Slow and Steady Mows the Lawn

“Hey Dad, do you still have that old mower in the garage?”

The slightly guarded reply over the phone that followed was looking for more information. “Which mower do you mean?”

Action Girl and I had recently moved into our first house together after several years of apartment dwelling and suddenly I was confronted with the need to own things that I had not considered before. It was a simple and elderly house in an old neighborhood and came with its own foolishly small bit of grassy lawn. No mater how foolish it was though, it still needed mowing. Our two house cats could only chew it down so much. Give them credit, they would have done their best, but I wasn’t planning on cleaning that mess up later.

Growing up, we had a pretty good sized lawn. It wasn’t overly hilly or terribly large, but mowing it properly took an evening to do. It was just big enough that pushing the old, blue mower that seemed to punctuate the beginning of the warm season was a noisy pain in the neck. Your feet turned green with the sticky clippings and there’s just nothing quite like shoving a two stroke, blue exhaust belching engine in front of you for an hour and a half. As a small child, I was instructed to stay well away from it when it ran and like most small children when warned about an astonishingly loud, appendage eating machine, I took the direction to the extreme and mostly viewed it from the safety of the house.

This wasn’t my Dad’s first mower, however, but rather his first gas mower. As a young man at his first, real, career-style job after college, an older and more experienced coworker had gotten to know my father and saw an opportunity to offload some of his excess garden shed treasures on the new kid. When you’re just trying to get your very first home up and running, free stuff is hard to turn down. Those of us who have reached the point in our lives where we have to make paths through the basement and garage just to reach the back wall, can sniff these young-uns out a mile away.

An offer of some free necessity and a warm smile is cheaper than a trip to the dump, with the added benefit that they can often even be convinced to come and take it away themselves. If however, the item could possibly be turned down when seen in the flesh, it’s best to go with “the drop off.” It’s harder to refuse something once the offerer has gone through the trouble of bringing it to you. At least, that’s what he’s hoping for.

Such was the method of transfer of ownership that my father found himself in when the “lawn mower” that he was offered turned out to be a thirty pound, cart iron, rotary mower. A forced smile and, “thank you” from Dad, and into our garage it went. He immediately went out and got the gas powered finger chopper that I hid from, and there it stayed for as long as I can remember.

As time went along, Dad managed to get his hands on a riding mower and when I was old enough, I would pilot it around in ever tightening circles, pummeling the grass into submission as Dad did the small areas with the push mower he had bought all those years before. The antique rotary mower was left to gather dust and other than the few times I took it out to oil and push a few feet before it was hung back up, it never saw the light of day.

Now it was my turn to need new things necessary to run a house. I had been borrowing an electric mower from a nearby friend since we had moved in, but if you have never experienced the thrill of running over your own power cord, then you my friend, just haven’t lived. They are horrible little machines and after the second extension cord wound up in the trash, I decided that I needed something else.

Getting a gas mower for the five hundred square feet of lawn I had seemed more than foolish. That type of blunt headed consumption, frankly, drives me more than a little batty. I needed something else. Then I remembered the rotary mower.

“That mower? The one hanging up in the garage?” My dear father, sensing a chance to reverse the roll he played all those years ago when he came into ownership of the cast iron wall hanger, pounced.

“SURE! You can have THAT one! Tell you what, I’ll even go and get it sharpened for you before I bring it up.” He was going for full effect on the drop off. Once he had it cleaned up and ready for pushing, there was no way I could turn it down. Happily, Dad took down the old rotary mower and, leaving a large but oil stained outline on the garage wall, took it to the local shop for sharpening.

“Woah! Where’d you get this one?” The guys at the shop all came over to inspect the machine as Dad wheeled it into the showroom. After a brief retelling, one of the workers looked down at it with respect. “Your son’s a lucky guy. They didn’t’ make them like this when the made them. This thing is the Cadillac of the rotary mowers. They do a way better job of mowing. The grass will look great after a pass with this one.”

My Dad related all this to me when he dropped it off and much to our amazement, we found that when sharpened and freshly oiled, not only does it purr like a kitten, but it cuts the grass beautifully, evenly and quietly.

There are a few things that can get in the way when using it. First of all, it weights a ton and you never forget that for a moment when you propel it across the lawn. Secondly, if you put off cutting the grass too many weekends, you are in for a lot of sweating later. Unlike its motorized brethren, rather than smashing the grass down with a whirling piece of metal, this snips at it like scissors, and just like them, you can only snip so much in one bite. Long grass means multiple passes.

I have a larger lawn now and though I suppose I could justify a gas mower, I still happily use this one. I never have to fill it up, it starts ever time and most of all, I love the sound. My neighbor keeps offering me the use of his electric mower whenever he sees me with it out, but I just thank him and say that it’s my version of going to the gym. The fact of the matter is, I love it. I can hear the birds over the whirring blades and I smell like fresh grass rather than exhaust when I finish. The old mower was built in 1918, and I always get at least one passer by who stops as they walk by, to marvel at it. I have to admit, I’m proud of the thing.

The best outcome of all this was my father’s own revelation. He’s always hated mowing the grass and the ride-on and the push mower always seem to need something. Top that off with his dust allergy and high opinion of physical activity and he started to view cutting the grass in a different light. Shortly after I started using mine, he went out and bought one of his own. It’s new and lighter and easier to push, but the effect is much the same. Now his neighbors stop and comment about pushing such an old fashioned mower around the yard. Entertainingly enough, one of them has decided that it was a good enough idea to warrant him going out and getting his own as well. We just might have a minor revolution on your hands here!

I doubt that my son and daughter will enjoy pushing my ancient, iron monstrosity across the lawn when the job becomes theirs, but I won’t be getting rid of it any time soon. If they want a gas mower, they can get one. In the mean time, I’ll oil this one up and push it out across the grass. It’s been doing just that for about a hundred years now.

Why stop just when you’ve gotten it broken in?

Resume or Résumé

Some of you who have been kind enough to come back here from time to time and see what scribblings I’ve put down may have noticed a glacial like slowdown in my writing. Believe me, if you haven’t noticed it, I sure as heck have… and it’s driving me nuts.

It’s not that I haven’t been on the computer. Quite the contrary. I’ve been on it a lot. Too much, to be honest. You see, I’ve been at school.

T’was the day before Christmas, and all through the house,
You could see me grin foolishly, as if I were soused.
The children were nestled, all snug in their beds,
While the bank check I held, meant I was not in the red.

Sorry, I’ll stop there…

You see, I sold my business that I started ten years ago and decided to get back into education. This meant going back to school for a while and I wasn’t sure how I was going to pull that off. Then, a little ad caught my eye offering on-line fully accredited undergraduate classes. Living on an island as I do and being the primary care giver to our two little knee biters (Don’t scoff. I’ve been bitten by both of them now), this solution seemed to be the perfect fit for my needs.

And… it is.

Let me first say that if you ever encounter someone who tells you that online classes are a snap/joke/not real, you have my permission to laugh in their face and then possibly clear a nostril on their shoes, all in my name. These things have been kicking my butt, but in a good way. I’m doing well in them but… man!.. When was the last time you had to read a four-hundred page textbook in three weeks and write up a pile of papers on it as you go? I don’t know how you’d fair, but my brain is feeling mighty squishy these days. I also encountered something unexpected. The first twinges of carpal tunnel. As you might imagine, I’m being seriously careful about that. The reading, the writing and the further reading is numbing, but it is percolating through. Ten years since I left the teaching profession for a life in the business world, I’ve actually managed to resurrect the brain-meats that can not only understand edu-babble but actually converse in it. The rule of thumb is that if you can say something in a sentence of simple English, than you need to be able to say it in two paragraphs of edu-speak. Frighteningly enough, I seem to have retained the ability to do just that. It makes me feel like a need a shower after writing a paper in it though. Ick.

So, that’s where I’ve been. I’ve knocked down four of my required six classes that I need to change my education certificate from art to general education: kindergarten through eighth. I’m almost there now.

With some luck, I’ll find a job teaching this fall.

With a lot of luck, I’ll get my wish and will be teaching Kindergarten or first grade. Here’s hoping.

So now, I have to do something that I haven’t done in a long, LONG time. I have to write a résumé. It’s going to be both humbling and surreal. I’m used to interviewing, not being interviewed. Well, I did sign up for this, so I’d better suck it up and get typing.

In the mean time, I’ll try to keep up my writing here, but please forgive me if things get a little thin here over the summer. I have a lot more to tell and you can bet that if I do get to teach, I’ll be writing about that! The good news is, if I do get a job in the schools, I’ll get my commute back and that means I’ll regain my favorite writing time as I sit on the ferry to the mainland.

In the interim, here’s something to laugh at…

Sixty Five Years Later

Utah, Omaha, Juno, Gold, and Sword.

It’s been quite a long time since I stood on the bluffs and cliffs overlooking these beaches. It was an experience that I shared with a large contingent of my extended family, including my Grandfather. Though he was not there during his service in The War, he is a battle weary veteran who understands what went in to a landing. He in fact, understands it better than most men alive. It was what he did for years and under horrifying conditions at that. As a skipper of LST’s, LCI’s and LCM’s, he became a member of an elite group of landing craft captains specializing in unusual or particularly difficult combat landings. His war, however, was in the Pacific.

As we walked around and over the battlements of a lifetime ago, he pointed out small things here and there that we might not have noticed. Things like how the tide was running and what that would do to soldiers in the water, the position of gun emplacements and how the fire would have converged out to sea and where it would be most intense. I have always been fascinated with the Second World War and having been glued to my television set when ever “Victory at Sea” was on, I was well versed in the Pacific War. Whenever I had asked him about his own stories though, I was brushed off. He had a handful of funny tales he liked to tell and retell. I can recall him recounting memories of watching B-25’s and B-26’s making bombing runs on the Owen Stanley Mountains in New Guinea. That was always a favorite for him.

“They’d come over the range high and in formation, then, one by one, dive like sparrows down the side of the mountains. We’d count them as they peeled off and thundered at tree top level with their engines wide open. Then they’d disappear over the jungle. We’d count them again as they came back into our view over the water and figure out how many we’d lost. At that speed, nobody had a chance to bail out.”

That was about as detailed as he would get. I never really heard much about the landings he made at all.

Even though I knew the stories by heart, I would still sit and listen, eager to hear what ever he’d give me. France however, was different for him. He hadn’t been here during the fighting and so, he was in a reflective mood and willing to share his views on how he saw this field of battle. It was a fascinating trip.

As I stood on a German pillbox, its sides crushed under the weight of Allied shelling and bombing, I remember wondering if it was a tomb for the soldiers who would have been manning on that day long ago. There are missing men in every battle, but the thought that under my feet and few feet of concrete and steel, may hold the unremovable, mortal remains of the German war machine, was a sobering one. They would have been young boys. They never grew old, but died as teenagers for the dreams of a madman. The loss from every stone, dune and bunker was palpable.

As we visited the American Military Cemetery at Omaha Beach, we split up as we walked with a sort of hushed reverence. These were the heroes who had given their own “last full measure of their devotion” and the emotion for me was overwhelming. As I humbly walked among the graves, I couldn’t miss hearing the voice from a young British girl as she pointed me out to her parents.

“Look mum! That man is out walking on the grass! It says right here not to do that!”

She was right, naturally. I had walked deftly past the neat little sign admonishing this very thing. We were to “stay on the paths, please.” I smirked… and kept reading and saying the names to my self in a soft whisper. These were my countrymen. They were from my home and I did not think for a moment that I didn’t have the right to be there. In the cemeteries of the other nations involved, I would stick to the paths, but not here. This was U.S. soil and I was here to pay respects. I was twenty-one years old then, and older than most of the soldiers who surrounded me as they lay in peace.

Besides, Americans have never been great at following rules. It’s actually how we started out with our own country.

On this sixty-fifth anniversary of the invasion, I think back to my time walking the peaceful and quiet beaches of Normandy. I thank the French whom we met there and the kindnesses they gave us during our stay. I think of my Grandfather as he stood on the cliffs with the knowledgeable eye of a veteran landing craft captain as he wondered aloud how they got anyone past the sandbars and onto the beaches or over the cliffs.

We remember this day for the great sacrifice of youth that took place and because it marked the turning of the tide in, what had looked all too often, like an unwinnable war against a juggernaut that knew no defeat.

The beaches are beautiful now but still carry deep scars, much like the individuals who were there on the day of invasion. Their scars will be gone soon. They are leaving us by the hundreds every day. The scars on the land will outlive them all.

If you have not seen them, I suggest you should.

If you know someone who saw it for themselves sixty-five years ago, ask them about it now, for they will likely be gone tomorrow.

Rock On

The house was hushed today during naptime except for the hum of a fan and the gentle music drifting out of the stereo speakers. Short Stack was tucked into our bed (his preferred napping spot) and I toiled along on my computer down stairs, desperately trying to get my brain to reconnect with the psychobabble that passes for a college level discussions in educational methods courses.

The iPod has a few carefully selected play lists that get a log of airtime in our house. Odd combinations of artistes whom you would not expect to hear in the same mix roll through the living room on an endless loop. Norah Jones is followed by Billy Holiday who comes just before Israel Kamakawiwo’ole and then it’s on to some Dido and Loreena McKennitt. My “mix tape” building skills, honed through college, has come in handy. The common thread with this mix is the mood: Mellow. I actually named this particular play list “Napping Folks” and it does a good job.

Then, I hear the tell tale sound of tiny, scuffing feet at the top of the stairs. HE’S UP!

The plan has been that he gets to go for a ride with Mom if takes his nap a little early and wakes up in time. Action Girl is captain of the ferry to our island today, a relative oddity, and the chance for Short Stack to ride with her in the wheelhouse makes both of them excited. After the Laurel and Hardy-esque dance of getting dressed, finding shoes, packing snacks and answering roughly twelve hundred questions about every single topic that might zip through his hyper distracted brain, we’re out the door and headed for the dock. With a hug, kiss and wave, he’s off for an adventure and I tromp back to the house alone.

Lulu Belle is at my folk’s, slowly disassembling their kitchen and moving it, one item at a time, into the living room. She’s helpful that way! When I step through the my front door, the soothing music that’s been playing for hours attacks me like ants crawling up a pant leg. A lunge at the stereo and it falls silent. Then… a new play list is started. A special play list. A Daddy play list. This one is all mine, and it…

is…

LOUD!

Action Girl and I have a lot of things in common. We love mountain biking. We enjoy making and viewing art. We have the same parenting philosophy. We love world travel. There is one path where we diverge heavily though. Music.

All right, there are several paths where we diverge, but music is the one that I come up against the most often.

There are very few musical forms I don’t enjoy listening to. For the most part, if it’s good music, I’ll happily listen. There are moments that just seem right for just about any genre and my music collection has a sampling from most.

Mornings go great with Cat Stevens. Evenings are a little nicer with some Nina Simone. A dinner party with a little Edith Piaf? Sure! I like them all and so does she. However, on several million occasions, she’s come home unexpectedly while I’m listening to my own picks and said something along the lines of, “Can I just turn this off?” or, the less subtle, “What the hell IS that?!”

When I’m alone… and especially when there’s physical work to do, well… that calls for something different. The warm up often starts with AC/DC and escalates from there.

For what ever reason, Action Girl lost her taste for rowdy music long, long ago. This is even more curious since she actually attended an AC/DC concert back when she was in high school. I, for whatever reason, have grown towards it over the years.

Back in high school, the loudest thing I owned was Van Halen’s 1984, which I still own in the original vinyl. Most of my stuff was more sedate, however. The Police, perhaps some Doors LP’s liberated from my Mom’s collection and a good deal of 80’s pop. That was about it. The Police planted the seed though and later lead me to the Ramones who brought me to The Clash and then the Dead Kennedys and… you get the idea.

Now, when there’s manly work to be done involving power tools, hammers and possibly the first aid kit, I like to punch it up. The problem is that I almost never get that chance anymore. For ten years, I ran my own manufacturing shop. Most of the time, it was just a bunch of loud machines and I, alone in an ancient factory building. Orders were via fax and email so I never worried about customers never coming through the door. This was the absolute PEFECT place to go nuts with the heavy metal and other musical obnoxiousness, and I did! I’d pound away with its driving beat all day. On my commute home, I’d cool down with something more main stream and mellower, if for no other reason than avoiding the temptation to drive like a testosterone poisoned seventeen year old. On the ferry ride back to the island, I might listen to some boisterious classical. Copeland, Verdi or Saint-Saens worked nicely and did a wonderful job of drowning out the chatter from clueless tourists. Once home, it was whatever Action Girl wanted. Often, this was nothing at all.

She enjoys her silence.

The day before Christmas last year, I sold my business. In one fell swoop I lost my place for listening to the corrosive heavy metal or electronica that I enjoyed, the drive home for my pop music listening and the boat ride for my zippy classical.

Short Stack seems to have taken after his mother when it comes to listening choices. Anything more rambunctious than Emmy Lou Harris will send him to me with his hands over his ears and the announcement that, “Daddy, this is TOO loud.” So, I wait for the rare times like this when the house is empty. I crank the volume to eleven and queue up The Offspring. Who knows, perhaps some day I’ll be telling Shorts Stack to “turn that DOWN!” …but I’m not betting on it.

In the mean time, when he’s at school and Action Girl is at work, Little Lulu Belle and I listen to music all day long. Nothing scary and fast, naturally, but I’m starting her off right in the hopes of having someone who’ll join me in rocking out one day.

She already likes the Talking Heads and will actually dance to Credence Clearwater Revival, so… there’s hope. Normally, I’ll stick to the relaxing stuff, but when the house is mine and there’s work to be done… hey, I’ve got to be able to hear it over the table saw, don’t I? I just need to make the lunge for the power before the front door opens and I get the greeting, “How can you listen to this?”

The politic answer is to simply shrug.

The one I say in my head is, “Loudly!”

Thank You.