By Bill King
If I could line up in a straight row every foot of grass I have mowed in my life; I quite possibly would have mowed around the earth a few times! If that were to be the case, I sure hope most of it would be on a riding mower rather than a push mower! I have been mowing lawns for a long time…in fact, for most of my life. After all these years and all those lawns, I think I may be right back where I first started. Mama was the grass cutter at our house when I was too young to do it. As soon as I was big enough to see over the handlebar, Mama graciously passed the privilege to me. Sometimes, I had the choice of running the tiller in Mama’s one-hundred-acre garden or mowing grass. I chose mowing.
I distinctly remember someone telling me back then that they made mowers you could ride, but someone also told me that Santa Claus drove a black Ford pickup truck. I put both of those tall tales in the same category as snipe hunting! Our mower was a 22-inch self-propelled push mower. I was the “self” that propelled it! I asked Mama if she was going to pay me for cutting the grass. She said, “Absolutely! After you finish mowing and I finish picking beans, you can help me shell them, and I’ll pay you with supper! Later on, my next-door neighbor actually did pay me for cutting her grass. Every time I pushed my Bill-propelled mower across her yard, she gave me two whole dollars. That wasn’t so bad back when that much money would buy around eight gallons of gasoline.
Now, more than a half-century later, I’m right back where I started. I’m cutting grass with a Bill-propelled mower and not getting paid a penny to do so! Oh, yes, I do own a riding mower, but it has been in the lawn-mower hospital for over a month now. I hit a hole in my backyard and broke something in my steering mechanism. Well, actually, not in my steering mechanism, but in my mower’s. It still runs, but it doesn’t know gee from haw anymore, so I never know which direction it may decide to go and mow. I took it to the local small-engine repair shop and asked them if they could fix it. They said they believed they could, and I believed them. (Does Santa really drive a black Ford pickup truck?) Perhaps, I should have asked when.
I have a battery-powered push mower that I use to do my trim work. For a month now, I have been “trimming” my entire yard with it. If I fully charge all eight of my 18-volt batteries, I can finish in one cutting. The biggest problem I’m having with it all is that a gallon of Gatorade in this kind of heat is not enough to keep my old-man batteries charged up! By the time I finish, I’m finished! I am considering paying someone to cut my lawn, or buying a goat.
Sometimes, we simply don’t know how good we have it until we no longer have it. While I gripe and complain about my Bill-propelled mower, the scorching heat, and the slowness of getting my riding mower fixed, I must admit that I am blessed beyond measure. I’ve had yet another birthday, and even at my age, I am still physically able to push a lawn mower. Besides that, I don’t even have to buy gasoline for the battery-powered one!
