Who Is John Hamilton?

Matt Welch | May 29, 2009

John Hamilton is my new hero, that's who:

SANDUSKY, Ohio -An Ohio man arrested for mowing unkempt grass at a public park said he just wanted to make his city look nice. John Hamilton said he took control of the situation because the grass in Sandusky's Central Park was about a foot high. According to a police report, a witness said Hamilton was blowing grass onto the sidewalk and shredding trash in the park that had not been picked up.

Police said they arrested 48-year-old Hamilton after he refused to stop mowing and charged him with obstructing official business and disorderly conduct.

Sandusky, which (like John Lennon's solo career) appears to have peaked in around 1970, can go just go straight to hell. I neither demand nor expect my city government to do that much (which spares one from eternal disappointment in places like L.A. and D.C., if nothing else), but aside from maybe lifting the occasional finger to combat the occupying rat population, one chore I wish to God the District of Columbia could handle is mowing the damned grass in city parks maybe more than once a decade.

Here you have all these handsome little squares and circles and triangles, usually featuring some Civil War general from the North (though not my great-great-great grandpappy, you Germanophobes!), and instead of ringing the space with nice green nature-carpets on which one might sit, you have foot-high thickets of filth more appropriate for hiding a dead body. Even my polite relatives from Oregon were muttering "cut the damned grass" after a few days of tromping around our nation's capitol. It's shabby, is what it is. Save us, John Hamilton! Your money's good in D.C.!

Thanks to Nicole Hamilton for the tip.