The Great Lawnmower Fiasco

At one time my family owned four lawn mowers at once. You may ponder that total and consider it rather excessive, but the truth is, the lawn machines just started to pile up on us over the years. Many years ago, my Dad was involved in a terrible car wreck that left him severely injured. When he could finally walk again, one leg was 1 ½ inches shorter than the other, which made walking difficult. He got a lift put on his shoe but we decided that minimal walking would be the best thing for him. Therefore, he bought a riding lawn mower.

We already had one old push mower that was not self-running. It was the kind that needed to be shoved along, rather than driving itself through the grass. My Mother considered it to be more work than it was worth, so a new push lawn mower was purchased, that would literally pull her around the yard like an untrained dog on a leash. That meant three lawn mowers for three people. I got the one that had to be pushed like a stubborn mule, but I didn’t mind. For years that mower was my grass-chewing buddy until just recently when suddenly it started spewing black clouds of who-knows-what while gasping and putting like a toy car with emphysema. That was the beginning of the great lawnmower fiasco.

Finally it died altogether, and I had to stop mowing, (I heard the Halleluiah Chorus) but my relief was short lived. I would have to help Mom with her mower every so often. This arrangement worked out just fine until the day that Mom’s mower also gave up the ghost. Then we had only one mower, the rider that Dad always uses. But something happened to it, and it would only run well in reverse. Finally, after a couple more uses, it refused to run at all, and that put us in quite a bind. We had three lawn mowers that would not run, and grass that was growing sky-high. It was a bona-fide jungle out there.

So we bought a fourth mower, then the other two push mowers were repaired just well enough to crumple up the grass and lay it down flat. So, we were a more-or-less happy family of three again, and fondly awaiting the day when the riding lawnmower would be repaired to give us a fourth. We kept the newest one around as backup. I’ve always heard that bad things happen in threes but the great lawn mower fiasco sure brought that message home in a hurry.

Before I got married and left home, and there were still three of us doing a lawn the size of Rhode Island, we were actually beginning to contemplate buying a goat or twenty to chew up the grass for us. I’m still wondering if they would have done a halfway decent job of it. Now I live in an apartment and I can relax in my chair and watch someone else mow the lawn using nice big industrial sized mowers. Now those would have been a wonderful addition during the great lawnmower fiasco!