Flashback Friday #44

The Riding Lawnmower

Hi folks, and welcome back for some more ramblings about people you don't know and places you'll probably never go to. In last weeks Flashback Friday #42, I mentioned in passing the riding lawnmower we had. Anyone who has ever had to mow a large area with a push mower realizes what a blessing a riding mower is. We had two lots (we had purchased the neighbor's lot when I was four), and that made for a good sized yard.

Dad had mowed the yard with a push mower up until I was about nine years old. One day he came home in one of his friend's truck. In the back of the truck was the prettiest green riding mower I had ever seen. Beeing green, you can guess the maker of the mower. At first, Dad was adamant that he was the only person to use the mower. After a while, he had a brainstorm. "I have two kids", he thought. "Why am I outside mowing the grass while I could be inside watching TV?" It wasn't long before he trained us to work his pride & joy.

One day I was tooling around the yard (I was nine or ten) and I guess I wasn't paying too much attention to where I was going. When I realized what was going to happen, I tried to take evasive action, but I was too late. I was headed , full throttle toward the swing set. As I hit the leg of the swing set, the wheels kept turning, and sent me right up the support leg. There I was sitting on a lawn mower that had just climbed the leg of a swing set, and would have kept going if there had been anything for the wheels to grip. I was lucky that it didn't tip over and crush me. Dad rescued me, and Sir Gattabout made my life miserable by teasing me about it for weeks. Here is a lesson to be learned. Never tease someone for something that they did, because it might happen to you. A few weeks later, Gattabout was mowing when something distracted him. Before he knew what was happening, he was climbing a tree with the mower. Fortunately, he didn't get hurt either, except for a bruise on his ego.

Drag racing was a popular pastime with the mower. Since our road was fairly quiet, you could set up races against neighboring teens. One kid would be the starter (usually me), one kid would be the finish line judge and two kids would watch for traffic(one watching each way, seeing we were using both lanes). A shout of "CAR" would send the mowers off to the sides of the road. Dad never caught Gattabout racing his lawn mower. He would have grounded him forever.

We always hung the key to the mower just inside the front door. One day, Dad went to get the key, and it wasn't there. Nobody knew what had happened to the key. Since he had kept all the papers that came with the mower, a spare key could be sent for as long a the serial number of the tractor accompanied the request, but it would take 4-6 weeks to come in the mail. By that time we would have had a jungle in the back yard. As everyone continued to search, I came up with an idea. I went though some of my "good junk" and came up with a sardine key. I took it to Dad and asked if it would work (since it was a "key"). He laughed and told me that it wouldn't work. While they were looking for the real key, I decided to try my key to see if I could get it to work. I stuck that sardine key into the ignition and turned it. The mower started, and I drove it around to the front of the house. Dad asked where I had found the key. I held up that sardine key. He told me there was no way that I could have started the mower with that. I turned the mower off, re-inserted the sardine key, and started the mower again. You could have knock him over with a feather. We used the sardine key until the replacement came, and hung it behind the key,"just to be safe".