There wasn’t a whole lot moving at ground level as a pair of turkey vultures swirled on a slow, patient recon above the neighborhood. I was sitting on the back porch watching the dogs dry as the temperature soared right along with the buzzards in the haze of a Kentucky afternoon.
I’d spent a good chunk of the morning in the midst of the pack playing "almost fetch" in the shale-bottomed creek at the back of the yard. For a mixed bag of mutts and purebreds we’ve actually got some surprisingly good retrievers in the family.
Unfortunately, obedience goes dashing off through the weeds when the "cousin" dog run together. Once that pack mentality kicks in you couldn’t get these clowns to deliver a ball to your hand if your fingers were broiled hot dogs. Accordingly, our little game eventually saw me barefoot and up to my knees in a stream churned silty brown, bashing shins and stubbing toes against rocks the size of cinder blocks while making my own retrieve. The pack abandoned me for a streambank squirrel.
A few more passes overhead and the vultures spiraled off over the horizon. They had no-doubt assessed our crew as well-worn but not quite dead.
Down-home as the scene may be, my daughter’s rural Kentucky neighborhood stops far short of corncob pipes and moonshine stills. One of those fancy country allotments where every home is surrounded by three acres of pancake-flat Kentucky Bluegrass, no one has the time to make moonshine—they’re all endlessly mowing their lawns!
In a summer where vacations are in extremely short supply, I was glad to be out of town for at least few days, and thrilled to be in the company of kin especially my new grandson. But in the heat of the day, while the baby (along with all sensible Northerners) napped in air-conditioned comfort, I found myself in the rarest of conditions: I was bored! So, taking up the mantle of the obsessive suburbanite, I set my mind to mowing.
As the slogan goes "Nothing runs like a Deere"—that is, if you actually know how to run one. Given that in my 50-odd years of lawn mowing experience I’d operated a riding mower exactly twice, I’m only mildly embarrassed in admitting that I didn’t have a clue. I was able to fire the thing up fairly easily by turning the key, but with no discernable gearshift, there was no clearly apparent means to back the thing out of the shed! The stick figure hieroglyphics for proved indecipherable. Finally, on the hazy edge of asphyxia, I resolved to just push the thing out backward into the open air and drive only forward as I mowed. This method worked for exactly one pass and ended when I came face to face with a fencepost that simply refused to yield. Temporarily suspending my effort, I retreated to the shade to ponder my dilemma.
While I’d love to report that simple intuition led me forward, instead I must confess that I ended up watching a video on my phone made specifically for numbskulls who couldn't figure out how to run a riding lawnmower!
(Be sure to check out Facebook for time-lapse film clips of Kristin’s artwork and other fun stuff at JohnLorsonSendHelp)
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July 26, 2020 at 09:28PM
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Send Help! Lazy days of summer yield new and exciting skill - Akron Beacon Journal
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