In Praise Of A Lawn-Mower

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Title:     In Praise Of A Lawn-Mower
Author: Charles S. Brooks [More Titles by Brooks]

I do not recall that anyone has written the praises of a lawn-mower. I seem to sow in virgin soil. One could hardly expect a poet to lift up his voice on such a homely theme. By instinct he prefers the more rhythmic scythe. Nor, on the other hand, will mechanical folk pay a full respect to a barren engine without cylinders and motive power. But to me it is just intricate enough to engage the interest. I can trace the relation of its wheels and knives, and see how the lesser spinning starts the greater. In a printing press, on the contrary, I hear only the general rattle. Before a gas-engine, also, I am dumb. Its sixteen processes to an explosion baffle me. I could as easily digest a machine for setting type. I nod blankly, as if a god explained the motion of the stars. Even when I select a motor I take it merely on reputation and by bouncing on the cushions to test its comfort.

It has been a great many years since I was last intimate with a lawn-mower. My acquaintance began in the days when a dirty face was the badge of freedom. One early Saturday morning I was hard at work before breakfast. Mother called down through the upstairs shutters, at the first clicking of the knives, to ask if I wore my rubbers in the dew. With the money earned by noon, I went to Conrad's shop. The season for tops and marbles had gone by. But in the window there was a peerless baseball with a rubber core, known as a cock-of-the-walk. By indecision, even by starting for the door, I bought it a nickel off because it was specked by flies.

It did not occur to me last week, at first, that I could cut the grass. I talked with an Irishman who keeps the lawn next door. He leaned on his rake, took his pipe from his mouth and told me that his time was full. If he had as many hands as a centipede--so he expressed himself--he could not do all the work that was asked of him. The whole street clamored for his service. Then I talked with an Italian on the other side, who comes to work on a motor-cycle with his lawn-mower across his shoulder. His time was worth a dollar an hour, and he could squeeze me in after supper and before breakfast. But how can I consistently write upstairs--I am puttering with a novel--with so expensive a din sounding in my ears? My expected royalties shrink beside such swollen pay. So I have become my own yard-man.

Last week I had the lawn-mower sharpened, but it came home without adjustment. It went down the lawn without clipping a blade. What a struggle I had as a child getting the knives to touch along their entire length! I remember it as yesterday. What an ugly path was left when they cut on one side only! My bicycle chain, the front wheel that wobbled, the ball-bearings in the gear, none of these things were so perplexing. Last week I got out my screw-driver with somewhat of my old feeling of impotence. I sat down on the grass with discouragement in contemplation. One set of screws had to be loosened while another set was tightened, and success lay in the delicacy of my advance. What was my amazement to discover that on a second trial my mower cut to its entire width! Even when I first wired a base-plug and found that the table lamp would really light, I was not more astonished.

This success with the lawn-mower has given me hope. I am not, as I am accused, all thumbs. I may yet become a handy man around the house. Is the swirl of furnace pipes inside my intellect? Perhaps I can fix the leaky packing in the laundry tubs, and henceforth look on the plumber as an equal brother. My dormant brain cells at last are wakened. But I must curb myself. I must not be too useful. There is no rest for a handy man. It is ignorance that permits a vacant holiday. At most I shall admit a familiarity with base-plugs and picture-wire and rubber washers--perhaps even with canvas awnings, which smack pleasantly of the sea--but I shall commit myself no further.

Once in a while I rather enjoy cleaning the garage--raking down the cobwebs from the walls and windows with a stream from the hose--puddling the dirt into the central drain. I am ruthless with old oil cans and with the discarded clothing of the chauffeur we had last month. Why is an old pair of pants stuffed so regularly in the tool drawer? There is a barrel at the alley fence--but I shall spare the details. It was the river Alpheus that Hercules turned through the Augean stables. They had held three thousand oxen and had not been cleaned for thirty years. Dear me! I know oxen. I rank this labor ahead of the killing of the Hydra, or fetching the golden apples of the Hesperides. Our garage can be sweetened with a hose.

But I really like outside work. Last week I pulled up a quantity of dock and dandelions that were strangling the grass. And I raked in seed. This morning, when I went out for the daily paper, I saw a bit of tender green. The Reds, as I noticed in the headline of the paper, were advancing on Warsaw. France and England were consulting for the defense of Poland, but I ignored these great events and stood transfixed in admiration before this shimmer of new grass.

Our yard, fore and aft, is about an afternoon's work. And now that I have cut it once I have signed up for the summer. It requires just the right amount of intelligence. I would not trust myself to pull weeds in the garden. M---- has the necessary skill for this. I might pull up the Canterbury bells which, out of season, I consider unsightly stalks. And I do not enjoy clipping the grass along the walks. It is a kind of barber's job. But I like the long straightaways, and I could wish that our grass plot stretched for another hundred feet.

And I like the sound of a lawn-mower. It is such a busy click and whirr. It seems to work so willingly. Not even a sewing-machine has quite so brisk a tempo. And when a lawn-mower strikes a twig, it stops suddenly on its haunches with such impatience to be off again. "Bend over, won't you," it seems to say, "and pull out that stick. These trees are a pesky nuisance. They keep dropping branches all the while. Now then! Are we ready? Whee! What's an apple? I can cut an apple all to flinders. You whistle and I'll whirr. Let's run down that slope together!"

[The end]
Charles S. Brooks's essay: In Praise Of A Lawn-Mower

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