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The Outlaw Betty Perry

By Lee Ostaszewski

The police in the town of Orem, Utah decided they needed to get tough. They had enough with the scofflaws, the cheats, the violators, the meanderers, and the generally unkempt. This wasn’t the Wild West any longer, they seemed to be saying. This part of the world, the proud land of Brigham Young, the Osmonds, countless minivans, and a really big salty lake had laws and those laws were put into place for a reason, and it was up to them, the lawpeople of Orem, to enforce those rules.

So the police officers did what they felt they had to. They came to the home of 70-year-old Betty Perry and after some words a scuffle ensued that resulted in her nose being bloodied. Eventually, she was arrested, handcuffed and taken to jail.

All for the unforgivable crime of failing to water her lawn.

My first instinct as a humor columnist was to now include a silly version of the lyrics to the theme song from the old television show “Baretta.” That’s the song in which Sammy Davis Jr. sings about not doing the crime if you can’t do the time, or something like that.

But I won’t, because almost instantly what became stuck in my head instead was a silly version of the lyrics to a popular song covered by The Clash which you will instantly recognize: “I fought the lawn cops, and...the lawn cops won. I fought the lawn cops, and...the lawn cops won.”

Just try getting that earworm out of your head today.

Technically speaking, Mrs. Perry wasn’t only arrested for having a brown lawn, she was also arrested for resisting arrest. She refused to give her name to the officer who came to enforce the lawn watering laws, and it went from there. I say good for her. There isn’t an American worth their weight in copies of Henry Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” who shouldn’t feel utterly justified objecting to an ordinance this, well, this ridiculous.

We can only imagine the confrontation that took place. If it were a movie, we’d watch as the officer pulls up in front of Mrs. Perry’s house and on cue 1970s spaghetti

Western music is heard. The officer would step out of the cruiser wearing, for some unexplained reason, an old Mexican poncho, then slowly walk part of the way across the brown lawn, squinting in the harsh sunlight, which in a tight close-up shot reveals crows feet around the eyes, which sit above three-days growth of beard and a half chewed cigar dangling from sun-parched lips.

Overall, not a bad look, except when you realize that this particular officer happens to be female.

No, no, that’s not true. I’m just kidding. As far as anyone knows none of the officers involved were scruffy, male or female. And the poncho thing probably didn’t happen either.

The crazy part of this story is that my lawn here in Massachusetts is brown and has been that way for most of the summer because of the drought we’ve had. Yet, if I dare tried to water it, because of local restrictions needed to conserve water, it means I could be fined up the wazoo, have my water service turned off, and who knows what else? Maybe even be called out by a scruffy, poncho-wearing, cigar-dangling female law enforcement officer. It could happen.

Who’s going to take a chance like that?

But unless global warming has changed things dramatically already, Orem, Utah is still located in a desert (just over 12 inches of rain annually, I learned). See what I am getting at? In New England we can’t afford to waste water despite the fact that we generally receive four feet of it each year as evidenced by the really tall trees everywhere. Yet if you live in Orem, which is A DRY CLIMATE, you are forced to waste water to keep your lawn green or else the lawn cops will visit.

It doesn’t matter if you would rather not have a green lawn. Yet, shouldn’t lawn care be a personal choice? Isn’t it time we get government out of our front yard? Isn’t this what we are fighting for in Iraq and Afghanistan?

If we must choose, shouldn’t we choose freedom over lawn fascism? Meanwhile, I wish I could choose to water my lawn because, personally, I hate it being this brown. ■