An Inventor Says ‘You’re Welcome’ ... And the Country Says, 'No Thanks.'

In Car and Driver, writer Ezra Dyer speaks for the man who gave the world the leafblower.

(It’s a parody.)


Worth reading in full. This will give you the idea:

Greetings, my fellow Americans. How is everyone doing today? I said, HOW IS EVERYONE DOING TODAY? I’m sorry if we can’t hear each other very well, what with all the beautiful music reverberating off the hills and dales and insides of our skulls. It’s the sound of my most fabulous invention, the leaf blower, and you can no longer escape it. As if you’d want to.

Today, you can see and hear my invention across the country, 365 days a year. You’d think that it would only be useful in the autumn when the leaves fall, but the world has realized that the humble leaf blower can blow more than leaves. It can blow gravel off the street, creating majestic plumes of dust. It can blow acorns hither and thither. It can blow pollen and stray bits of mulch.

Pine needles! They need to be constantly whooshed to different locations. And whooshed they are, leaf-blower devotees often playfully blowing all sorts of things onto one another’s property, and then right back again the next day. Sometimes the leaf blower might need to be employed twice a day, if one’s morning work is undone by a rare meteorological phenomenon known as “wind.”