A Pilgrim’s Digression

On Sunday, I bought my first lawn mower and weed trimmer. Talking about such things as lawn care machinery, I feel rather like Hank from the cartoon King of the Hill. But I have indeed discovered a new found interest in the subject.

After a couple weeks in which the yard went un-mowed, it had reached such an unruly state this weekend that either I had to break down and buy a mower, or else I was going to have to commit to using a regular lawn care service. Despite my professed non-work ethic, I decided to undertake the care of our lawn myself.

A few weeks ago, I paid a man from the neighborhood to mow our lawn, and he did not do a good job. He missed too many spots, and since he only used a riding lawn mower, there were some places he refused to mow at all because he said the slope was too steep or the grass too high. So I figured if I wanted it done right, I would have to do it myself.

And if I wanted it done right, I would have to buy the right equipment. So Sunday, I went to Lowe’s and bought my mower and trimmer. The mower is a Troybilt self-propelled mower/mulcher with grass catcher. The trimmer is a Black and Decker cordless, rechargeable trimmer/edger.

If my Dad or Grandpa knew I had bought an electric trimmer, they probably would have shook their heads in despair. Growing up, they trained me pretty well in the labor of lawn care. I was mowing neighbors’ yards for cash by the time I was ten. Dad always owned gas-powered trimmers, and Dad always said electric trimmers were a waste of money; they are under-powered, he’d say. If you can’t attach a blade and cut down a small sapling with it, what good is a trimmer, he’d say.

When it came time for me to buy my own trimmer, however, all I remembered from my youthful experiences was the headache of trying to start the things. What merciless pieces of junk! I’d crank and crank and crank on our gas trimmer, then stop and prime the choke, then crank and crank and crank some more, and maybe the thing would start eventually. They were heavy and unwieldy. I can’t count the number of times I burned my arm on the muffler.

So I decided I’d give a cordless electric trimmer a try. It turned out to be an excellent purchase, and I highly recommend it. It came with two batteries, so that as one is drained, you can use the other while the drained battery recharges. It took one full battery and about half the other to trim our entire yard.

Another drawback of the gas trimmer is that the “automatic” line feed was never automatic. I’d pound the thing on the ground, and sometimes more line would unspool. Most of the time, I had to stop the trimmer and manually unwind enough line to continue trimming. Then I had to go through the process of starting the thing again.

With my electric trimmer, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that as promised, the line unspooled as I ran the trimmer. No need to pound the spool on the ground to make it unwind.

Also, it was extremely quiet, and when the trigger was not depressed it stopped entirely. I can also feel good about saving some gas by using electric.

The mower I bought is also praiseworthy. I can’t say enough in its honor. I knew when I went to Lowe’s that I would need a self-propelled mower. Our yard is too sloped to make a non-powered push mower a sensible purchase. So I bought a self-propelled mower that seemed a reasonable mid-way purchase between the high end John Deere’s and the low-end Murray push mowers.

When I was growing up and mowing yards for money, I always used Lawn-Boy mowers, which were excellent machines. They always started after one or two pulls. In the case of the last mower I used, it was a key-start Lawn-Boy. But they don’t make Lawn-Boy mowers anymore. The man at Lowe’s said the company went out of business about five or six years ago. It’s sad, because they were truly great mowers. The chassis was typically plastic, which made them much lighter in weight than other mowers.

The Troybilt turned out to be an acceptable alternative to a Lawn-Boy, however. It’s a big, steel-bodied mower, and it is extremely heavy, but since it is self-propelled it doesn’t need to be particularly light. I have some rough ground to mow, as well, so in retrospect it is probably better that I went with a heavy-duty model rather than a Lawn-Boy, which after all was made primarily for clean, flat suburban lawns.

When I first got the mower home and opened the box, I was perplexed to discover that the mower had been used, the box re-taped, and the mower returned to Lowe’s. I called the manager, and after expressing my disappointment and frustration with having to drive back over there to exchange the mower, a distance of about fifteen miles, the manager told me to bring my receipts from the purchases I’d made that day, and he would refund my money, then re-ring my items at a 10% discount.

I had spent $593.00 at Lowe’s that day on my lawn equipment, so when the exchange was finished I got about $60.00 back, all because some bloke had pulled a fast one on Lowe’s. The manager said from now on, all returned mowers would have to be checked to be sure they were returned as new.

Additionally, before I left the store, the manager opened the box containing my new mower to make sure it was genuinely new. I said, “Since you’ve got the box open, can you go ahead and assemble it for me? I’ll take it out of here assembled.” So he pulled it out of the box and assembled it, which was no big deal. Mainly, “assembly” meant folding the handle into place and screwing it down tight, but usually Lowe’s charges for any kind of assembly.

All in all, I got a damn good deal. I took the mower home fully assembled, stopping at the gas station to fill up a new, red, plastic two gallon gas tank. I went home and placed the mower in the driveway. I put the gas in. I added the oil. I held down the drive bar against the handle and pulled the starter cord…and nothing.

A few more pulls. Nothing. A few more pulls, Nothing. I was starting to feel like I should have looked in the newspaper for a used Lawn-Boy. But then I recalled that there was an instruction manual for the mower. I got it out of the car.

Ah, there is a fuel valve that has to be opened before the mower would start.

I opened the fuel valve and, convinced that the mower would now start on the first pull, I held down the drive bar and gave the cord a quick pull. Nothing. Many minutes followed in which I alternately pulled the cord in futility, then bent down and looked in perplexity at the engine, then straightened up and looked at the instruction manual, then flipped the fuel valve back and forth, then pulled the cord some more, all to no effect.

Where’s the fuel pump on this thing? It’s like it isn’t getting any gas, I thought to myself. On a Lawn-Boy, there was always a small rubber pump underneath the engine cover, or sometimes recessed in the engine cover, which you could push to prime the fuel pump. There was no such thing on the Troybilt. The machine was almost completely devoid of any external parts; everything was encased under the engine cover. Like the Honda engine that powers it, this thing wasn’t meant to be tinkered with.

Finally, after a wasted fifteen or twenty minutes, I looked at the manual again. I really looked at it. I went step by step through the assembly instructions, thinking perhaps the Lowe’s manager had goofed up. Sure enough, I discovered that the drive bar cable was not connected properly. When I pulled the drive bar against the handle, the cable was not engaging whatever it is supposed to engage in order for the engine to fire.

I fixed this minor detail. I made sure the fuel valve was turned on. I pulled the starter cord, and the mower started without hesitation.

Including the time it took me to figure how to operate the mower, it took me a little more than two hours to mow the yard. Trimming took maybe another half hour. Not bad. I figure next time, I’ll have my time down to right at two hours, which is about what I’m used to. Grandpa always told me, if a yard takes longer than two hours to mow, it’s a yard that requires a riding lawn mower. My yard does not require a riding lawn mower.

Grandpa would not have been pleased with how I mowed the yard this first time, however. The grass was quite high; in places it stopped the mower, despite my best efforts to keep the mower going. I hit stumps and sticks and rocks that I could not see because the grass was so high.

Grandpa would have removed the mulching plug, set the wheels at their highest level, and mowed the yard. Then he would have set the wheels lower and mowed it again. He never would have mulched a yard with such thick, high grass.

I didn’t think about how I should mow before I started mowing. I set the wheels at the next to highest setting and left the mulching plug in, which is probably why the mower stalled so frequently. Live and learn.

After the job was done, Grandpa probably would have used the water hose to clean the compacted grass out from beneath the mower. He was fanatical about keeping his mower clean, sometimes even using soap and water and a brush as if it were a car. I hope to be the same way, but not right away.

By the time I finished mowing Sunday evening, I was absolutely beat. I put the mower away without cleaning it up. Later, I figured up that it was at least twelve years or more since I mowed a yard. I exercised muscles I had forgotten I even possessed. I hadn’t the strength to hose off the mower. I pulled myself up the steps and into the cool house, took a cold shower and shaved, and that was about all I could manage before dinner, or after dinner. Even two days later, I still have a few aches and pains.

I am probably going to mow again on Friday, nonetheless. I want to put my mowing on an every Friday schedule so that mowing day falls on my regular day off from work. I don’t want to have to mow on Sunday evenings.

Mowing is good exercise, and I find myself more amenable to it than I expected. When I was a teenager, I hated it, though it provided me with a small income. I always said to myself, when I was out there sweating in the sun, that when I owned a house I would pay someone else to cut the grass.

In retrospect, I think that was just ordinary teenage recalcitrance, or laziness. Now that I do own a home, I don’t find the task so onerous. It’s funny how a job I detested as a teenager has stood me in good stead. I knew what to look for in a mower, when it came time to buy one, and I was able to operate it successfully once I bought it. Grandpa and Dad taught me well, I guess.