They Should Have Called It "Monster"

My partner, Christine, and I avoided it for as long as possible, but it finally happened yesterday: we bought a new lawn mower.

Ah, the humble lawn mower. I am not sure if too many other household items make such a direct statement on a couple’s relationship and announces that you are, indeed, planning on staying in the home you bought together for what will most likely be a decade or two. You don’t believe me? Think about it. When you buy your first mower, what do you do? Search the “used junk” ads and try to spend as little as possible. You are practically screaming, “We’re not sure if we want to commit to this!”

Trust me, Christine and I did this very thing when we bought our cute, little green house with a lawn the size of Buckingham Palace. Were we at all daunted by the thought of mowing that monstrosity with our 17”, electric, corded mower? Of course not! For the low, low price of $60 and the purchase of a 100’ extension cord we could keep our environmental ethics intact and turn up our snooty noses whenever our neighbours cranked up their noisy, polluting, gas-guzzling mowers.

And we did exactly that for three whole summers. Three summers of reluctantly tramping outside once a week to lug a 100’ extension cord around a million square feet of useless lawn by attaching it to a Fisher Price mower. And it definitely did have to be once a week or there would be more grass than the little mower could handle. It would gasp and choke, almost stop, and then vomit out great clumps of partially masticated turf onto our shoes. So, I am quite certain that you can imagine our profound (and carefully hidden) relief when our geriatric mower decided to give up the ghost last week. We looked at it sadly and hung our heads in respect while secretly giving each other semi-high-fives when we were certain no one was looking.

However, reality swooped in and smacked us in our heads because we now had a choice to make...what was the replacement mower going to be? So, we began to search the “used junk” ads and we discussed. And we talked. And we discussed. And we talked.

We wanted a reel mower. No electricity, no gas, no cord, no bother. But we had tried a reel mower when we first bought the house. It had bounced and skidded across our lumpy lawn, snipped a quarter inch off a few stalks of grass, and then become horribly lodged in a tangle of clover. No, a reel mower wouldn’t do. We were certain it would work well on a smooth postage stamp, but not for our resource intensive wasteland.

I was looking at large, powerful (and expensive) electric mowers when Christine admitted to me that she hated “The Cord”. Secretly, I did too and this gave me the opportunity to propose spending even more money on a cordless electric mower.

Ah, the cordless mower. The utopia of the mower kingdom. Quiet, powerful, and...wait...what do you mean, “the battery’s dead already”?

Yes, unfortunately, the cordless mower still has a long way to go. Mowing grass is an extremely difficult task for a machine to perform. It takes a lot of energy to overcome that much resistance and in order to do that batteries are going to be depleted in a hurry. We calculated that even the best cordless mowers might, just barely, might be able to complete our front lawn using the charge of two batteries. We could envision our relationship ending due to spending one thousand dollars on extra batteries and heated battles of “Rock, Paper, Scissors” to see whose turn it would be to spend the entire week trying to get all the grass mowed. By the time the back was done, the front would be six inches tall again.

We hemmed and we hawed and we hung our heads in shame and mumbled quiet affirmations to that fact that we absolutely, positively, without question, indubitably needed a gasoline-powered mower.

11am Sunday arrived. We climbed in our little truck and rambled off to Peavey Mart. And then Canadian Tire. And then Home Depot. And then Wal-Mart. And then a smaller Peavey Mart in a smaller town. And finally, once again, Wal-Mart where we purchased “The Brute”. 163 CCs of “Brute” power. Self-propelled. 22 inch cutting width.

My god. What had we done?

We brought it home. We unpacked and assembled it. We put oil in it. We put fuel in it (after filling our tiny, cute, brand new jerry can).

May 8, 2016, 4:51pm: The silence is shattered, when, on the second pull of the starter cord, “The Brute” roared to life. It was angry, it was exhilarating, it was...fast! I hit the bar to engage the FWD self-propelled wheels and “The Brute” leapt ahead like an Acme rocket leaving me behind like Wile E. Coyote.

May 8, 2016, 5:15pm: The mower is silent. The lawn is shaved like a newly enlisted marine and I am staring, dumbfounded at the time on my phone. What took 40 to 45 minutes with the old mower took less than 25 minutes with our Brute.

I struggled and wrestled with “The Brute” to put it to bed in the shed for the night, but once it was in there it seemed happy and I gave it a smile and a pat on the head and said, “Good Mower” to it.

The old Black and Decker electric was unceremoniously dragged out and slung into the garage with the other junk. There could be a Frankenstein lawn mower project in my future.