Harmon’s Histories: Lawn mower or scythe, summer’s chores are at hand

Jim Harmon

The forecast looks good for the coming week, so I’ll be outside much of the time, attending my lawn and plants.

I love a great lawn. In the 1940s and 1950s, all the neighborhood kids (after spending hours playing games, riding bikes and mocking death with unbelievable twists and turns on roller skates) would find a cool, shady spot on a soft lawn and watch the puffy clouds roll by.

We’d take turns pointing out a cloud that looked like an elephant, or another resembling a dragon. We’d talk about exploring the world or floating in a hot-air balloon.

Unlike today, our parents handed out very little money – a meager allowance that would allow an occasional visit to the five-and-dime store.

Chores were required to amass any real pocket money. So in addition to chopping kindling for the family wood stove, I would scythe tall grass and mow lawns.

Mowing is still familiar to our youth today – but the scythe is no longer in our vocabulary.

One of my favorite newspaper stories about the terrors of the scythe was written by a man calling himself “Uncle Dudley,” in an article titled, “The Old Way of Doing It,” published in The Iola Register, Allen County, Kansas, July 6, 1878.

“The grass was getting frightfully high around our domicile. We had been lecturing our young descendants, during the breakfast hour, upon the nobility of labor, and also upon the wickedness of running after every new thing that came out to lessen the labors performed by our forefathers; that we used a scythe instead of a lawn-mower, as a matter of principle.”

“He didn’t want the youngsters to ever become so averse to labor, or so filled with pride, as to countenance the use of a horse power machine, or a sacrilegious lawn mower in the performance of this ancient and honorable branch of labor.”

“He adjusted his hat, and, followed by the family procession, went out where his scythe was suspended in a plum tree. It took us some time to get it down, but finally it commenced coming, and we ran out from under the tree and let it fall just as it had a mind to.”

“The boys laughed a little; pretty soon it quit flopping about, and we advanced cautiously and got it by the tail, and one of the handles, and lifted it off the ground; it sort of swung around and came near cutting our leg, pretty high up.”

“I told the boys they'd better climb up on the fence till we were underway, and got the ‘hang' of it a little. We finally secured it by both the handles, carried it up to the edge of the grass, nerved our muscle and gave it a tremendous swing.”

“It went sky-larking though the trackless air above the tall grass, and cut off a fine plum tree around behind us; and if we had not let go all holds and dodged out through one of the crooks and made the top of the fence just ahead of it, no doubt we should now have been running about without a head.”

“The boys laughed and tittered a good deal, but we reproved them severely for making light of so serious a toil. After the establishment had quieted down again, we advanced on the crookedest side, and grasping it by both handles, we held it out at arm's length to find its chief center of gravity; soon, we thought we had it, and made another pass at the luxuriant pasture.”

“This time, the point of the scythe went into the ground half way to the handle, and the tail-end kicked us on the left ear and one of the handles vibrated against our stomach and we sat down to hold it where it ached the worst.”

“The boys laughed so that they fell off the fence, and our ear swelled up like a blighted plum. We made just one more effort to "conquer or die:" the scythe skipped around, cut a little row of grass, nipped off to the left, cutting a favorite rosebush off close, then took a circle around overhead and brought up with a terrific crash and buried itself in a fence-board, while we sprang out through a "twist," ran into the house and locked the door.”

“A scythe seems to be made of crookedness and cussedness mixed in about equal parts; and how a man is expected to go straight at his work, behind one of them, is a little in advance of any mathematical calculation we have on hand.”

“We cannot imagine that any man living can manipulate one of them successfully, except he be a cross-eyed man. A real cross-eyed man might be able to get in his work where it was wanted; but if all scythe-handles are as crooked as the one we have - and which we now want to give away – we have shekels that say no person can cut down the grass he wants to cut, unless he strikes at something in the next lot, or else throws it around the corner of the house and then runs the other way. You might as well try to drive a tack with a ram's horn – it isn't in it.”

“If anybody wants one of the grass-tools of our daddies we hope they'll come around and get that thing out of our lot, before it completely wipes the Tribe of Dudley off the face of the earth.”

Uncle Dudley.

P.S. Wanted: A lawn mower