We Cut the Grass. What's the Problem?
My friend Greg and I were driving to a job in Michigan the other day. I like driving with Greg because we always end up talking about funny things from our childhood. Somehow we got onto the subject of our dads teaching us how to mow the lawn. I have no idea how we got there, but we spent a good part of the drive comparing our experiences.
I grew up in Evanston, where we had a front lawn that was maybe 40 by 80 feet, shared with our neighbor, and a backyard about half that size. Greg grew up in rural Iowa, in Marshalltown, where they had a whole lot more grass to cut. He had a riding mower, while I had a gas-powered push mower. Two very different lawns, but as we started talking, we realized we'd done almost exactly the same things.
Man, were we excited when our dads first taught us how to use those machines. Here we were, kids being allowed to operate a gas-powered machine with a rapidly spinning steel blade underneath it. How cool was that? You learned where the gas went, checked the oil, held down the lever and gave that starter cord a good yank. The engine would sputter, catch, and suddenly you had this loud, vibrating machine under your control. You could smell the gasoline and hear that engine change pitch as the blade dug into thicker grass. I thought it was great. I had no idea my dad had just found a way to get out of mowing the lawn.
At first, I took the whole thing seriously. Precision was important. I'd line up the wheels so the blade overlapped just enough of the previous pass to make sure there weren't any strips of uncut grass. Nice, straight rows, back and forth. Greg is even more particular than I am, so I'm sure his rows were as straight as the cornfields across the road from his house. We both wanted to do a good job, and we were pretty proud of ourselves.
Then the excitement wore off. What started as a chance to operate these great machines had become a job we were expected to do every week. And it was always on some hot summer day when there were a hundred other things we'd rather be doing. The grass kept growing, and our dads kept expecting us to cut it. There wasn't much discussion about that.
I can still remember the smell of freshly cut grass. I loved it then, and I still do. That sweet, green smell coming up from the mower, especially when the grass was a little damp. But after walking back and forth across the yard in the summer heat, even that wasn't enough to make the job interesting. Those straight lines were getting pretty damn boring.
So we started getting creative.
This was the part of the conversation with Greg that really made us laugh. We discovered that both of us had started using our lawns as giant drawing boards. We'd do diagonals, zigzags, checkerboards and all sorts of different patterns. Our favorite was the spiral. You'd start at the outside edge and work your way toward the center, going around and around until you finished in the middle. I also loved working around trees and figuring out how the pattern would change depending on where I started.
And we weren't doing sloppy work. We were still cutting the grass with the same precision we'd used on those original straight rows. Every pass overlapped perfectly. No missed spots. We were proud of what we'd created. We'd stand back afterward and look at the whole lawn, checking out our designs. It was a lot more interesting than walking in straight lines for an hour.
Both of our dads yelled at us. Not because we'd missed sections or damaged the machines. The lawns were cut perfectly well. The problem was that they looked ridiculous compared with the neighbors' lawns.
In Evanston, where the houses were close together and our front yard was shared with the neighbor, my designs were on display for everybody walking down the sidewalk. My dad wasn't interested in having a giant spiral in front of the house, no matter how carefully I'd cut it.
Greg and I did not remember anything in the original instructions about which direction the grass had to be mowed. Our Dads wanted the grass cut. We cut it. And we thought it looked pretty good. We couldn't understand why they were so upset about it. We weren't trying to get out of doing the work. We were just trying to make it a little more interesting.
I thought I'd eventually be finished with mowing lawns, but in high school I worked at the Evanston Court Club as a desk clerk and assistant club pro, teaching racquetball to beginners. The manager, Jim, had always mowed the grass around the building himself. He decided I could take that over, too. So now I was mowing lawns at home and at work. All those years of practice were really paying off.
One particularly hot summer day, I was outside mowing the club's lawn, trying out different patterns and having a pretty good time working around the little trees turning the green into all sorts of palettes. I was sweating like crazy and needed some water, so I shut off the mower and went inside for a drink. I wasn't gone more than a few minutes.
When I came back outside, I couldn't find the mower.
I stood there looking around, trying to remember where I'd left it. It wasn't a huge lawn but it did wrap around the building. There were only so many places a lawn mower could be. I walked around the building and kept trying to picture where I'd been mowing before I went inside. How could I not remember where I'd put something that big?
Then I noticed the tracks.
In just the right light, I could see two parallel lines pressed into the grass, starting where I'd left the mower and heading down the little hill toward the sidewalk. They looked like miniature railroad tracks. I followed them down the hill, and when they reached the sidewalk, they stopped.
Somebody had stolen the lawn mower.
I have been robbed a few times and when it happens your brain doesn't immediately accept what's happened. You keep looking for some other explanation because the obvious one doesn't make any sense. When I was in my 4th your of college (5th was Senior year for me.) my garden-level apartment was broken into while I went home to visit my parents. I got back late Sunday night into Champaign. I walked from the station to my apartment and was very tired. When I got to my front door I couldn't push it open it because the chain lock was fastened on the inside. I stood there trying to figure out how I'd managed to lock myself out with a chain that could only be secured from inside. How clever I was to do this I thought. It took me a while to understand that somebody had been in my apartment.
That's exactly what happened with the mower. I was standing there looking at those tracks, still trying to figure out where I'd left it, when the answer was right in front of me. Somebody had walked down the hill with it and kept going. I never saw that mower again.
What I enjoyed most about that drive with Greg was discovering how much we remembered about something as ordinary as mowing the lawn. We could both remember the excitement of starting those engines, the heat, the smell of the grass, and the boredom that led us to start making patterns. And we both remembered our dads yelling at us because we'd made the lawns look ridiculous. 45 years later, we were still laughing about it.
I wonder how many other guys did something similar. Maybe it wasn't mowing the lawn. Maybe it was shoveling snow, washing the family car, painting the garage or cleaning out the gutters. Some job your dad decided you were old enough to do, and before you knew it, you were doing it every week. And I'll bet plenty of us figured out our own ways to make those jobs a little less boring, whether our dads liked it or not.
We were proud of those patterns. We'd taken a job we didn't particularly want to do and made something out of it. The grass was cut, the equipment was put away, and we could stand back and admire our work. Our dads saw a lawn that looked ridiculous. We saw something we'd actually enjoyed doing.
And I still love the smell of freshly cut grass. Especially now when somebody else is mowing it.
About Greenland Sharks
Greenland Sharks is a Chicago men's group who value friendship, experiences, and the long swim. Just a crew that shows up. No speeches. No name tags. No nonsense.
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