Proper Preparation for the Hunting Season Begins at Home

Preparation for hunting season starts at home and, well, I took what I felt was a big necessary step for a fluid transition from worker/provider to hunter/provider.

I mowed the lawn today.

That may not seem like a big accomplishment to most people but for me it really is. You see, I am not usually allowed to run the riding lawn mower. My wife, Sheila, says it is for adults only and that it was not meant to run at top speed when you mow. My reply was if that is so, why do they have such a fast speed and still let the blades turn?? I explained to her that it was like the expert setting on a video game – if you always play at novice, you will never reach expert.

Mostly, her reason for not allowing me to run the new mower is we had our first new riding lawn mower for 1 year and the first time I mowed with it --the second year -- I ran into a post and bent the deck on the mower. After that we had to let a little air out of the right rear tire to get it to mow straight. Oh, and we always had to mow on height level 4 or it looked like our grass was growing in waves. Personally I liked the rolling ocean look that it gave the lawn, but Sheila did not find it as appeasing as I did.

And, an added bonus, it wreaked havoc on the fire ant mounds!! Sheared them off at a slope which I am sure kept those ants off balance while they rebuilt!

After much foaming at the mouth and gnashing of teeth, I finally took pity on Sheila and worked on the deck. With hammer and giant channel locks I managed to straighten it out to where we could mow on Height level 3 AND air up all the tires. To me, this was a great improvement! To Sheila, I was still the culprit that broke the lawn mower.

One day as we admired the gentle rolling waves of our freshly cut lawn Sheila and I entered into a heated discussion over the lawn mower dilemma (Translation: Griping) and so I took the mower to a real mower repairman. He said he could replace the deck for a mere $500.00 plus labor! Well, after I slapped him on the arm and told him that was a good one, I asked him what he would really charge!!

He was serious!!!

I said "Man, the mower cost me $800.00." He said, "Yep, and the deck will cost around $600.00 total." I loaded up my mower, brought it home and told Sheila she had to live with the deck problem. What she said is unprintable and up until then I had never realized she actually heard the words my buddies and I used when we worked on our vehicles together!

The old mower just didn’t like me. I was mowing close to the sidewalk along the back of our garage and suddenly the old mower tried to buck me over the steering wheel! The front right clip that held the tire in place came off and so did the darn tire. No one was hurt, but there was a huge plume of dust around the whole thing where the blades chopped into the dirt!! Luckily I was mowing on height level # 4 out of habit!!

Several years ago the mower wouldn’t start and Sheila came inside to inform me, sure it was time to send it to the mower graveyard and buy a new one. Upon inspection I found that some of the drive teeth that the starter engaged were missing. I rotated the upper part of the motor and it started right up. I could tell by the way Sheila rolled her eyes she was amazed by my mechanical abilities. We managed to mow with this mower for 3 more years.

Last year we bought one of those Zero-Turn Radius mowers and Sheila said I wasn’t to have my butt in the driver's seat. Since that meant I didn’t have to mow, I feigned sadness and threw a half-hearted argument her way, but finally agreed she was right and I would stay out of it. Still I have to weed-eat and I have tried bending the drive shaft on the weed-eater, but for some reason she just makes me fix it.

So you can see it is something of a great personal accomplishment for me to have such a successful day of yard work. I don't think she wanted those flowers near our pecan trees anymore. I tried like hell to stop, but I was moving a little too fast!