Oh My God . . .

Oh, my God, will Bill Gremillion roll over in his grave? I wonder? His daughter, my beloved wife, just bought a John Deere lawn tractor. The old Yard Machine gave up the ghost, valve problems. So I gave it away to a buddy who has a good one for parts. His needed a steering arm and now he is in heaven. So we got rid of the old heap cheap. It lasted 7 years.

Of course, the new machine has a few more bells and whistles and cost less than the old Yard Machine did. Yard Machines are made by MTD. They make a whole range of machines, top of the line is Cub Cadet. Good machines and when we went to look at them they cost the same as the John Deere. It even had a better turn radius. But the wife wanted a mulching block or plug (not that Cub Cadet did not have one) and she liked the John Deere better.

So we have a John Deere. It is a LA105 model and has a constant gear transmission. That is you do not have to hold your foot down on a pedal all the time to get it to move. This has a combined brake clutch system. You press in to the brake and that also disengages the transmission. She has five speeds forward, one in reverse. And it has a back up button so that the engine will not kill when backing up. But you do not have to "ride the pedal" all the time. More comfortable.

I filled the fuel tank, installed the mulching plug and she went to cutting. All those leaves she wanted to mulch up had already blown away. So she attacked the winter/spring weeds/grasses with abandon. Did the job wonderfully.

But alas, she learned that she was not yet proficient in its operation. She ran into the brick mail box. Nice dent in her new lawn mower. Blamed it on me, of course. The dent is more of a wound of her soul rather than a severe problem with the lawn mower. A bit cosmetic, not a big deal, just hurt her pride.

Or was Bill getting even? Hummmm.