Lawny

Tuesday

Our lawn service crew showed up today for the first cut of the season. (We use Turf Trimmers--Kent, Ohio--and have happily done so since we moved here in 1997.) We have a tiny yard, and it doesn't take them very long (the machines seem almost inappropriately large). I could do it myself, I suppose, but I don't want to--saving my energy for things I do want to do.

We first started using a lawn service when we were living in Aurora, Ohio--1990-97. We had about an acre of grass (front and back total), and I would do the front (the smaller and less difficult--by far), and the crew--run by a former student--did the back.

In childhood, I first mowed grass back in the early 1950s in Amarillo, Texas, and in Enid, Oklahoma. An old push mower (which is pretty much what everyone had).

The only thing fancier was to attach a grass-catcher, which we didn't bother with for a long, long time.

It was pretty hard work, pushing one of those--especially in our final home in Enid, which had a front lawn that seemed perpendicular--at least to a mower-pushing wee one like me. Having no trouble was Dad, a farm boy, a man whose musculature I envied to his final days. But I had trouble. Lots of stopping and resting. And cursing my foul fate. I have to mow the grass while my brothers are not!

Don't want to make it appear that they never mowed the grass. They mowed it a lot, too. It just seemed as if I were mowing it every day. My older brother, in fact, once we moved to Hiram, Ohio, in the summer of 1956, actually had a lawn job out in the township. One thing I remember about him: When he mowed, he sang operatic arias. I thought that was odd. (But then he went on to become the classical music critic for the Boston Globe, so who am I to cavil?!?)

It was in Enid, not long before we moved, that we got our first gas-driven power mower--more about it next time.

To be continued ..