Published May 28, 2006 in the Hibbing Daily Tribune
By Aaron J. Brown
A sunny afternoon in northern Minnesota brings the subtle rumble of mower engines shaking off their winter slumber. Mowing lawn has always been my favorite chore. This is probably because it’s one of the few “manly” chores that I can actually do. I descend from about eight generations of mechanics, but can’t fix vehicles or even properly explain how they run. Internal combustion? Dark magic? As long as the motor starts I don’t care which one is true.
Every woodworking project I’ve ever done would best be described as “tilty.” I have several talented woodworkers in my family as well, but often look for shortcuts to overcome my lack of the fine touch. The results have not been pretty.
But I like lawn mowing. The machines are designed so simply they could be operated by panda bears. You only mow lawn when it’s nice out, so it is often a relaxing experience – just an umbrella drink and straw hat short of a Jimmy Buffet vacation.
This year is a little different, however. Last summer, we built a house (or, more accurately, “through the acquisition of a substantial construction debt caused a house to be built.”) We were able to plant grass seed on our smaller, fenced-in back yard last fall, but the bulk of our so-called yard is a murky combination of mud and clay. The parts where grass has grown still feature many of the natural inhabitants of our land: rocks, sticks and ticks.
I’ll get to the ticks later. The rocks and sticks are what trouble my mower. My mower is a low end but reliable jobber I picked up to mow my former lawn, a tiny postage stamp patch of grass near downtown Hibbing. It had a good life in the old yard. Every week it would calmly munch up a thin layer of city grass and go back to its corner of the garage.
Now the mower has to battle tree roots, clumps of earth and rocks that periodically blast out of the chute in a fashion that would no doubt prompt the owner’s manual to flap angrily. A mower should never make the same noise as the air vents from my high school after we used to drop paper clips into them to get out of math class. That much I do know.
Once I’ve mowed a few times I know the lawn will be in better shape. I only hope that my mower survives. Meantime, I have to worry about the ticks. Ticks don’t have many friends, but of all the creepy crawlies that live in my yard I find them to be most disturbing. Anything that wants my blood better have a college degree.
Ticks hang out all over our new yard. They get on Molly Dog (AKA: MoDog) and ride into the house. Late one night I woke from a dead sleep after feeling a tick crawl on me. I leapt out of bed and flushed it down the toilet. Then, for reasons unknown, I woke up Christina to say, “I found a tick in the bed.” Her response: “Why did you tell me that?” It was dark. Quiet, too, except for the sound of the dog scratching at the foot of the bed. “Did you see it go down the toilet?” she asked. “I don’t know. It was dark.” We laid in bed for a good long time imagining a few thousand ticks crawling all over us.
You’ve probably seen news stories about ticks. Wood ticks – the offending parties in my story – are pretty common and they don’t carry the nasty diseases. You’ve really got to watch out for the smaller deer ticks, which carry Lyme’s Disease. Then there’s the even smaller and rarer Doom Tick that feeds on its victim’s sense of hope for the future. If you get one of those you are so hosed.
In due time my lawn will be free of rocks and sticks, and tick season will be replaced by a season for some bird-sized insect that carries a shiv and knows four languages. You pay a price for all the peace and quiet out here. My mower and I stand ready.
Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune.