Years later, I still feel his impact

A recent Opinion piece on leaf blowers got me thinking about my favorite (and most difficult) college summer job.

Initially, I had a great position, as the clerk in the record department of W.T. Grant in Hempstead, playing records and meeting young women. An opportunity arose, though, to work outdoors with lots of sun, abundant fresh air and chances to meet people – as a landscaper in Oceanside.

My boss was literally larger than life – Buddy Ackerman, a former basketball star at the Brooklyn campus of Long Island University in the early 1950s who also played for the Knicks. He was an imposing man who ran a landscaping business for more than 40 years and employed two or three young men each summer to toil in backyards (and front yards) of the rich and famous – well, sort of – in Oceanside.

Our crew ran lawn mowers and picked weeds on lawns all over the hamlet, but the best work happened on Thursdays, on Benjamin Road. That was the prime day, close to the weekend but not too close, so the grass had time to recover. Ackerman had almost every house on that street, and our job was to make each property look perfect – without the omnipresent riding mowers of today. This was 1964! (Mowers were quieter then, but still major polluters.) I’d walk back and forth across the huge, green yards in the hot sun, following the mower as I relentlessly pushed it through relatively tall, manicured grass. But that was not all. The beds all had to be cleared of weeds and stray grass, encouraged by friendly reminders from Ackerman -- "Hey, Scootch, you missed some over here. Get on it!" Gruff, with an eagle eye for detail, Ackerman surveyed each kingdom and made sure it was as he wanted.

String trimmers? What were those? We cut the bed edges with long-handled shears and snipped with the hand clippers that Ackerman "suggested" each of us carry in a back pocket. He powered up the edger and trimmed the long straight lines on the sidewalk and driveways. And then came the cleanup. Leaf blowers? Fifty-seven years ago, we used quiet, environmentally friendly brooms . . . and shovels to pick up debris. "See that over there?" we’d be advised. "Get it and put it in your pocket!" At home each night, I emptied the day’s bounty into the trash.

As each summer started, I readied myself for the lawns, and soon I was driving the truck and trailer, heading the crew, and now I was the one looking for stray weeds. Ackerman did other trimming jobs, fertilizing and weed killing, but he always managed to stop by and give "helpful" hints on how we could improve.

In many ways, Ackerman helped me grow. Through the hard work, I learned cooperation, attention to detail, and to give back, as he did. He founded the Catholic Youth Organization basketball program at St. Anthony’s Church in Oceanside and worked for the church.

Landscaping has changed over the decades. It’s more affordable with all the labor-saving devices, but bring back the brooms and hand trimmers, and let’s again hear the sounds of silence.

Reader Wally Simola lives in Blue Point.