Good day, and welcome to another exciting episode of "Home — Then and Now."
Last week’s historic home phones versus "the cell" got a terrific response, so this week I’m shifting the focus to yet another home history category: "Lawn and Garden Maintenance — Then and Now."
While pondering some of my relics of days gone by, I had a sudden revelation.
I believe I now understand why all those beautiful, early-1900s two-storey homes were built three feet apart and on postage-stamp-sized lots. The lawn and garden equipment of the era was rarely powered by anything other than a human!
We’d never have kept up!
How many of you start sweating when I say the words "push mower"?
Now, some of you may be saying, "Well, what’s the big deal? I have a gas mower I have to push, so it’s a push mower." Yes, but the wheels on the push mower require turning/rolling to make the blade wheel turn and cut.
If those blades are dull, if the grass is a little too long, if you’re mowing into a wind, if it’s any day of the week, that endless push can be exhausting. Power mowers just roll. Some are even self-propelled. No comparison.
I remember that "push," because as a young lad, both in my hometown of Killarney and then in Winnipeg, I had to mow with one of those.
And just like walking to school back then, it was uphill, all uphill, non-stop, cross my heart and hope for pie, I swear.
At least by the time I came along, mowing had graduated from using a scythe to the push mower, but a motorized mower would have been nice.
Although the motorized lawn mower arrived around the 1920s or so, still, by the 1950s, none of them seemed to have made it to Killarney, or even Winnipeg.
I do remember seeing one or two, but never in our yard until at least 1960. Was I raised by sadists?
The larger mowers of the time were pulled, not pushed, and came in either one or two horsepower.
Tell ya one good thing about push mowers and the other lawn and garden tools of the time. Life was a lot quieter back then. It was much easier to take a nap — which you badly needed after all that yardwork.
Garden prep and maintenance required the same endless push, probably more.
Every spring — or was it fall, or both? — you had to take the big fork and push it into the garden soil with your foot (and the drier it was, the harder it was), then pull the handle back towards you to loosen that soil up. Big gardens took a lot of forking.
Motorized Rototillers existed, mainly on farms. Again, none of them ever made it to our yard. The only Rototiller I ever laid hands on back then (surprise, surprise) was the push variety. The wheel part broke down and levelled the soil a bit, and the forks behind fluffed it up.
I believe the brand name for this model was RotoKiller. Pure torture.
All of these motorless tools are totally useless today, of course, because it is completely impossible to operate any of them while holding a cellphone. You could smoke, though. Lock your lips on, and that cigarette is hands-free till it burns into your flesh. Pause, light another and you’re off.
Now if you had a tree to cut down, the tool for that required both pushing and pulling.
Wise to sucker in a very strong partner for that task.
A toast to motorized tools everywhere. Well worth the pollution! Have a great long weekend!
Comments or feedback, love to hear from you at lmustard1948@gmail.com.
