WEED ABATEMENT
George C. Ballas - inventor of the weed eater (Houston Chronicle) On a blistering hot day in 1971, a ballroom dance instructor named George Ballas sat in his car as it was pulled through a Texas car wash. The spinning brushes that were battering the windshield wipers caught his attention. He later claimed this was the inspiration that led to his inventing the weed eater. His first prototype had fishing line poking through holes of a tin can attached to a lawn edger. The 28 inches of rain that fell on Michael's 4,500 square-foot backyard last winter completely ruled out using George's weed eater. By late April, the 40-degree slope that rises up behind the house was blanketed with a six-foot high impenetrable thatch of shrub-like weeds with stalks the size of a baseball bat. In early May, the annual weed abatement proclamation arrived in Michael's snail mail. The Los Angeles Fire Department demanded that nothing alive or dead, exceeding three inches in height would