Dave Colon stares in disbelief at the thin brown band, this dagger through his heart, this imperfection, this disfigurement in his near-perfect front lawn. He's too good-natured to do much more than swallow the pain, but there's no use denying the injury. Ever since those cable TV installers dug their narrow trench one week earlier, the strip of dead grass has been standing out like a scar.

"I wish I had a can of green spray paint," he says wearily. "They tried to be careful. They made a slit. But it died. There's nothing I can do."

Some people may read these words and think this man has overreacted. Some will think Colon, who mows twice a week (and does so at a slow pace to avoid "ripping" rather than cutting the grass) is a little too involved with his lawn.

Well, maybe those same naysayers don't understand a guy who has treated his too-rocky backyard to truckloads of rich black topsoil, who has installed an oversized water line strictly for the lawn sprinkler, and who lovingly cleans his 18-horsepower garden tractor with a leaf blower to keep it dry and rust-free.

But a lot of guys will understand. Their reaction will be envy. Colon knows that, and he smiles.

"What can I say? I take a lot of pride in my lawn," shrugs Colon, 51, who is a quality-control supervisor for the U.S. Postal Service when he's not mowing a 2.5-acre lot in Darnestown, 12 miles northwest of Washington.

Jonathan Swift once wrote that whoever could make "two blades of grass grow where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, [and] did more essential service for his country, than the whole race of politicians put together."

What then do we say about the people who shoot far higher, whose burning desire is to have their neighborhood's finest lawn, a plush, weed-free emerald carpet that beckons to be rolled upon -- except after a rain, of course, lest someone bruise those perfect stalks of Kentucky Blue.

There are 850,000 blades of grass in the average 1,000-square-foot suburban back yard. That's a lot of essential service for the country.

"The lawn sets up and beautifies a home," marvels Edward J. Bender, a retired Baltimore County recreation official and avid Timonium lawn tender. "It's like setting a table. You have to make it look good."

Colon readily admits that he represents a small but formidable group of mostly affluent suburbanites for whom having a "nice" lawn is not enough. They seek something greater, something monumental. A higher, if you will, turf.

Vince Patterozzi knows about that. By weekday, he is the Ravens' chief groundskeeper, creating a landscape that can endure repeated pummelings by 300-pound linemen. On weekends, he is just as fanatical about his own lawn in Severna Park. "How many people can bring their work home and have everyone enjoy it?" asks Patterozzi cheerfully.

But there's a twist. Patterozzi uses his one-third-acre lot as a test site, trying out the latest seeds and fertilizers. Sometimes, he deliberately harms parts of his lawn, leaves bare or brown spots, or cuts it too short so he can see the effect.

When he moved his family to Maryland from Cleveland in the fall of 1997, much of the front yard was torn up and left bare for weeks -- to test the slow- germinating Creeping Bentgrass that is so common on putting greens. His wife, Lynne, was not pleased with the mess and issued an ultimatum.

"She said she wanted a real lawn, and she wanted it right now," he recalls.

Despite his experiments, Patterozzi still has the nicest lawn in his neighborhood these days, green and lush despite a recent drought. He has ryegrass growing thick beneath an oak canopy in a shady back yard that is better suited to growing ferns and moss -- as many a frustrated amateur knows.

It doesn't hurt that he has installed an $8,000 computer-controlled, 14-zone, 56-head sprinkler system that covers every square inch of turf. Or that he gets the latest products and grass seeds from the leading suppliers.

"I guess I've just always enjoyed the color green over brown," says Patterozzi, 45. "And there's just that little bit of exercise involved."

Lawns are big business. Americans spend an estimated $39.3 billion on lawn care each year, making it by far the nation's most lucrative crop.

A recent contemporary art exhibit from the Canadian Centre for Architecture, "The American Lawn: Surface of Everyday Life," ran for two months in Cincinnati and brought in large crowds. It featured such attractions as mowers from the '50s and an array of weed tools, as well as slides and film clips of rolling estates and country homes.

Warren Schultz, the author of a hefty coffee-table book on the subject, "A Man's Turf/The Perfect Lawn," (Clarkson Potter $35), says lawn care is a passion felt primarily by men. Perhaps, he says, it reflects man's need to feel in control, or to seek mindless escape, or simply to be accepted by other men.

"A well-tended lawn shows that we think we belong to the community and we're a member in good standing," Schultz says. "It's an opportunity to spend hours fussing over something natural -- even if a lawn is an unnatural patch of nature."

While lawns in America have been primarily a 20th-century preoccupation, their roots go much deeper, to English and European traditions. For centuries, poets like Walt Whitman have rhapsodized about them. The first chapter of Genesis quotes none other than God: "Let the Earth bring forth grass."

"There's something genetic here, maybe back to early man and the African savannah," says Schultz. "It represents home and safety."

For the passionate, it means even more. They tussle with their lawns, fighting insects, disease, weeds, drought. Texas A&M;'s Web site averages 100 questions a week from lost souls anxious to find out how to create the Camden Yards-like fields of their dreams.

The development of effective herbicides, slow-release fertilizers and disease-resistant varieties of grass has made the job easier but still not easy -- particularly in a transition zone like the Mid-Atlantic, where it's too warm for cool weather grasses, too cool for hot-weather plants.

"To have a Southern Living kind of lawn, you have to put forth a lot of effort, money and time," says Dr. Gene Taylor, a Texas A&M; associate professor and a turf grass specialist, "And it probably doesn't hurt to be a little [obsessive compulsive]."

The last two decades have given rise to an ally -- albeit a paid mercenary -- in these turf wars: the professional lawn-care company. In 1998, Americans spent $16.8 billion on them, a 32-percent increase from the year before, according to a Gallup survey commissioned by the landscape industry.

No longer do affluent homeowners need to labor hard to create the envy of their block. "The guy who calls me up and wants me to look after his lawn usually doesn't have a lot of lawn-care knowledge, but he has the money," says Robert E. Andrews, owner of the Greenskeeper, an Indianapolis, Ind., lawn-care company and consultant to the Professional Lawn Care Association of America.

Some lawn aficionados fret that the rise of professional lawn care has caused a corresponding drop in their ranks. And what of the next generation? Whither the American lawn fanatic?

"The people who do their own lawns, they're a shrinking bunch," says Jim Watson, owner for 45 years of Watson's Garden Center in Timonium. "It's mostly the retired codgers. Today's guy just doesn't have time for the lawn."

But others dispute that notion. Officials at the Scotts Co., the country's leading lawn-care supplier, point to marketing surveys that show record numbers of do-it-yourselfers and product sales that have risen 75 percent since 1995.

Besides, can a lawn company give a homeowner the same kind of satisfaction as do-it-yourselfers feel? Sam Helms thinks not. The near-perfect landscape of green surrounding his duplex in Glendale is the result of his own loving devotion.

"It's a challenge to see if you can make the son of a gun look more beautiful than others in your neighborhood," says Helms, 61, director of institutional research at Towson University and an admitted lawn fanatic. "Mine's much better than anyone in my neighborhood -- not that I need to compliment myself, but there it is."

Lawn lit

"And God said, Let the Earth bring forth grass ... And the Earth brought forth grass."

-- Genesis 1:11-12

"When you destroy a blade of grass, you poison England at her roots."

-- George Bottomley

"Nothing is more pleasant to the eye than greene grasse kept finely shorn."

-- Francis Bacon

"Let your lawns be your home's velvet robe, and your flowers not too promiscuous decorations."

-- Frank J. Scott

"I believe a blade of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars."

-- Walt Whitman, "Leaves of Grass"

A common thing is a grass blade small

Crushed by the feet that pass

But all the dwarfs and giants tall

Working till Doomsday shadows fall

Can't make a blade of grass

-- Juhan Stearns Cutler

-- Selected quotations from: "A Man's Turf/The Perfect Lawn" by Warren Schultz, (Clarkson Potter, $35)

Pub Date: 06/27/99