Pushing Through to Greatness

With the right attitude, you can make even a push mowing job a cut above.

“Now what are we going to do?” Cathy nervously asked me. “They are actually standing around our pickup truck waiting for us to start a dang lawn mowing seminar.”

“I know,” I whispered. “I didn’t think anyone would show up.”

“It’s our own fault,” Cathy hissed. “Our chatter about replacing me as your mowing partner was a joke, until we piled on all the Tom Sawyeresque talk about our jobs being the best. And when you hung posters advertising the seminar and contest to replace me, it looks crazily real and cool.”

“Yeah, and I guess I went a bit over the top on the posters with the schematic of our lawn mower,” I mused as I chewed on the ragged nail of my chlorophylled-stained green thumb.

“You think? So what are we going to do now?” Cathy asked. “We can’t disappoint them.”

“The way I figure it Cathy, there’s only one thing we can do,” I said, squinting and looking a little like Vic Morrow from the 1962 TV show, ‘Combat!’ “Let’s soak ‘em with a couple of hoses and then run like hell. You with me?”

“I guess you’re right,” Cathy said, crunching the last bite of her carrot and tossing the leafy tassel to the turf like a bad hand grenade. She leaned over to turn on the spigots on the side of the greenhouse. “It’s a fitting end for my summer grounds crew career. Let’s move out, Stoa.”

With water spraying full blast, the two of us ran boldly to the back of our truck where our unsuspecting North Dakota State University (NDSU) grounds crew coworkers waited for us. They had expected us to teach them about the joys and awesome responsibilities of push mowing. Instead, they were forced to scatter like greenhouse break room cock roaches when Cathy and I doused them with cold water.

Quickly gathering their wet wits, the crew chased us across campus.

For the record, Cathy and I never received a reciprocal hose down that summer day in 1979, partly because of our speed and endurance. She and I had been pushing lawn mowers eight hours a day for three months and riding our bikes across town to and from work. As a result, we were in great shape—better than when we had played basketball together for Shanley High School. It also didn’t hurt that we knew all the nooks, crannies and Festival Hall corners on campus in which to hide from our sloshing and determined hunters.

Unscathed and unbathed, Cathy and I parted ways at the end of the week when she left for school at the University of Arizona.

The following Monday, Weed-eater Sheri joined my team for the final two weeks of work before classes started at NDSU.

Let’s pause for a moment on this point. Weed-eater Sheri joined the push mowing team. It was quite a feat to entice someone from the weed eater team to join the push mower team. You see, there was a caste system on the NDSU grounds crew, or so Cathy and I had been told when we began our summer jobs after Memorial Day.

At the top of the turf hierarchy, were the huge riding mowers upon which two guys hung tightly to their stick shifts and refused to dismount the mowers to give anyone else the opportunity to sit and mow.

Next on the food chain were the weed eaters. That team was comprised of four Kappa Alpha Theta gals who, slinging their weed eaters on their tanned and toned shoulders like armed Charlie’s Angels, and swaggering like John Wayne on parade, cut down grass that the riding lawn mowers could not reach.

As the newest members on the grounds crew team, Cathy and I, and our push mowing jobs were the bottom of the grassy heap.

Granted, there was one other person on the grounds crew. She was a Zen-like woman who hand watered flowers. All day long. Watered flowers. All day. She seemed to be on another North Dakota plain altogether and oblivious to the hierarchy espoused by the earthy crew.

On that day of the surprise soaking, Cathy chuckled as we squatted in a hiding place while our coworkers hunted for us.

“Okay, I have to admit that was dang funny,” she said.

“Yeahhhh, could you believe their faces when we hit them with our sky-blue waters,” I started to say with a laugh.

“Shhh,” Cathy whispered as the Buddhist-like flower waterer sloshed by, searching for us and world peace.

“You know Cathy, maybe like the flower waterer, we have been on a journey toward enlightenment,” I mused when it was safe to talk again.

“What do you mean?” Cathy asked watching for other hunters.

“Well, we never accepted the status the others bestowed upon us as bottom of the grounds crew caste system,” I said. “We just push mowed every day, had fun, got in shape, and intuitively knew our fine lawn work was a cut above.”

“Yeah. Maybe,“ Cathy replied.

“I mean. Look at us,“ I said grinning.

We looked at each crouched between bushes and the northern wall of Ceres Hall.

”Well maybe not right here right now, but look at us during this whole summer,” I said.

“Yeah, you don’t have to convince me,” Cathy interjected. “This has been a great job, and I’ve grown from it.”

“I know,” I chimed in. “We worked hard and took pride in our mowing, but we had lots and lots of laughs.”

“Yeah, like the time we found marijuana growing by one of the dorms,” Cathy began recalling with a giggle.

“Yeah, ah huh. You said it was our duty to remove the illegal substance, but then you replanted it on our dashboard.”

“I know!” Cathy said. “For a few days, we drove around campus with our hoodlum ornament. Our mistake was telling others about it so that Glenn, the manager, got wind of it and destroyed our stashboard.”

“Right. That was a mistake,” I concurred.

“And you know another mistake was when we forgot to put up the back gate of the pickup when we took off and one of our lawn mowers rolled off, and cracked part of its base,” Cathy said.

“Yeah,” I laughed. “I remember you looked at our poor injured mower, and said, ‘Oh, he’s okay, just a little scrunched. I think I’ll name the old boy, Crusher.’”

“Good name for our baby,” Cathy said solemnly. “And don’t forget the next time we forgot to put up the gate and the other mower fell off.”

“Who’d believe we forget twice,” I said. “I remember the little guy looked okay from the outside, but I suspect we cracked something internally because he smoked from there on out.”

“Yep. I dubbed him Rolaids,“ Cathy recalled.

I smiled and shook my head in agreement, enjoying our mow down memory lawn.

“Except for those unfortunate events, we took good care of Crusher and Rolaids. Every week, we changed their oil, and sharpened their blades,” I said.

“We even learned to set the points on their engines,” Cathy said proudly.

“All in a week’s work,” I sighed. “Yep, it’s been a great summer.”

—————

“That must have been the most boring and lowly paid job ever,” people have said over the years when I tell them I was a member of the less-than-minimum-wage-paying summer grounds crew.

“Not on your life,” I countered every time. “With nothing else to do, my mind went wild with ideas as I got great exercise. Those days were some of my most creative and fun times, and I got paid to work out, and contemplate school, future career, and life.”

Yep. That summer I learned two life lessons:

· Find value and enjoyment in every job, no matter how simple or low it seems. You can make it into a wonderfully satisfying and meaningful experience.

· And if you plant an illegal substance on your dashboard. Don’t talk about it; just water it daily and give it plenty of windshield sunshine.

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