Gravely Tractor

Gravely Tractor

I started my lawn mowing career at an early age. My father felt that the best way for me to use my idle time was to work. When I was strong enough to push a hand mower (that’s a mower that operates on muscle and sweat), my summer chore was cutting grass. Eventually I was deemed mature enough to operate a gas-powered push mower; a giant step forward in lawn maintenance.

One day my father came home with a Gravely Tractor. At the time, this was the Cadillac of lawn mowers. Actually, it was a tractor that came with many attachments. You could attach a sickle bar on it to cut brush; an auger to throw snow and in my case a 36-inch mower blade to cut grass. According to my father this was the ideal tool for our two acres of lawn. It wasn’t long before I discovered it was my worst nightmare.

First of all, it was too big and too clumsy for an adolescent boy to operate. Walking behind this tractor, using all my muscle to keep it on track was a task I wasn’t up to. Trying to explain this to my father was useless. He insisted I could do it; it was character and muscle building. It wasn’t until I took out part of my mother’s flower garden that he started having second thoughts.

Just to get the gas engine started was a Herculean task. No electric start here. You had to wind a leather strap around the fly wheel and pull with all your might. With my feeble strength I could barely get a chug out of the engine. Thinking a little more gas would help, I flooded it. I think this is when I started swearing.

I gave that Gravely Tractor my best effort, but it was too much of a machine for me. The last straw came when I just couldn’t muscle it any more. In one final desperate move, I drove that d…. tractor over a four-foot retaining wall! Unfortunately, the mower survived but for me less so after a trip to the woodshed with dad.

All these years later, I am mowing our small patio lawn with a new hand mower that is powered by muscle and sweat. It is hard to improve on that!