A Dozen Reasons Why

I was weed-eating after work this past Wednesday evening. I had already trimmed around the house, around the driveway art installation consisting of my 1978 Volkswagen Bus, a 1974 Sears Allstate enclosed utility trailer, a 5X8 utility trailer, and had just done a short distance down the fence line when I noticed my dogs interested in something out on the road beyond my driveway. I looked up and saw one of my neighbors stopped outside my gate. I shut the trimmer off and wiped the sweat off of my brow before it stung my eyes. I could see his impressive handlebar moustache and he was sporting his grey Stetson hat he's had on every time I've seen him. He looked at me through his rolled down window and asked if I had a riding mower. I pointed to the blue tarp in the undeniable shape of a Bolens 42" rider sitting beside my house. "I can't get it to start."

"I've got a rider if you want to borrow it." He nodded his head in the direction of his place, a house just across the field on the other side of the creek. It's the house with a barn and horses across the same field that floods during heavy rains when that same creek overflows its banks. He nodded toward his house again. "Just come up and get it."

Honestly, my only goal was to do the trimming. I told him that with what daylight was left, I probably wouldn't have time to mow the whole yard. "I bet you do have the time. 60" cut, zero-turn...you got time."

So, I walked up there, and he brought the mower up to the front of the house, and proceeded to tell me how to operate it. But his lesson involved more emphasis on showing and less on speaking. Before shutting it off, he moved the throttle from turtle to rabbit and back again. He used the foot-activated deck height pedal. He pushed the button that engages the blade and pulled it up again. He pulled the two steering/drive arms apart and engaged the parking brake. He showed me that the engine would stop if I tried to pull those arms back up into drive position with the handbrake on. His advice then, as he turned to go inside, was to "Take it slow."

I did take it slow.  Even so, I mowed my yard in record time. A 60" cut while riding beats a 22" cut walking any day. I took it slow, not only because it was a borrowed mower; a mower I was unfamiliar with; a mower that probably costs as much as a beater used car from Terd Ferguson's Used Car Lot on a slow sales day...I mainly took it slow because the mower scared the crap out of me. Shoot, there's places I didn't mow because the tires kept spinning out on the incline and I did not want to be rolling over on somebody else's mower. I probably wouldn't have mowed those steep places with my own riding mower. The last time I drove a zero-turn lawnmower, I was a pimply teenager working for East Pasco Medical Center (now a part of Florida Hospital) and I wasn't even a member of the grounds maintenance department. I worked in the cafeteria. I just knew the grounds keeper.

When I finished, I had to get my headlamp to see to drive the mower back to my neighbor's house. I saw that his storm door was open, so I walked up and announced my arrival. A Western was playing on the living room television, and an old dog whose eyes reflected the light of my headlamp sat on the couch, but there was no old dude to put the mower back from where he got it. So I started the rather loud mower up and put it under the four poles with a roof where I'd seen him get it. I went back to the front door to give him the keys and he still wasn't there, nor was he answering me. I decided to hang the keys on the inner handle of his storm door and come on home.

I don't know why he asked me if I wanted to borrow his mower. Our relationship as neighbors is levels below my relationship with my other neighbors. I know them better. I see them more often. We wave when we see each other. We jokingly wipe the sweat off our brows when we see each other working in the yard in the summer heat. We determine the need to mow our lawns by the condition of each other's lawns. We all have our fences, and like good neighbors, we stay over there, just behind sections of chain link and lockable gates. There's no communal picnics or yard sales, and hardly any of the leaning on the fence with drink in hand conversation.

But there are Christmas cards exchanged every year. In fact, this past Christmas was the first time I'd given the old dude a Christmas card. In fact, it was the first time I'd given ALL of my neighbors Christmas cards. With my closest neighbors, we keep an eye out for nefarious activities when one of us is gone from home for an extended period of time. We borrow ladders and light bulbs and cliché cups of sugar, but I've never asked to borrow a lawnmower from any of them. I just walk behind my self-propelled push mower, cutting a swath in a back and forth motion, 22" at a time.

I'm glad he stopped by to offer use of his mower. I don't know why he did, but I'm glad he did. I wonder if he thought I was mowing the lawn with a weed eater. I don't know. But I do know that I now coveteth my neighbor's Dixie Chopper.

Jump to the next morning and I'm already running later than I wanted due to misuse of several snooze buttons and general exhaustion due to the inability to make myself to go bed at a proper hour. I was taking my work stuff and lunch box to my car, and there he was, standing next to my car.

"I knocked on your door. I went up there," he said, pointing toward my porch. "I didn't want to get bit, so I came back out here."

It was The Hole Man. Wayne is his name. I was made aware of The Hole People when I moved in. He's the one who lives down in the hollow (er, I mean "holler) with, I assume, Mrs. Hole Man. I've never seen her, but I was told "they" live there, so there's that. "I think he smokes weed," one neighbor told me years ago. I feigned shock. "He shoots dogs," said another. Feigned shock got real. I've yet to confirm either claim.

He looked like he's always looked to me; age-worn blue jeans, a loose-fitting T-shirt, and a wide-brimmed leather hat. He pointed toward my dogs and said, "I've been bit before and I know how it feels." I assured him those dogs couldn't get out of their pen and all was cool. No biting today.

"Um, I was wondering if you could take me to get some gas. I ran out of gas." His eyes kept glancing at my dogs, who were barking. "It's for my truck. I need to drive my truck." The closest gas station was only a few miles away, and even though I was running later than I wanted, I wasn't running late.

I agreed to take him to get gas. As he walked back up to his driveway to get his gas can, I went back inside to get the rest of my stuff. I hadn't packed a lunch yet and there wouldn't be time to make the salad I'd planned on making. So I had no lunch, but no worries. After all, that's why God created Subway®. Back outside, Wayne was already back with his gas can and was standing by my car again, ready to go. So, we did.

There wasn't much conversation on the drive, just normal banter about how people are so like one another. We all run out of gas. We all have to ask for help. Hope it doesn't rain this weekend. Wow, the price of gas sure has gone up. Stuff like that. The awkward in me recognized the awkward in him. I could tell he didn't talk much either. Like the other neighbor. Kinda like me...

While he paid for and pumped the gas he needed, I texted my boss and let him know what I was doing, just in case I ended up being late. Wayne had pumped his gas and put the almost empty can in the car, then got back in the front seat. He said that $2 doesn't buy much gas, but it was enough to get him back to the store to fill up. I agreed, and I proceeded to take him back home. He told me I could drop him off by his driveway, so I did.

"Thanks, neighbor." He said this as he opened his door. He said it again before the door was shut. He said it after he opened up the back car door to get his gas can. He said it before closing that door. He said the emphasized word "neighbor" at least five times. As he was walking onto his driveway, I put down my window and said, "Neighbor? You're Wayne and I'm Travis." He smiled a smile that was missing a few pearly whites and waved as he walked down his driveway.

I said I didn't know why the neighbor from yesterday helped me like he did. I really didn't, but I think I've discovered something while running a jackhammer at work. Yes, I did some thinking while wielding a 70-lb. electric implement of concrete destruction. I thought about it being the 3rd year anniversary of my grandmother's passing on Memorial Day, 2015. I thought about the lessons she sternly, but lovingly instilled into my head and heart (and sometimes across the back of my legs with a leather strop). Over the repetitive clacking of the hammer's own metal-on-metal mechanisms and the equally repetitive noise of a metal chisel busting up concrete, and underneath the pair of ear muffs that deadened those sounds and protected my hearing, I believe I discovered that I do, in fact, know why. It was for that morning. For Wayne and a trip to a gas station. It was for me and for making me think about others. For running late but not being late. For using actions instead of merely words. For doing without expecting. It was for that whole "Do unto others" bit. For an impromptu learning experience. For love. And since it cost me nothing, it was for free.

And I think those are some pretty darn good reasons.