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The first lawn I mowed was on the top of the hill and the lawn relatively flat. I was 10 and small. The mower was a bear to push–weighed as much as I did and was me propelled. A few years later Dad built a new house across the street and a few houses down — on the side of the hill. The front yard was flat and small. The rest of the yard was steep and large. Then Dad bought the lot next door. The whole thing was 2+ acres and steep. My brother and I called it the Ponderosa and it took 3 days to get it all mowed. During the spring, when the grass was shooting up, we mowed every day except Sunday. Dad would check to see that there weren’t any “holidays” in the mowing. No missed patches. And no quarters for doing it. We had food, a bed, a house, etc. We contributed.
Now I have a 48″ lawn tractor for my own lawn. I don’t miss mowing with the push mower. I just wish Dad were here to see my lawn and how well he taught me to keep it.
Funny how that which we hated as kids means so much to us as adults–especially where are fathers (or mothers) are concerned. Sounds like your dad “Done Good,” by all of you
I love mowing the lawn. Of course, we had a rider from the time I was about 13. But we lived in the country, and even with the rider, it took me about 3 hours to mow everything. Mostly, because I expanded the lawns to be about twice what the had been before I took over the responsibility for tending to them. We lived next door to my grandmother, so the lawns included her front yard, the lawn by her driveway, backyard, the lawn (which I reclaimed from thorn bushes) on the hill behind her barn, my parents front-front yard by the road, the lawn by the clotheslines, the (lush, green) lawn over the septic tank, the side lawn, the back lawn, the front lawn, the western lawn, the path to the blueberry bushes.
Living in New York City really chafes.
I’d show you my glorious lawns on Google Earth, but then you’d know where my father lives.
Are lawnmowers common in Europe and elsewhere in the world?
I can understand the pride in owning land. I can understand the pride in shaping that land to one’s will. But what’s so impressive about neatly trimmed grass? Is it anything more than a stunted field or an empty garden?
Of course, if you’re making a football field, that’s entirely understandable!
Work for work’s sake smacks of communism rather than the American dream, which is why I question the value of a mowed lawn. But the attitude that, “If you’re going to do something, do it right” is certainly honorable.
ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Not sure that qualifies for the torture of pushing that lawn mower which was so heavy one couldn’t even lift it alone to put in a truck. “Riding a lawn mower” is like trimming a hedge with ban electric trimmer or “raking leaves” with a blower. However, you’ve got the right spirit–and who could have “push mowed” an acre?
An interesting analogy and one “The Greatest Generation” would have taken great offense to. They HATED communism and would have been flabbergasted at the mere hint that doing a job right, because it’s the right thing to do, smacked at all of anything to do with communism.
They were more of the Epictitus mode–that there was only one way to do things–and that was the right way. They were regimented and they became the very definition of “Establishment”–but they couldn’t help themselves. And eventually, we all ended up loving them for it.
J.E.W., Wonderful post; I was raised by the “Lawn Ranger”, too…Watched my two brothers push/ride/edge/rake – with alternating passes. (One of them is still doing it – on his own place *and* at our Dad’s. Riding now, though.)…Thanks, again!
Well, that’s fine, because that isn’t what I said.
Taking pride in meaningful work is good. Performing a job to the best of one’s ability is good.
What is not good and what I likened to communism is valuing work apart from the results of that labor.
Granted, there’s honor in doing whatever’s expected of you because you trust that your boss or general doesn’t have you running in circles. But if you’re working for yourself, as a homeowner is when he mows the lawn, you should take pride in the results and not just the work.
At risk of belaboring a point nobody is interested in, let me put it this way…
The Soviets had an expression: “I pretend to work, and they pretend to pay me.” Millions of communist citizens were going through the motions without actually contributing anything. That absence of reward and productivity defined communist economics.
Under FDR, our government payed farmers to let fields lie fallow in hope of counteracting deflation. Farmers were in effect paid to not work. Suppose that such a farmer worked anyway, and burned whatever crops he harvested. Would that be honorable work?
What do we wish our children to learn about hard work? Is it that there is honor in a stressed mind, aching muscles, hunger and thirst? Or is that a person can achieve much, produce much, if he is willing to endure the struggle to get it? Without a worthy goal, labor is self-waste at best and self-abuse at worst.
As a Christian, I believe that fruitful labor can be a form of worship. But simply moving heavy stones back and forth without purpose isn’t worthy of a human being. Hard work, like life itself, is made worthy by a noble pursuit.
Aaron: I did not get the impression that any of those Old School fathers were being respected by their grown children because the children were reminiscing about “make work.” If they were raised by people like my parents–that generation who grew up in the Depression and became adults during WWII– then work was what you did so you could eat. Now, mowing a lawn to exaggerated specs might not seem vital to existence; but it is vital to teach your children that what one owns (by the sweat of one’s brow) is worth maintaining to a high standard. The goal might not seem evident to the child. But–again–maybe it wasn’t just the lawn that was important. More likely it was the lesson: you learn self-respect by doing hard things and by contributing to the upkeep of the family and home. My farmer parents raised, not just cows and crops, but self-sufficient children. Yeah, we whined fairly often. But as an adult, I’m so glad I learned how to persist in a mindless job because it had to be done that day. And the next. And the next…
Cow Girl,
Wish I had been this articulate. You summed it up perfectly. Good on ya’ mate!
Array