Mowing Lawns

When we lived in Rhode Island, our house sat on a 3/4 acre lot. The back of the lot was overgrown with brush and was fenced off for the donkey to roam. In front of the house was a small lawn. My father would mow this lawn with a reel style push mower. If he decided the back yard needed to be mowed, he would borrow a gasoline powered push mower from my grandfather.

Moving to Pennsylvania, my father was faced with a huge lawn on a hill. Somewhere he acquired a gasoline powered reel mower. This was a monster that needed to be started with a rope wrapped around a pulley. There was no clutch or brake on this machine and it would start creeping away as soon as the engine started. This meant you started it against a wall or tree. To stop it you ran into a tree or wall and disconnected the spark plug. For obvious reasons, Dad was the only one to pilot this machine around the lawn.

Luckily for Dad, we moved into the Pennsylvania house in August so his lawn mowing duty was soon over for the year. On course, a new mower purchase was now at the top of the must have list. Therefore, as soon as the mowers appeared at the department store, a riding variety was put on layaway. The mower was paid for and brought home just about the time the lawn needed its first cutting.

The new mower was a generic brand but it had a Briggs and Stratton motor to prove it was a quality machine. Riding mowers were still in their infancy so this one also had to be started with rope wrapped around a pulley. The blades served the dual purpose of cutting the grass and acting as a flywheel to keep the motor running. This meant they never stopped spinning. Not the safest idea but much better than having to run into a wall to stop. At this time, Mom took over the piloting position while my father was the chief mechanic. Our yard had as many rocks as blades of grass so we were always able to track Mom’s progress by the sound of her mulching up rocks along with the grass.

After her first year piloting the riding mower, Mom decided she wanted to also tackle the overgrown fields. Their little riding mower was much too small for this job so my grandfather gave us his 1938 Case tractor and we purchased a new Woods mower (shredder) for it to pull. Off Mom would go in her cowboy hat to mow the fields. Seeing the field were as rocky as the lawn, we could track her progress by the sound of rocks being mulched. If the sound stopped abruptly, my father would head for his tool box and meet my mom at the driveway to fix whatever she broke (usually just a shear pin).

When I moved to Nebraska, among my first purchases were a gas push mower, a riding mower and a tractor with a shredder. Although there are no rocks to mulch, when I put on my cowboy hat and head out to pilot a mowing machine I know I am following in my mom’s footsteps.