The smell of a clean lawn fills the air. Grass stuck to his shoes and jeans, grass is everywhere. Beads of sweat slowly drip down his face as he drives through the yard. As the job comes to a close, he and his dad look over their shoulders and call it work well done. Leo Smejkal, a junior, helps his dad with his landscaping and lawn care business called “Classic Lawn Care and Landscaping.”
Smejkal always loved riding along with his dad starting all the way back to age three. The work really began when he was around 10. The work that he and his dad do is very straightforward, “Whatever the customer needs to be done with their lawn or landscaping,” said Smejkal.
Smejkal describes his relationship with his father as a basic father-son relationship, but working with any family member has its pros and cons. Smejkal explained the biggest advantages as “I have someone who will stand up for me, and he is someone I can trust no matter what.”
The hardest part about working with his dad is “he can be strict sometimes,” Smejkal said, “and if you are doing something wrong he will definitely make sure you know you are doing something wrong. Which is good but can definitely be a lot sometimes.” Some of you may ask how he gets paid, well that is very simple. Smejkal describes his pay as “having a roof over my head and food on the table.”
Throughout Smejkal’s years of working with his dad, they have run into some interesting yet funny situations. One of the jobs that they went on was at a ranch. The customer just wanted them to mow a few acres. To get to those acres they had to go through a pen. The customer said nothing about any animal inside. “That’s when we saw it,” Smejkal said “A longhorn cow was just sitting there watching us, it was startling but he never did any harm he just sat there watching.”
Another scenario that wasn’t exactly funny was when they started to realize pieces of equipment started to go missing. Smejkal started cleaning and loading everything up when there was a noise from inside the trailer. Not thinking anything of it Smejkal kept packing things up to put into the trailer. When he was opening the door two guys bolted out of the trailer. Stunned and confused, Smejkal let them run because they had nothing in their hands. Confusion was radiating off of both Smejkal and his dad, Smejkal states “Who would want to steal landscaping equipment, All it is is shovels and some tools?”
