Florence’s mower is at least 30 years old, maybe 40 and it has it’s own story. Everyone told me it would never work, could never get it started, but they didn’t know Ben Osterhaudt, who got it fixed in an afternoon. The mower has it’s own story. Florence was both deaf and blind in her later years, although she admitted to neither. When she drove into a police roadblock (checking for drunken drivers) they threatened to take her license away and they finally did it later when she gave a police officer her Price Chopper card instead of her driving license. When they took her license away, she simply rode the mower up and down the highway and over to the lake where she loved to swim. Eventually they took that away from her too and the mower sat for years in her barn. When she died at age 104, several people came bye to encourage me to throw it away and were certain it would never ride again. The mower is as tough as Florence.

I love this mower, and am determined to use it forever, or as long as I can. It is very idiosyncratic, stalls frequently, gobbles oil and has a bone-rattling noise and vibration. As Florence got frail, members of the American Legion secretly came by and mowed her lawn when she was out of the house. She seemed unable to ask for help. I was very happy to get the thing running again, once you get to know the levers and choke, it will warm up and run for a good while. It stalled last Sunday in the middle of the highway in front of the house where I was hoping to turn it around and I thought for a few minutes I might be meeting Florence again face to face, but then it just decided to start up. It does that sometimes.

I am determined to mow my own lawn here, and Sunday I put the earphones on, plugged into my Iphone 5 and listened to Kanye West as I circled and circled the lawn. Didn’t stall once, a first.