Beech Tree News Network

You know how you get a feeling that you should or should not do something, and you ignore the feeling and tell yourself it will be alright if you do or don’t do something, then it’s really not alright?  I’m sure you’ve done that, right?  Well, I can guarantee you haven’t done that as many times as I have.

The first thing you need to know is I was wearing my new birthday shoes, the ones my daughter and granddaughter bought for me.  They are those Sketchers that you just walk into, you don’t have to use your hands to put them on.  They’re great!  I started to pack my old garden shoes for my trip to Alabama to visit Aggie, Garey’s mom, but I reasoned with myself that I wouldn’t really need them.  Yes, I planned on mowing her yard, but I would be sitting on the mower, therefore there was little chance of getting my birthday shoes dirty, and besides, they felt so good on my feet.

Garey had tried to talk me into taking some of our late green beans and canning them while I was there, but I gave that basket of beans to friends.  When I visit Aggie, we eat junk food, watch TV and play Rummikubs.  Mowing her yard was already going to cut into our play time, so I sure didn’t want to throw canning green beans into the mix.

Aggie’s mower is a twenty-one-year-old Craftsman.  I had already planned on having Garey walk me through all the quirks of getting the thing started, so I called him right after I turned the key over, but got no fire to the engine.

“You’re going to have to put the charger on the battery,” he said.

I picked up the charger but noticed the cord wouldn’t reach the outlet.  I told Garey about the problem, and he said I would have to put the mower in neutral and roll it toward the outlet.

I did, but as I rolled the mower toward the outlet, my left foot didn’t have enough sense to get out of the way, and the front tire rolled right over my left birthday shoe.  It left a tread impression distinct enough to get a conviction on Forensic Files.

After the battery was charged, I remembered that I needed to make sure the gas tank was completely full, because if the gas in the tank falls below a certain point, the mower dies.  There were three gas cans, and the only one that had gas in it was the one without a pour spout.  I made a funnel out of a Gatorade bottle, but try as I might, I couldn’t seem to hit the opening.  Gas splashed from the top of the mower, where the tank was located, down the sides, onto the clutch, then landed on top of…you guessed it…my birthday shoes.

I mopped up the spilt gas as best I could, looked into the tank, and saw that, luckily, some had actually hit the mark.  With the mower charged up and gassed up, I backed it out of Aggie’s garage.  Garey told me beforehand that the mower didn’t mow exactly even.  I quickly found out this was true.  I kept trying to mow back over the high spots, to no avail.

I’m a short person, so it was a struggle for me to push the clutch/brake pedal all the way down when I wanted to stop, and I found myself right at the edge of Bankston Road more than once.  I ran over a few small fire ant hills, which threw dirt and dust all over me, but fortunately no ants.  I was tempted to run a back tire over an especially large fire ant hill—picture the termite mounds in Africa—but I decided to let that rather large colony of sleeping ants lie.  (If you’ve ever been stung by a fire ant, you will understand my decision.)

When I finished mowing, I stepped back to admire my work.  I had mowed slowly, I had gone back over the high spots, and I had mowed as close to the edge of the road as I dared.  It was just as I expected.  The yard looked as if it had been manicured…by a blind man with a butcher knife.

It was so discouraging, but not as discouraging as the sight of my birthday shoes.  The gas that had splashed onto them had attracted the dirt from the ant hills I mowed over, and the tread mark from the mower’s tire was even more visible.

“Next time,” I said to myself, “I’m going to…probably do the exact same thing!”  

Will I ever listen?