Cindy Lange-Kubick: Helping one man get his lawn back
digg it!
Facebook
del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit
It’s only grass, but it’s Charlie Stumphy’s grass, grass he planted 40 years ago, long before Mama died, grass that was doing just fine until a mob descended on his yard a year ago and stomped it to death.
Stomped the zoysia grass, stomped the evergreen bushes, stood on each other’s shoulders and stomped up onto his front porch — all to get a glimpse of a bedhead named Ty Pennington.
Jeesh. He knew he wasn’t the guy getting the “Extreme Makeover” home, but he didn’t bargain for this, either.
Mr. Stumphy called the Journal Star a few times last spring, disgusted no one had come and repaired the damage as promised.
He called again last week.
Still no grass.
He was done making calls, he said.
“It’s been almost a year. They keep promising to come back and fix the yard and they don’t.”
So Wednesday morning, I went to visit the neat white house in Havelock, the house Mama bought in 1946, where Mr. Stumphy and his sister Winkie still live.
The 72-year-old stepped out into the mist, dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and black loafers, ready to point out bare spots and weeds.
“It looked real nice at one time.”
Someone did come and take out the smashed evergreens shortly after the makeover mansion was finished last October, said the former owner of Sun-Kist cleaners.
You don’t have to replace them, he told the lawn care worker. I’ll be dead before they have a chance to grow.
But what about my grass?
We’ll come back in the spring, they said. We’ll aerate and put in the grass plugs and fertilize.
When no one came, he called again, he says.
The zoysia plugs won’t be ready until July, they told him. But come July, it was too hot to fertilize the new grass and expect it to grow.
“They said, ‘Well, we can come out in September,’” he says. “But I never heard no more.”
The last time he called someone told him: We were just getting ready to call you, Mr. Stumphy.
“And that was a lie.”
Wednesday, Mr. Stumphy showed me a business card and I copied down a phone number.
The man who answered said he thought Mr. Stumphy was going to call him this fall and that he’d lost his phone number — and could he have it?
He’d get that grass planted as soon as things dried out.
“I’m glad you called,” he said.
I checked his lawn care service on the Better Business Bureau Web site and found there had been no complaints lodged against it in the last three years.
It’s a small company with a sole proprietor, and I’ve decided not to name it.
Maybe the owner got his money from Ty and Company already and fixing up Mr. Stumphy’s yard suddenly slipped off his to-do list.
Or maybe, he’s like me, writing phone numbers on slips of paper and occasionally losing one or two.
It’s hard to say, so I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.
All Mr. Stumphy wants is his nice, neat yard back again, and I’m happy a phone call from the Journal Star might help him get it.
He never wanted that show in the neighborhood in the first place, he says. He’ll believe he’s getting new grass when he sees it in the ground.
The whole thing — the giant house, the crazy people, the stomped-up yard — brother, what a nightmare.
Wednesday, he walked on his thick zoysia grass, the grass next to the driveway that hadn’t been stomped to death by crazed reality TV fans.
“See, it’s just like walking on carpet,” he says.
Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.
Post Your Comment
Standards and RulesYour posted comment will appear after it has been approved.
Frequently asked questions about story commenting.