As a young boy on the farm in the early 1960’s I was fascinated with machinery, and especially tractors. There was one tractor that was just my size. The garden tractor or lawn mower. I was too young to operate the first riding lawn mower my dad purchased. It was a Springfield and I believe it was purchased through the local Gambles Hardware store around 1960. It had very small rear tires and even smaller front tires and the mower deck cutting height was not adjustable.
But a few years later we bought a Homelite riding lawn mower from Pete Boe in West Concord. I think Pete sold more Homelite’s than any other dealer. This was my first serious job on the farm. It had a 24’ single blade deck and a 5 horsepower Tecumseh engine. A few novel things about this unit was the four speed transmission, which was a rubber disc spinning on a flat drive plate, and the crank starter on the engine. One would wind the crank until it stopped and then trip the little lever, which spun the engine over. Easy enough for a 7 year-old to operate.
It had a padded seat and a bar in place of the steering wheel. I would spend hours upon hours mowing the yard around the farm. I could only dream of having a radio to kill the monotony. One had to be careful filling the gas tank, as it was part of the engine and any spill would pour raw gas right over the hot engine cylinder. One time the grass was exceptionally thick and tall behind the shop and I complained to my dad that it couldn’t hardly cut it in first gear. I was secretly hoping we would get a larger garden tractor. He simply informed me to only cut half as wide a swath. I wasn’t the best at fractions as a second grader but I did know that half of 24 inches was one foot and that was forever to get the lawn finished.
The one shining reward was mowing my grandmother’s lawn. She lived at the south end of the farm and when I finished her lawn I was invited in for in ice cold Mountain Dew and some cookies. Nothing tasted quite as good as a cold glass bottle of innard tickling bottled by Zeke & Daisy Dew. Probably most Dew drinkers today have no clue.
My friend Ross Avery started selling Massey Ferguson Garden Tractors in the late 60’s, at his dad’s construction business. I wanted us to buy one of those so bad. The Massey Ferguson 7 was a thing of beauty to me. It had seven horse power, an electric start, a 34 inch deck and a hydrostatic transmission. It even looked like a tractor. I worked on my dad for a long time to convince him. A lawn mower was not a necessity in his mind. But the day did come and I felt like a king on this new machine.
I still mow the lawn. Now I find it a welcome time to think and come up with new ideas. Fifty-six years have passed and my young mind could not even conceive of what lawn mowing would be like in 2024. I use a 25 horsepower John Deere zero turn mower with a 54” triple blade deck. Spring absorbing soft cushion seat with arm rests, and a top mowing speed of over 9 miles per hour. What used to take more than a day for me to accomplish is now finished in about two hours.
