around nothing ever broke. Nothing ever
dared
to break.”
Loud as the mower was, it still wasn't moving and the blade wasn't going around. I stood looking down at it.
This strange thing happened.
It spoke to me.
Well, not really. I'm not one of those woo-woo people or a wack job. At least I don't think I was. Maybe I am now.
Anyway, there was some message that came from the mower through the air and into my brain. A kind of warm, or maybe a settled feeling. Like I was supposed to be there and so was the mower. The two of us.
Like it was a friend. So all right, I know how
that
sounds too: We'll sit under a tree and talk to each other. Read poems about mowing. Totally wack.
But the feeling was there.
Next I found myself sitting on the mower, my feet on the pedals. I moved the throttle to the rabbit position—it had been on turtle—and pushed the left pedal down, and the blade started whirring.The mower seemed to give a happy leap forward off the sidewalk and I was mowing the lawn.
Or dirt. As I said, we didn't really have much of a lawn. Dust and bits of dead grass flew everywhere and until I figured out the steering, the mailbox, my mother's flowers near the front step and a small bush were in danger.
But in a few minutes I got control of the thing and I sheared off what little grass there was.
The front lawn didn't take long, but before I was done the next-door neighbor came to the fence, attracted by the dust cloud. He waved me over.
I stopped in front of him, pulled the throttle back and killed the engine. The sudden silence was almost deafening. I stood up away from the mower, my ears humming, so I could hear him.
“You mow lawns?” he asked. “How much?”
And that was how it started.
When it all began, it was simple.
Our neighbor's house had a larger yard than ours, with what looked like good grass. No difficult corners, just a big square with a large elm tree in the center.
I mowed it, and he gave me money.
Twenty dollars.
Figuring that I used almost all the gas in the tank, about a gallon, which cost three dollars, and not counting the wear and tear on the mower (I didn't know how to figure that out), I made seventeendollars for my work. It took two hours so I made eight dollars and fifty cents an hour.
That, I was to learn later, was called capitalism.
While I was finishing up that lawn the next neighbor up the block came by and said:
“How much to mow my lawn?”
Wow. Another job, just like that.
I poked around in our garage and found an old three-gallon gas can. I walked to the station on the corner, bought gas, brought it back, filled the tank and mowed the second guy's yard.
And while I was doing that a third man came and asked me to mow his lawn. The lawns kept getting bigger, and soon it was dinnertime and I had done three lawns and had made sixty dollars and I had a small piece of scrap paper with phone numbers and addresses for six
more
lawns. …
Turns out the man who owned the lawn service that had done all the yards in our neighborhood had run off with the wife of one of his customers and all the husbands were worried about hiring a new company after what had happened. A kid like me mowing their lawns wouldn't be much of a threat, I suppose. Plus, I was cheap.
Later I would learn that I had tapped into something called an expanding market economy.
All I knew was that it felt good to have all that money in my pockets.
That evening I took a rag and wiped the mower down, parked it in a corner of the garage and—a little admission here—patted it on the top of the gas tank. As I bent over, the wads of bills cracked in my pockets. Thanks, Grandpa. I never really knew my grandfather but the mower seemed tough and friendly. Maybe it was like him. He had worked on it and used it and it was nice to think of him as part of it.
Then I went inside. A strange thing happened.
My parents were getting food on the table and as we sat down to eat my dad said:
“That new film about
dared
to break.”
Loud as the mower was, it still wasn't moving and the blade wasn't going around. I stood looking down at it.
This strange thing happened.
It spoke to me.
Well, not really. I'm not one of those woo-woo people or a wack job. At least I don't think I was. Maybe I am now.
Anyway, there was some message that came from the mower through the air and into my brain. A kind of warm, or maybe a settled feeling. Like I was supposed to be there and so was the mower. The two of us.
Like it was a friend. So all right, I know how
that
sounds too: We'll sit under a tree and talk to each other. Read poems about mowing. Totally wack.
But the feeling was there.
Next I found myself sitting on the mower, my feet on the pedals. I moved the throttle to the rabbit position—it had been on turtle—and pushed the left pedal down, and the blade started whirring.The mower seemed to give a happy leap forward off the sidewalk and I was mowing the lawn.
Or dirt. As I said, we didn't really have much of a lawn. Dust and bits of dead grass flew everywhere and until I figured out the steering, the mailbox, my mother's flowers near the front step and a small bush were in danger.
But in a few minutes I got control of the thing and I sheared off what little grass there was.
The front lawn didn't take long, but before I was done the next-door neighbor came to the fence, attracted by the dust cloud. He waved me over.
I stopped in front of him, pulled the throttle back and killed the engine. The sudden silence was almost deafening. I stood up away from the mower, my ears humming, so I could hear him.
“You mow lawns?” he asked. “How much?”
And that was how it started.
When it all began, it was simple.
Our neighbor's house had a larger yard than ours, with what looked like good grass. No difficult corners, just a big square with a large elm tree in the center.
I mowed it, and he gave me money.
Twenty dollars.
Figuring that I used almost all the gas in the tank, about a gallon, which cost three dollars, and not counting the wear and tear on the mower (I didn't know how to figure that out), I made seventeendollars for my work. It took two hours so I made eight dollars and fifty cents an hour.
That, I was to learn later, was called capitalism.
While I was finishing up that lawn the next neighbor up the block came by and said:
“How much to mow my lawn?”
Wow. Another job, just like that.
I poked around in our garage and found an old three-gallon gas can. I walked to the station on the corner, bought gas, brought it back, filled the tank and mowed the second guy's yard.
And while I was doing that a third man came and asked me to mow his lawn. The lawns kept getting bigger, and soon it was dinnertime and I had done three lawns and had made sixty dollars and I had a small piece of scrap paper with phone numbers and addresses for six
more
lawns. …
Turns out the man who owned the lawn service that had done all the yards in our neighborhood had run off with the wife of one of his customers and all the husbands were worried about hiring a new company after what had happened. A kid like me mowing their lawns wouldn't be much of a threat, I suppose. Plus, I was cheap.
Later I would learn that I had tapped into something called an expanding market economy.
All I knew was that it felt good to have all that money in my pockets.
That evening I took a rag and wiped the mower down, parked it in a corner of the garage and—a little admission here—patted it on the top of the gas tank. As I bent over, the wads of bills cracked in my pockets. Thanks, Grandpa. I never really knew my grandfather but the mower seemed tough and friendly. Maybe it was like him. He had worked on it and used it and it was nice to think of him as part of it.
Then I went inside. A strange thing happened.
My parents were getting food on the table and as we sat down to eat my dad said:
“That new film about
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