Lawn Mower Summers

Today, my husband, soulmate, and partner in crime, Larry K. Collins, shares a memory from his childhood. 

For about three years, starting when I was eleven or twelve, I mowed lawns in my neighborhood to make extra spending money. Several of the neighbors gladly hired me for the chore.

I used my father’s push mower. It was old school. The forward movement of the wheels drove the vertically rotating blades which sliced against a fixed blade. A grass catcher hooked on the back and was held in place by a coat-hanger-like contraption hung from the mower handle. I turned the mower upside down, threw the catcher on top, and dragged it down the street to the selected house.

A year later, a young couple from the next street over heard about me and asked if I would do their lawn on a regular basis, twice a month for $20.00 monthly. Wow, a steady source of income. And the best perk was he had a new state-of-the-art, rotary-type power lawn mower I could use. On this model, a propeller type blade spun horizontally under a protective metal housing. The gas-driven engine sat on top, and grass clippings were thrown out an opening on the left side of the machine. The motor only worked the blade, so I still had to push it across the yard. I agreed to mow and edge the property.

The couple and their two daughters, one three and the other a year old, had moved in recently. He was a news announcer for a local radio station, and she a retired airline stewardess. In those days the airlines didn’t allow married stewardesses.

Their house was located on a curve, so the front yard was small, but the back was gigantic. Behind the house was a vast field of grass sloping down to a six-foot high concrete block wall on two sides. A detached garage and driveway completed the third side. There were no bushes or shrubs except for three sickly little rose bushes along the garage and a fifteen-foot high peach tree in the far corner. Near the rear steps from the house was a patio. Well, really a ten-by-ten square concrete pad set with two outdoor lounge chairs, the kind with plastic webbing screwed to an aluminum frame, and a low table of the same construction placed between. During the summer months, a small inflatable kiddy pool rested on the lawn nearby.

The first day, the wife led me to the garage. Her husband was at work. She pointed out the machine. Then I was left to figure out how to use it. After several unsuccessful pulls of the starter rope, I finally found and read the instruction manual, checked gas and oil levels, set the speed control lever on the handlebar to ‘start’ position and tried again. Success. One problem solved.

The instructions also said to mow the lawn in counterclockwise circles from the outside to the center of the yard. Grass clippings thrown from the mower would be reduced to mulch, which would become fertilizer. It worked well. Soon the lawn in the center grew so thick I could hardly push the mower thorough it.

My first pass around the yard was also almost my last. As I approached the peach tree, I heard a loud twang from the blade, and a peach-pit struck me in the groin. Ouch! I learned quickly to rake fallen peaches from around the tree first.

During the summer months, the wife would sunbathe while the children played in the pool. Often, one of her girlfriends and her two-year-old son would join them. Two wine glasses would occupy the small table. It was my first introduction to twenty-five-year-old ex-stewardesses in bikinis. I tried not to stare.

One eventful day, I was trimming the tall grass around base of the steps with my hand clippers when the phone in the kitchen rang. The wife, lying on her stomach leapt to her feet and ran past me up the stairs to answer. In her haste, she forgot she had unhooked the bra back-strap to prevent a tan line.

Her girlfriend, seeing my stupefied expression, burst into laughter.

Thinking back now, the neck strap was still tied, so I didn’t get much of a view. Still, since I vividly remember the incident after more than sixty years, it must have made quite an impression on my preteen psyche.

I mowed their lawn faithfully for several more years, but sadly, it never happened again.