When we bought these two and a half acres, half of which is in lawn, we also bought a riding mower from the previous owner. We had never lived in the country and had no idea what such a thing should cost. I think it was figured into the mortgage, and I think we paid way too much. That machine lasted long enough for us to take some funny pictures of Scott zipping along while holding a beach umbrella over himself. However, Scott didn’t really have time to mow, I had no desire to mow, and our oldest child was only six. Within a few months, the rider was dead, and we hired Reggie.
Reggie is a fifty-something neighbor down by the creek, who keeps his own property looking very nice. At the time, he managed a convenience store by the state line and left for work about 5:30 AM. After work, he mowed for extra income. He was THE FASTEST mower I’ve ever seen. In ninety minutes, he rode and weed-eated our entire yard and it always looked spiffy. We paid him the going rate (per job), and let’s just say that as fast as he worked, his hourly rate was astounding.
Somewhere along the line, we bought another rider and a used (green) push mower. Later on, we bought an electric (corded) weed-eater. When Katie was about 12, we began requiring her to mow the place for a pittance as one of her weekly summer chores. It took her a lot longer than it took Reggie, but she did a a great job, too. We got her a cordless weed-eater, which ended up working for two seasons, but finally got to where it would only run for 27 seconds after charging for eight hours. So Katie did the lawn till Jessica turned 12, at which point Jessica took over the sweat-for-squat mowing chore. Gas had gone up a bit, so we increased Jessica’s pay a bit - a very little bit. We also bought another (red) push mower, when our trusty old green one bit the dust.
The next year, Jessica decided to split the work and the pay (which we again inched upward) with Josiah. She rode and weed-eated; he pushed. We also bought a gas weed-eater, which the kids were finally big enough to handle.
This year, Josiah is 13 and fully in charge of mowing, and, while we have certainly had our share of lawn equipment woes in the past (as in, the year that you spend $200 pre-season to have the rider serviced, it breaks down over and over all summer, but the year you don’t service it at all, it runs fine - go figure), that was NOTHING compared to the challenges we have now. Almost every time he goes to mow, something goes wrong.
It could be that the rider won’t start. (dead battery? loose cables? who knows?) Or maybe it’s running rough. (spark plug? need oil? who knows?) Or the push mower won’t start. (always a total mystery) Or the weed-eater twine won’t advance. (screw thing at the end is busted and wants a certain touch) Or the push mower is blowing black smoke. (burning oil?)
It doesn’t really matter and I’m not even surprised any more. EVERY time it’s time to mow, something breaks. And to make matters a little spicier, now that Andrew has taken over push-mowing the front yard (for which we pay him the magnificent sum of $1, while still paying Josiah his full amount for all the riding, all the weed-eating and the rest of the pushing - but Josiah has to buy all the gas), we have to deal with that idiotic feature of all push-mowers manufactured in recent years: that stupid little metal bar that you have to keep squeezed against the main bar in order to keep the mower running. Our old faithful green model was free of such idiocy, but the red one’s got the bar.
Gooo-ooo-oood night! Do I really need the government to keep me from injuring myself with my own mower? Are we living in 1984? With my carpal tunnel problems, squeezing that stupid little bar makes my fingers go numb. And, when you’re eight years old and you pause to wipe the sweat from your brow (inadvertently pausing releasing the stupid little bar), the mower quits and you have to either go find your (riding or weed-eating) brother and frustrate him by asking him to stop his own work to re-start your mower, or you have to go inside and ask a sister or mother to do it. Neither of these options is a maximally efficient use of any of our family members’ time!
So today, the boys were mowing and
A) the rider was out of gas and the station next door was closed (read “drive up to Gateway and spend $2.89/gallon”),
B) the push mower “completely died,” requiring Josiah to weed-eat all the grass (including the dreaded ditch) that he usually pushes, and
C) the weed-eater twine thingy would not unscrew for love or money, so Josiah had only two inches of twine available (read, “it’s gonna take a LONG time to trim this these 1.5 acres with scissors.”)
Josiah asked me to try to unscrew it. This was somewhat of a joke, because a mere three days ago, I was trying to unscrew a new salsa jar’s recalcitrant lid, and after trying all the old standbys (running the lid under hot water, banging it with the handle of a butter knife, grunting hard and saying, “hoomp-hah”) unsuccessfully, I had sought Josiah’s brawn to solve that problem. Did he now REALLY think that I could unscrew the weed-eater twine thing when he couldn’t? I tried, but I could not.
The only other option was Dad, who was upstairs in the office trying to earn a living - to help pay for lawn equipment, among other things - and who was slightly frustrated already, because he had been interrupted numerous times, had banged his knee on the sharp metal corner of his desk pull-out while trying to help me help Jessica with what turned out to be a stupidly simple geometry problem AND had just had telephone go-around #13 with the folks who are supposed to be installing our Dish Network TV system - ten days ago. I told Josiah that Dad was not about to come back down and go outside to try to unscrew the weed-eater twine thing, and that he (Josiah) should take it up to the office, hand it to Dad, and ask him to give it a yank.
Josiah did exactly as I said, but Dad was just then on the phone with the admissions office of one of the colleges Katie is considering, trying to arrange for him and her to visit said. He motioned to Josiah to “GET THAT THING OUT OF HERE!” So I told Jo to put it out in the hall and find something useful to do till Dad got off the phone. When Scott hung up, Josiah was nowhere to be seen, and Scott was NOT happy about a weed-eater in the house. He wanted it out on the front porch, so he put it there himself. He then returned to the office and I asked if he had gotten the twine thing unscrewed. No, he didn’t know where Josiah was. Was that the question I asked? Sheesh.
So, Josiah eventually re-appeared, and Scott left his work for the umpteenth time and I guess got the dude unscrewed, because an hour later Josiah finally announced that the yard work was DONE.
Now, I still don’t know if the push mower will ever work again, but Reggie did do the whole yard with just a rider and a weed-eater (no push mower at all) for a number of years. Hmmm… And the main handle of the red push mower did break in two about six weeks ago - but Scott fixed that. And then when it started making a horrid noise and bellowing black smoke, Scott took it to a repair place. They were a little slow getting to it, so he decided (while at Wal-Mart) to just buy a new one - the cheapest one they sold, since our family is so hard on them. He brought it home and the boys mowed with it. The next morning first thing, he called the repair place back and told them not to mess with it, but they said they had already fixed it and it was running fine. So he took the new one back to Wal-Mart (after it had been used to do all the push mowing on our yard!) and got all his money back, and then went and paid for and brought home the old one - the one that is now (a month or so later) “completely dead.”
Reggie went out of the mowing business a few years ago, and I doubt we could find anyone who would be willing to do our yard now for what we paid him then - although, if you add up what we pay the kids, plus the cost of buying the equipment, plus the cost of maintaining the equipment, plus the cost of servicing the equipment, we could probably pay DOUBLE Reggie’s old rate and still come out ahead.
Ah, but then what would the kids learn about work and money?
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