A person can do a lot of thinking going ‘round and ‘round on a zero turn riding lawn mower. Lot of smellin’ too.
Last week I was zero turning for several hours trying to knock down some weeds, a little bit of grass, and quite a few leaves around the old home place. The combination of the three, and some broken limbs here and there, had things looking a bit raggedy. Plus that yard — that field — can get away from a poor old mowing person in a flash and I don’t have a flash to give up.
Mowing folk of my stature know that once the first cut of the season is done, there is no turning back. The stuff only starts growing higher and faster, and higher and faster. That, I dread!
There is one thing I do like about the first cut of the season — besides it looking nice of course — and that is the sweet, yet pungent, smell of the wild green onions.
One swoop through a clump of them and my mind flashed back to the ‘60s and our housekeeper, Sadie, sending me out into the backyard of the “big house” we lived in on Church Street in Newton. I can hear that sweet little old lady’s voice just like it was yesterday, rather than yesteryear. “Boy,” she would say, “run out there and pull us up some of them wild onions and I’ll scramble ‘em up with some eggs for breakfast.”
I did, and she did, and it was simply delicious. Simple and delicious.
When we moved from the “big house” to the one beside the school my brothers and I had become old enough to sit with ourselves and Sadie didn’t move with us. I missed her. Still kind of do when I get a whiff of those wild onions.
Then, while mowing beneath the ancient cedar tree that sits outside the window where my grandmother used to rock and crochet, as she watched the squirrels and birds scratching up food from the ground below, there was a minty smell. One that very clearly reminded me of the Doublemint gum my mother chewed so faithfully back in the day. I don’t know why it smells like that, but it sure does.
There is a little rod stuck in that tree that has another little rod attached at a 90 degree angle on the end with an eye hook connected to each end of it. I gave that thing to my grandmother for Christmas or something, I don’t really remember the occasion. Whole corn cobs are attached to the screw end of the eye hooks and when a squirrel tries to get the corn it spins and flings the critter to the ground.
As I mowed by, I could almost hear my grandmother cackle through the window, as she would often do when a squirrel would plop to the ground, especially if it was her cherished white one. Then she would turn back to the work in her hands while, more likely than not, watching Bob Ross paint a picture of a landscape above a lake on the old grainy television set.
Wife Danny sits in that spot now and I think I need to get some corn cobs and rig up the flinger and let her watch the big fox squirrel out there these days get flung to the ground.
In the field out front, near the road, stand two very old, very large sweetgum trees. I don’t remember this from years past, but last week as I mowed beneath them what I suppose is a bumper crop of sweetgum balls took off through the air as my blades dug through their turf.
Balls from those trees used to be spray painted silver and gold, just like the song, covered with glitter and hung on a scrawny cedar we would have found somewhere on the side of the road at Christmas. These days they sound like fireworks on the Fourth of July as they fling against the deck of my mower. There should be a lot of fireworks this year as we celebrate 250 years.
It is amazing what a mind at work can do as a fellow goes ‘round and ‘round on a zero turn with dull blades, and in dire need of an oil change. My dad would frown on that, but I do believe that if I had made a few more rounds I could have let my mind smell the smoked hog meat he would have had hanging in the smokehouse just outside the kitchen door some 60 years ago.
But, I didn’t.
I finished up with the weeds, the leaves and the little bit of grass and then cleaned out the bluebird houses got them ready for the bluebirds, and thought about that Doublemint gum a little while longer, wondering again why in the world does it smell like my momma’s chewing gum when mowing the grass beneath the cedar tree.
I suppose I’ll probably never know the answer to that, but will just be glad that it does as it evokes a very fond memory.
