The Traveling Lawnmower Brotherhood

Today I cut grass.

I am something of a recluse and prefer to be alone when I work in the yard. Then, as I do routine grass cutting my mind and can fly away wherever it wants to, providing it is back by the time I finish.

But then my neighbor Jim saw me cutting and hopped on his lawnmower and came out. Then Bob evidently told his son Joe to start cutting also. Three of us were on red riding lawnmowers. Jim and Joe both tried to time their cutting so each would be at the closest to me when I was on their side, closest to their yard. Each time, it is just rude to look the other way, so each time there was some kind of wave or recognition. It is hard to think of a different wave each time when you want your mind to go elsewhere.

If aliens were watching us from a hovering flying saucer above they would probably think we were doing some kind of ballet with machines or some kind of strange mating ritual.

As I rode around I was looking at the car Bob, his ex-father-in-law, and Joe went Rockwell, North Carolina, for his daughter Melissa. “A dream-come-true” he told me. On the ground round it looking worse and worse each day. More parts and tools are cluttering around the front of the car each time I look. The hood is still off and propped against the house. The blue tarp no longer covers the innards of what was under the hood. Why bother?

After we cut the grass Jim came over and trimmed my driveway. He always does it when I cut grass. This time he pointed to the house two houses down the street and told me Bob sold a John Deere lawnmower to John that lives there. Now, john is selling it someone else for a profit but something is not working right on it, so Bob was summoned to come down and adjust whatever was wrong with it.

I remember that John Deere lawnmower. The preacher bought it when he lived in that house, which is next to Bob and across from Jim. The preacher, wife, and teenager daughter could just take the house next door (Bob’s) with so many late night parties, police surrounding the house, horny teenage boys… they sold their house and got the heck away from their.

They sold their house to a Haitian woman, with a thick French accent, her boy friend, who also signed the papers, and five children. The preacher left the green John Deere tractor lawnmower. I don’t know if it was part of the deal on the house or what.

The Haitians lived there almost a year when the woman kicked out her boyfriend. The two teenager daughters where hot to trot and Joe was probably accommodating them. I have seen Joe and one of them make out in the middle of the street – I think that is part of it, to make a show. The woman tore up the John Deere Tractor. Jim volunteered to repair it, which he worked on it for a full week, and even had to drive to a John Deere dealer in Cartersville 30 miles away for a belt.

They could not or did not pay their payments and the house was sold on the steps of the court house. The Haitian family moved just about overnight. But they left a little sedan car and the John Deere lawnmower.

In a week or so the Haitian woman and her new boy friend returned. The car wouldn’t run and they left it with Bob to fix. They also left him the lawnmower. They just gave it to him.

Jim was hurt they didn’t give him the lawnmower because he was the one that got the lawnmower running again and went all over creation looking for the right part.

So, yesterday it probably was, Bob sold the John Deere lawnmower to John down the street for $100. And John turned around and sold it to somebody else for a profit.

And it will probably be sold or traded again and again and……