Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Three Kind-hearted Souls Rescue a Damsel in Distress

Through the kindness of strangers, one Ogden City woman is released from the clutches of the Ogden Lawn Nazis

This morning's Standard-Examiner reports that several kind-hearted souls have already stepped up to rescue that 83-year old damsel in distress, whose story we discussed here on Saturday. Here's the gist, per Charlie Trentelman:

On July 24, she got the city's warning letter. A neighbor, seeing her distress, called the Standard-Examiner.
Williams said that after her story ran Saturday, her phone rang off the hook and at least one TV news crew showed up.
"I haven't had one minute's peace. KSL (news) called, and I've just had calls from everybody," she said. "Just one constant thing after another."
Amid all that, she said, someone fixed her sprinklers. [...]
Williams said the job was done by three men, one each from Layton, Roy and the Mount Ogden area of Ogden, whose names she didn't even get written down.
They showed up, fixed her sprinklers and left, she said.
"They had to dig up and replace some broken hose," she said. "They worked about seven hours that day, and they wouldn't take a dime for it."
Over the weekend, several of our readers commented on the possibility of conducting a humanitarian rescue operation. If any of our readers were among the three participating in this act of beneficence and generosity... don't be shy. Please step up and take a well-deserved bow.

8 comments:

Monotreme said...

I am still waiting for someone to cite me the section of the city code that prohibits brown lawns.

The only thing I can find relates to a "fire hazard", but that seems a bit of a stretch to me.

City Code Viewer

I am looking at Title 12, Chapter 4, but have looked briefly in other places and can't find anything that seems to pertain.

Anonymous said...

monotreme:

It's in the zoning regulations: 15-13-16. To see that this section applies to single-family properties, see 15-15-4(F).

Monotreme said...

Dan:

There it is. Thanks.

I guess I have issues with the word "attractive", then.

Anonymous said...

The History of Lawns in America

Turf Wars - The battle over the American lawn

Zoning: The New Tyranny

Monotreme said...

Mrs. Monotreme and I did a driveby of the house today.

I saw a house across the street that looked in pretty bad repair, with weeds and an unmown lawn.

I also saw a vacant lot that had both noxious weeds and grasses over 6" in the same block.

So, I have to ask, why would we have code enforcement on Mrs. Williams' house, but not on the other properties in the same block?

Whether it's aesthetics, or health and safety, I found her house to be one of the better-maintained ones in the neighborhood.

I don't think Code Enforcement should be used to settle personal agendas, regardless of whose agendas they are.

Anonymous said...

So she has to water her grass. Big deal.

Hooray to the people who helped her.

Double hooray that they didn't leave their names.

Another tempest in a teapot is stilled by useful people doing useful work.

Monotreme said...

Danny:

Just for the record, I have two neighbors who are in similar circumstances.

I have often gone over to mow a lawn or help with snow removal so that they aren't in violation of the code. That's just what neighbors do, in my experience. I have other neighbors who have helped me out when I've been laid up.

I prefer this to calling in the Imperial Storm Troopers. I agree that we could all look out for each other a bit more. Calling Code Enforcement should be a last resort, don't you agree?

Anonymous said...

goddamnit, danny, must you be so flippant? You're starting to sound like a godfrey plant hiding undercover in the midst of us nay-sayers. I hope your family jams your sorry ass in a nursing home when you get old and decrepit and might not always have the ability to instantly take care of all problems in the house you've lived in for decades, and you end up developing oozing, festering bedsores from the sloppy and impersonal treatment that is so typical in nursing home establishments these days.

The issue here is not whether or not the old lady should jump to instant attention and take care of her desert lawn-watering issue; it's overly-aggressive and selective enforcement. There's a house a half a block away from me that has grass that is literally as tall as I am; I'll try to snap a photo and ask our libertarian-crazed rudi to post it for me. Do you think lesham has paid a single red cent for a house where his lawn is over five feet tall? Not a chance in hell. It's okay, because he's FOM. I wonder if this woman had a Van Hooser sign in her yard last year. It'd be interesting to find out.

Our city code enforcement does NOT do touchy-feely, polite discourse; it's a two-week warning before the siege of Napoleon swarms in. Two weeks is a very, very, short amount of time for those of us who don't always have the liberty of sitting our asses in front of the interwebs and flippantly pointing fingers at others expecting them to wave a magic wand and just take care of it or move into a condo. Well, kind sir, this is real life, and in reality it's not always quite that easy.

So lesham's got abandoned houses being burned down by transients, grass as tall as cornfields, trash and debris strewn all over hell and back, but by god, we got that crazy old woman to water her lawn.. what a great day!

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