Finally, a new mower

After several years of stealing parts off of one of the two broken down Wheel Horses to keep the third one running, I finally convinced dad to get a new lawnmower. This time he took me back to Shearer and we looked at all of the new models. I was so excited.

We finally decided on the GT275, which had a 48’’ desk so the mowing would take less time, plus it was had 3 more horse than the Wheel Horse so I could definitely mow faster too. I would still have to lug the mower back and forth from the house to the farm, but who cares, this was a new mower.

After about a month of having the mower and the second time mowing, I was up in front of the free stall barn where dad had the disk parked. I was trying to get as close as possible because I took the shit seriously. I loved mowing and loved to do a good job, especially with the new mower. Well I obviously was not quite adjusted to the new placement of the forward reverse because I meant to hit reverse instead I jammed it all the way forward and rammed into the disk.

I just so happen to hit it right where the outside pieces fold up so I got a huge scrape mark down half of the mower’s hood. I was devastated for two reasons. First, this was my new mower and I had completely fucked it up. The second was, what the hell is dad going to do to me now. So immediately went to Shearer and special ordered a new hood and paid for it with my own money because I know that would be the first thing dad would ask if I had just charged it to his account. The hood cost me $230. To put this amount in perspective, this was about 5 weeks of washing Cherry’s truck and mowing Hughie’s yard because I did not get a pay check for the farm work.

I told dad about the hood when the hood came in 3 weeks later. To my surprise, he was like, “what the hell did you buy that for?” talking about the new hood. I told him why I bought it and how upset I was that I did that to my new mower. He just blew it off. I did not end up taking the hood back because I would just leave the messed up hood on there for a few years in case I did it again, and then replace it later.

Sometimes you just got a completely different reaction from dad than what you imagined you would.

Shawn