Strange British Customs in the US

Do you ever wonder about seemingly counter-intuitive customs and practices we accept and take for granted every day? I do. Two come to mind that seem unrelated but share a common point of origin: they trace back to our colonial British past.

The first odd custom is that of grass. Lawns, specifically. Why do we all work so hard to surround our suburban homes with golf-course green lawns? Fact of the matter is that over large swaths of the country (my home in Texas for example) grass doesn't grow naturally very well. I spend hundreds of dollars a year on water bills and to pay a lawnmowing service, just so I can have a lawn! Where did all this "lawn" idea come from anyway? England! Well in England its cool and damp--great conditions for rolling carpets of emerald-green lawns. In Texas its extremely dry and the summer heat is punnishing. Basically this is ideal climate for--well, rocks. Yes, stones do very well in Texas.

I've just about had it up to here spending good money forcing nature to replicate a small patch of the British Isles on my Texas property. Think how much time, money, and water I'd save just letting Texas be Texas and landscape with rocks and a few bits of that tall range grass that grows here. It'd still look great, but it would stand out from all the neighbors and their 9th hole lawns.

Ok, on to my next British colonial hold-over custom/pet-peeve. Suits. Why is it that we presume a gentleman must be wearing a suit to be considered well-dressed in a formal environment? Once again this is a hold-over from our English heritage. Most of the year its pretty cool over in London, so yeah, wearing a good suit and tie would reasonably define well-dressed for a gentleman. Fast-forward to post-colonial U.S., where more than 1/2 the territory suffers long, high-heat and/or high-humidity summers, and a suit looks completly rediculous, perhaps even dangrous to one's health. I mean c'mon! London is 6 degrees latitude north of Montreal Canada! Sure, I'd be fine wearing a suite in Canada. Not too many >100-degree >95% humidity days in Montreal. If there were people would be dying--probably because they're wearing suits!

I think in hot climates we should adopt something like the Latin guayabera, a traditional and distinctive dress shirt, worn without a jacket and not tucked into ones trousers. Air flows freely through it and there's nothing contstraining your neck.

I can't reshape culture--only pop stars can do that. I can make small individual choices to insert some reason into the personal decisions I make to adopt customs, or to adapt them to my local region. Rocks. I like rocks. Don't need to water or mow rocks. Rocks don't promote weeds. Yeah, I like rocks.