joe hands me a shovel. We need to move this pile of dirt like ten feet. Fine.
About an hour in (and I’m being generous to make myself feel better) I tell “Joe, hey, I’m going to sit down and take fifteen, you mind?”
“No, Señor Medina,” he points to a chair underneath a tree. I sit down in the shade, it’s a couple of degrees cooler, but it's still like ninety degrees. The pile is about five feet and close my eyes. Next thing I know, Joe is nudging me awake, the pile of dirt is gone and where it was is swept and cleaned. It’s about four in the afternoon. “Vamos a la casa,” Joe says, still smiling.
Before we get home Joe tries to hand me fifty bucks. Half of what he made that day. I shook my head. “Dude, I did squat.” He insists, but I tell him no. Thank God that kid had some semblance of integrity.
Dad did ask how it went. “Fine, Señor Medina,” Joe said. He told my dad I was a big help.
“He’s being nice," I say. I told dad the story. Of course, Mom and Dad laughed. So did Joe. I swore never to do yard work again.
But now I have a house with a big backyard with a deck. And a wife that likes working in the backyard. She’s done some really nice landscaping and found some nice deck furniture. I grill out there and it’s nice to have a well-kept lawn. We planted a palm tree in honor of Lucy and Marcos’ ties to The Valley in South Texas.
We lost contact with Joe years ago. He got caught coming over one too many times and they told him, if we catch you again, we’ll throw you in prison. Part of me wishes I could send him a picture of my yard now. To tell him, I’m trying. Most days, I’m still that kid that hates manual labor, but there are those rare times, I feel like Joe The Gardner.