So far my website has offered readers two things; somewhat humorous observations on country life and glimpses of my ongoing struggle with technology. Technology has been the closest thing I have ever had to a wife; fun to have around, but very hard to deal with.

I have decided to make my daily struggle with technology transparent, more or less because I have to. For example in yesterday’s post, I’m guessing you all noticed the picture, which hopefully will be a regular feature here on HH. My brilliant manager walked Mr. Moron through the process of resizing a photograph to the desired specifications. That was all fine and dandy as long as I had him on the phone, but when I tried to do it solo, I ran smack into my own incompetency as a human being.

So you’ll have to bear with me, and thank you for doing so. Until I can get my manager back on the phone, there will be no more resized photos.

I can tell you what the image was going to be; it was going to be a fresh-cut lawn, with a lawn mower in the foreground, to get you in the mood for the following narrative-

I was talking to my sister Gemma yesterday. I don’t believe we’ve discussed Gemma yet. Gemma will be a sophomore at Wall High School next year. In addition to having a really cool name, she is an excellent cook and the lawn mower at the “Upland Trask” residence. Yesterday, she was dreaming out loud about how nice it would be to have a bigger lawn mower.

I can understand. When I was her age, I was the chief lawn mower at the “Upland Trask” residence. Since I was allergic to hay (I know, quite the cowboy) and none of our tractors had a cab, I spent most of my summers mowing our rather expansive lawn.

Of course, “lawn” is not the right word for most of what I mowed, at least not if you’re from the city. It would more appropriately be called “large area of land where we’d like to be able to find stuff.” To help the “Upland Trasks” find stuff, I was armed with an ancient John Deere push mower.

When I first started mowing, the thing wasn’t much more than a motor and blade with a handle. It had already lost the grass discharge chute, and the deck was starting to go. The plastic wheels had degraded to the point where they might has well have been square. It was louder than a Harley Davidson, weighed half a ton, and threw stuff everywhere.

It’s only redeeming feature was the one that I came to despise it for; that damn Briggs & Stratton engine sitting on top of it would not quit. Year after year after awful year, it kept going. It was, much to my disgust, a “one pull start” machine.

I can’t even blame this one on Dad. He bought several other lawn mowers during my childhood, which all failed. Long after the other mowers had given up the ghost, I would be out there ducking the debris and losing my hearing behind the John Deere. During the summer, I would dream at night of the thing dying a thousand horrible deaths, only to spend the next day trailing behind it.

You know, now that I’ve written about it, I see the beauty of it- an unappreciated object that simply refuses to quit. I almost miss that old lawn mower…