The 3 Amigos Lawn Service

Today is my brother’s birthday.  So, in honor of my brother, I want to reminisce about the “3 Amigos Lawn Service.”  When he was in high school, my brother was looking for various ways to make some extra cash.  One of his bright ideas was to start a lawn service.  That was right around the time when “professional” crews of Hispanic men were revolutionizing the lawn mowing industry and pushing the neighborhood kid’s summer job out of business.

But my brother decided to make a go of it, and with two of his best friends, he started the “3 Amigos Lawn Service.”  If you are a movie buff or just into the old cult classic, you probably picked up on the reference to the movie by the same name.  He actually asked me to design a logo, which featured three guys wearing sombreros, just like in the movie.  But I digress.  The point of the name, besides the obvious that there were three of them and that my brother loved that movie, was that he was hoping it would lend some credence to them being serious professionals, just like all of these upstart lawn businesses.

Never mind the fact that only one of them was actually Hispanic.  Or that one of them was so pale white and freckled that even after an entire summer in the sun, he wouldn’t be able to pass for Hispanic.  My brother was betting on the fact that nobody would know until they actually showed up, and then they’d wow them with their lawn sculpting abilities.

The “3 Amigos Lawn Service” didn’t have a long tenure under my brother’s management, maybe around a month before he grew tired of the venture.  But my next door neighbor and I picked up his customers and continued the legacy.  Despite there only being two of us, we kept the name, and the business went off and on for over two years after that.  We finally went under when the overwhelming number of professional businesses could do it faster and cheaper, making our feeble attempts completely obsolete.