Tag team of bulk, blade tame wildest growth
Being fat has its advantages. Despite some chilly days and nights, grass growing in our yard has been reaching skyward at an alarming rate.
Snow spit down on it several days before the first cutting. By that time, it was lush, thick and tall, its color a deep jade that gleams only with spring’s reawakening.
I have two lawnmowers. Electricity powers one. I power the other. I bought the latter the first year we lived in our home in town, opting for something clean and noiseless instead of the traditional kind with a smoky, sputtering, gas-consuming engine. Also, I have a yard slightly larger than an airmail stamp so I figured I could handle it with an old-fashioned reel-type push mower.
To be safe, I asked a clerk at the store where I purchased it if the mower was too hard to push could I bring it back for a refund? “Yes,’ she said. “Just make sure you keep your receipt.’
I happily began my experiment.
I can’t say it is anything like I remember. I cut part of the yard at age 12 with a non-motorized reel mower and its impression continues plaguing me. It was a beast, a monster, a dull, rusting contrivance taunting me to push it – or try to push it – through the yard. If the grass was just slightly high I needed a running start on bare ground to manhandle (or boyhandle) the hulk through the blades of green. I wasn’t a big kid so the energy expended in that push would get me over about three or four feet by 20 inches of lawn. Backing up, I’d make another running push. I would keep doing that until I had finished clipping my share of the yard.
Anyway, that’s why I asked the clerk at the store the question I did. If she had told me, “No. You can’t bring it back after you used it,’ I would have walked out.
So, since the grass in our yard had risen to new heights I figured I’d better work at it with the push mower rather than the electric one. No, I didn’t think it would be an easier chore. I was concerned the grass was too high and thick and it might overload the electric mower.
Correct I was, because a couple of spots in the yard required the old standby run-for-it-push. And I’ll tell you – getting this old, fat frame moving like a 12-year-old again was about as easy as pushing a water buffalo uphill. About half the backyard was like that, the grass thicker than cold honey and I got the best workout I’ve had since shoveling that last major snowfall out of our driveway.
But once I got it moving (and myself), the mower sliced through that growth like a hot knife through Jello.
Like I said, I sure don’t recall it being that way when I was a kid. Of course this newer mower is also lighter and the blades are sharp. I was never convinced that old mower was sharp enough to cut air let alone grass.
What it proved to me is who needs fossil fuels when you have flab power. After all, there is a scientific equation that shows mass times gravity equals thermodynamic energy, giving the solution in foot pounds of force – well, there should be some kind of equation like that. And when I calculate how much mass I launched against a series of blades of grass, well, it was no contest.
I suppose you could say it’s too bad I wasn’t a heftier kid. Then maybe I wouldn’t have had such a chore working that old clunky mower through the yard. But I’m glad I wasn’t a fat kid.
And I also wouldn’t have this story to tell.
Have a good day.
Jim Pletcher is the Herald-Standard’s business editor. E-mail: jpletcher@heraldstandard.com.