Dexter Iowa Community Site

Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

A sure sign of spring is the inevitable task of mowing the yard that first time of the year. Of course, when you working world becomes insane like mine does, finding the time to complete that task can be somewhat of a challenge but one day early this week, I figured I had put it off long enough so set forth in my mind to complete at least most of the first cut of the lawn.

It was blatantly obvious that I was unprepared for this when I went to the back shed to get the lawn mower out and found three flat tires on it. The first two tires blew up just fine with the tiny little cigarette lighter air pump, but the third tire, which was one of the back tires wouldn’t blow up at all. I was perplexed by this for a few minutes until I realized that over the winter the tire had come off the inside rim. Now as anyone who has ever tried to inflate a tire will tell you, that reseating one that has blown a bead with an air compressor that has less power than an octogenarian asthmatic trying to blow out a birthday candle doesn’t work very well. There was only one alternative left, remove the tire and take it to town and try to use the air pump at the gas station to reset the bead. That plan only went as far as taking the stupid rubber/plastic cap off of the axle along with the Jesus clip only to find that the rim was rusted tight onto the shaft.

After a few choice words I put on my thinking cap and found an old ratchet strap, some dish soap and with a little elbow grease I was finally able to get the tire to seat far enough to catch. The next step was getting it to turn over, and of course I had forgotten that it needed a new battery, but being resourceful I decided to just hook a pair of jumper cables up to my car to get it started. Have you ever noticed that when you need a pair of jumper cables the only ones you can find seem to have been made before Franklin discovered electricity and that either one of the wires is green with corrosion or the ends are so rusted that only some high grade uranium would be able to produce enough juice to flow through them. After an hour of dinking around, I finally got it started and was met with a shower of chicken feathers from the mouse nest under the engine shroud.

At this point in the evening I didn’t really care to waste more time and began mowing in earnest. Now I’m just gonna say this once, as a country dweller I don’t rake leaves and unless the branch or stick laying in the grass is bigger than my forearm I figure that it will make good lawn mulch. I mowed to excess and was only slightly amused when I ran over the first snake of the year. What interested me more was all the collective junk that has appeared in my yard since last fall. There was the usual assortment of things that made now sense, like a pair of gloves that I obviously had set down while working on something, the garden hoe that was lost in the tall weeds and a rather peculiar looking round metal object that upon closer inspection turned out to be the reflector from my yard light, which maybe explains why it would never hold a light bulb more than a few weeks.

I was also deeply touched that passing motorists evidentially understand the poverty I live in and decided to leave me nearly $1.35 in beer cans in my ditch. Who needs government handouts when you have caring strangers taking care of you in such a fine way? It may have only taken me four hours to complete the majority of the first cutting of the lawn for the year, but the entire project turned out to be one amazing journey. I am not sure that the rest of the mowing season will be as exciting as the first mowing, however if it is any consolation, in a few months it will snow. You’re welcome. See you next week…remember, we’re all in this together.