On the cutting edge

He placed his hands upon the metal bar and squeezed so tightly, his knuckles turned white.

“Ready?” I asked.

His eyes were fixed upon the difficult journey ahead. After a deep breath, he nodded his head once.

“Try to go in straight lines,” I told him. “And when you get to the end of this row, push down on the handle and turn around in a circle to come back.”

He nodded again, his eyes still staring at the long green road.

I pulled the cord and stepped back. He clamped down on the lever below the handle. The red growler lurched forward. Startled by the spin of the wheels, he nearly let go. His feet stumbled as the machine pulled him onward.

My son took a giant step from boyhood into manhood, a rite of passage directed by fathers everywhere.

He was going to cut the lawn for his very first time.

Some men that I know dread cutting grass. I’ve alwaysenjoyed this event that comes about every week or so from spring through autumn. Call me weird if you have to, but when I pull that cord to start the loud grind of the engine, the world around me goes silent and I have an hourlong opportunity to think about life more clearly.

Now through the years, I can recall some interesting mower stories.

When I was 10 years old, my dad turned the lawn cutting job over to me. We had a yard surrounded by high banks of grass. I had to tie a rope to the handle and lower the mower down the banks and then pull it back up. This routine took about 30 drop-downs and pullups to finish the banks, all done of course with a machine that was not self-propelled. This became my summer workout, building the muscles in my biceps and triceps upon an obstacle course filled with sticks and stones that could break my bones when they shot out from the back of the mower and slashed against my shins.

Then there was John next door who took three hours to cut a yard we described as the size of a postage stamp. Sometimes when John rested during another one of his six-pack beer breaks under the shade of a tree, out of the house stormed his wife, Helen, who would march across the yard in a pink flower house dress. She yanked the cord and pushed with such force you’d think she’d run over dogs, cats and little kids if they got in the way of her Mad Max machine.

One time, she hit something that brought the mower to a screeching halt. While John slugged a beer, she lifted the wheels off the ground and picked up a large rock. With a loud grunt and swing of the arm, Helen hurled the rock at John, who covered his face with his hands as the projectile bounced off the tree trunk behind him. He just shook his head and crushed an empty can with his hand.

It seems that everyone has had that one neighbor who cranks up his gas mower at precisely 8 a.m. on Saturday morning while we are trying to get a few more minutes of shut-eye after a long workweek.

Then there’s this 80-year-old guy who drags his cutter out of his shed on a 90-degree afternoon or how about this fanatic down the street who attached a compass on the deck of his mower to ensure that his cutting lines were perfectly straight.

For everyone, to bag or not to bag becomes the question of controversy.

“Leave the clippings on the grass,” says the environmental expert. “They put nutrients back into the lawn.”

“You have to bag it,” says the fastidious wife. “You can’t have clumps everywhere and the kids tracking grass all over house.”

Although I will gladly pass along some of my chores to my son, I still enjoy cutting the grass now and then. The last time he cut, the lawn looked like one of those mohawk haircuts you see every now and then.

Maybe I’ll buy my him a compass for Christmas.

Rich Strack can be reached at katehep11@gmail.com.