Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, May 31, 1990                   TAG: 9005300180
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NEW LAWN MOWERS AND OLD MEN DON'T MIX

The trauma of this made me write like Ernest Hemingway again:

It was spring on the Highfields Road when the old man backed the Cherokee into the driveway and removed El Lawn Boy and el rear bagger and el mulcher attachments.

"Is this not a magnificent machine, mujer?" the old man asked the woman.

"It is so, viejo," she said and went to stir the minestrone, for the old man often longed to be in Italy again.

He ignited the machine's engine and soon his breath came hoarsely.

"Basta, basta," he said to the woman. "This machine has too much of a mind of its own. Each time I let go of this lever on the handle, it stops. What is happening, muchacha?"

"Viejo pobre," she said. "Much time has been made since you have bought a machine of the lawn. Now, our government of the people, for the people and by the people has made the machine makers put this lever on to protect brazos such as yourself.

"It is well, hombre. If you should fall down the bank in front of nuestra casa, you would release the lever and the machine could not then chew into your aging body."

"Aiyee," said the old man. "Will it protect me from going mad that it stops every time I take my hand off this accursed lever?

"Why does the government afflict men who have served it well now that they are old?"

The old man knew the answer. When a man gets old he is made to feel he is of little use. He falls into thinking too much of old battles and old scars.

"It is the same government," he said, "that put those pequeno skirts around the backs of los mowers to protect us. It is odd, even today, to see a lawn mower with skirts on it."

"Be happy, viejo," the woman said.

The old man nodded. But he knew that all men pay for happiness with eventual sadness.

The old man thought of taping down the lever on the machine's handle, but he feared a government agent would arrest him.

He also feared he might, indeed, fall down the bank out front and his machine would take a fearful toll on his body.

And then, while he lay bleeding, the woman would get a strange sadness in her eyes and say, "I told thee so."

And he would say, "Get me a drink of bourbon. I smell the breath of the hyena and I will never again run before the bulls."

The old man obeyed his government and soon his machine was running him. It is the way it is.