Leaf blowers and Entropy in Pacific Grove

There is a man mowing a lawn across the street, and the sound is penetrating into every corner of my home.  Above that noise I hear the shush of tires on the avenue that crosses my street. An occasional scrub jay's "zjaaack" punctuates the other noises. Now a leaf blower is beginning and I am feeling my mood darken.  I don't necessarily require quiet all around me at all times, but certain irritating noises drill so severely into my ears that I cannot stand them. 

The leaf blower has miraculously stopped.  I hear the clock ticking, a rake on gravel, the refrigerator humming.  Evidences of human activity and busyness all around. My jaw is unclenching, gradually. 

It's the middle of the day and the week, a Wednesday.  Money is being earned, lives enriched.  Pacific Grove is a tidy town and the yard keepers are ensuring that it stays that way.  Many times, too many to remember, I've seen yard workers blowing leaves and dust from under bushes, across lawns and the sidewalk, out into the street.  Usually, the dust is blasted to a point six feet from the curb. There it rests until almost precisely 1 PM when the wind comes up and blows everything back where it came from. 

If there's anything you can really count on in this town, it's the wind coming up at 1. 

My street is narrow and, having just watched the yard worker out there with the leaf blower, I see he has blown the debris across it to the neighbor's gutter.  What a friendly gesture!  To keep the PG neighborhoods looking good, residents (almost all are white) hire Hispanic or Asian men from Seaside or Marina - low-rent towns - to blow leaves, dirt and trash into each others' gutters.  I guess it makes sense in some sort of way.  It's basically an ironic and perpetual situation that balances the local economy.  Everyone seems satisfied (my neighbor has just given directions to the leaf blower and thanked him).  Some young grad student could come over to this little street, put little ID tags on the leaves and use a GPS tracking system to see how many times they get sent back and forth by blowers.  My bet is there are leaves out there that originally fell in 1962. 

It's 12:30 PM at the moment, so in about half an hour the debris I see scattered in the street will be picked up and redistributed entropically, but - my smile is widening - much, much more quietly.  What a funny town.