Yesterday I decided to mow the yard. Now y'all know, I only have about an acre to mow and it lays purty good so I can usually mow it in about three hours. Most of the yard is purty open but I do have to slow down a little when I'm mowing around the fruit trees. That's about the only time I ever use the brakes on the lawn tractor.
I had just got started mowing when I decided to mow around the fruit trees first. That way, all I would have to do was sit back and let'er roll. Well, as I came up on the first fruit tree and hit the brake, you know, so I wouldn't skin the bark off the tree. I discovered I didn't have a sign of a brake. I swerved to the right a little and zipped right on past that tree. I stomped the brake a few times before I finally figured out that I was stuck on a runaway lawn tractor and no way to stop it.
Then I thought to myself, Shucks, this ain't no big deal, I can just swerve in close to the fruit trees and make several passes and before you know it, I'll be done. Shoot, this may just turn out to be a good way to mow. But then I realized I still didn't have a way to stop the lawn tractor when I did get done. Oh well, I figured, I'll study on that while I'm mowing, that'll give me plenty of time to figure something out. Now I reckon all that swerving and dodging kept me too busy to ponder my situation very much, so there I was done mowing and still no way to stop this thing.
So I kept on steering that thing around the house, van, truck, stump and fruit trees. After a while it got dark and I had a harder time steering the lawn tractor around all that stuff. I mean, I turned on the headlights but they ain't much punkin. They did help a little but then one of them burned out and I almost rammed the truck. I saw it just barely in time to swerve and miss it. Then I bounced over a rock laying next to the edge of the driveway and the other headlight went out. There weren't no moon so I was driving by the seat of my britches. That was until I ran through a barbed wire fence, then I didn't have a seat in my britches no more, or a back in my shirt neither. I figured my hide would grow back but it was gonna cost me about twenty dollars for another pair of britches and a shirt.
Somehow I managed to get the thing back over next to my house. Along the way I may have run over two possums and a polecat somewhere below my yard. Them critters travel a lot at night you know. I think I may have clipped the neighbor's bull too but I ain't sure. I was wishing the lawn tractor would run out of gas but it never. Finally it started to get daylight and I thought, surely this thing is about out of gas by now. But no way, it just kept on going and getting faster as it went.
About nine o'clock my wife come out on the deck and stood there till I whizzed by. She yelled, “breakfast is ready”.
I circled around again and got as close as I dared to and yelled back, “I can't stop this thing, ain't got no brakes”.
She jumped off the deck and ran to the truck and got one of my ropes out. She built a loop and was swinging it above her head as I dashed by again. She threw that loop and caught the lawn tractor by one of its hind wheels, then dallied the rope around the stump there by the driveway. That lawn tractor ran the full length of the rope and was jerked to a halt. Then the durn thing reared up on its hind wheels and started toward my wife, it cut that rope into about a hundred pieces. I spurred that rascal in its hind fenders and kept my free arm swinging about my head to help me stay balanced. I yelled, Yee Haaaa, as my wife ran in the house. Then she come back out there with a rifle. She stood there on the deck, took deliberate aim and shot that sucker right square between its burned out headlights and it stopped dead in its tracks.
I jumped off and ran over to her and asked, “why did you shoot my lawn tractor?”
She said, “breakfast was getting cold”.By Roy Lovelace
