Lee High School - Huntsville Alabama Alumni

Lawns Mowed - One Dollar

by Tommy Towery

Class of '64

I told Sue today that I did not have anything to write about for this week’s she suggested that I write about cutting grass. She said that because she and I spent most of a glorious Saturday afternoon cutting grass and doing yard work. By the way, if you don’t know before you start you will know before you finish reading this – I hate yard work! I think I have always hated it.

My earliest memories of cutting grass goes back to when I was about eight years old and was living on East Clinton Street (before it became Clinton Avenue East). That was 1954 I suppose. My paternal grandmother was taking care of an elderly lady over on Echols and the lady needed someone to cut her grass so my grandmother volunteered me. She thought I could use some extra spending money, which was true, but I really didn’t want to work for it. All that aside, she talked me into cutting the lady’s grass once a week, for $1.00 per event. Yes, a whole dollar! I guess my grandmother thought that was a lot of money, since she always put a dollar bill in my birthday card each year. She did that until I graduated college, with no cost of living increases for almost 20 years.

Well, at the time of the contract arrangement all I had was a manual, reel, push mower similar to the photo above. I can close my eyes even now and almost hear the sound that those mowers made. I do remember that you could flip the handle over the back of the mower and pull or push it without engaging the cutting blades, and that was what I had to do to get the mower from my house to the yard that needed cutting. I did a mapquest search today and found that it is .71 miles (almost 3/4 mile) between the two houses. That hasn’t changed over the years I am sure. Also the satellite image of Echols reminds me how big the yards really were and are still. But it was a long haul for a short legged eight year old I remember. Once I got there and started cutting, I spent a lot of time stopping and picking up limbs fallen from one of the many trees in the yard. It was hard work.

After a couple of weeks of grass cutting my grandmother finally felt sorry for me I guess. That came after a constant complaint that the work was too hard for the money I received, even if I was being a good boy and helping out an old lady. She finally understood and I thought I was off the hook. Not so! My grandmother bought me a new lawn mower - a gasoline powered one that came from Western Auto I think. I don’t know how much she paid for it, but it was between $49 and $74.50 I think. Those were the key figures in advertising back then. My biggest memory of that lawn mower was the afternoon I rolled it the .71 miles between the two houses. It was heavier and did not roll half as good or fast as the lighter manual one. Soon after I started cutting the yard it started raining. The power mower did not do well on wet grass. I ended up having to roll the mower back to my house and wait two days to go back and finish the job. By the time I finished it, the side that I had already cut a few days before had grown up to where it did not look right so I had to cut it again. I also remember that my grandmother had the old lady pay me an extra dollar since I had to cut it twice.

We all know that a dollar was not all that bad of pay for a kid back then. I could go to a movie for a quarter, buy a Coke for a dime and a bag of popcorn for the same price and a candy bar for a nickel. I could walk out of the Lyric or Grand with 50 cents still in my pocket. Sometimes I would go to the other theatre and spend the second 50 cents the same way. Sometimes I would go to Krystals or Sno-White and get a couple of ten cent hamburgers and a dime Coke and then take the last 20 cents to the Grand News Stand and buy two comic books for 10 cents each.

With the gas powered mower, some of my profits were used to buy a gallon of gas for 29 cents. Today, I went to the gas station and bought gas for my mower, I buy it in five gallon buckets now. Today’s cost for gas to cut the yard - $13.10. That’s more than I would make in a whole summer of cutting grass back in 1954. I wish I could find someone to cut my yard for $1.00 today. The last kid that cut it wanted $40 and that did not include trimming the sidewalk. Come to think of it, I didn’t do any trim work back then either. Oh, and I didn't have a grass catcher on the mower either, nor did I rake the grass up. God put it there, if he wanted it he could get it.

I never cornered the grass cutting business like my grandmother wanted me to, primarily because almost everyone else I knew cut their own grass back then. And those that didn’t usually had kids that had that chore.

I can’t help but envy Don Stroud now. He lives on a houseboat. He has no grass to cut. Hey Don, need a neighbor? I’d like to hear from the rest of you with your own personal grass cutting adventures.

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Mary Ardrey Aukerman, Class of '66 - That looks like a typewriter eraser. You used the white end to erase the error and then brushed the little pieces away to keep them off the ribbon. I hated typing forms with carbons because you had to erase every copy and hope the carbon would work in the spot where you erased. Thank goodness that’s all behind us and we can just backspace to correct a mistake after doing a spell check. Some things about the good old days are best left behind us; this is one of them. I’ll take a laptop over an IBM Selectric anytime!!

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Thoughts!

I’ve gotten old! I’ve had two bypass surgeries, a hip replacement, new knees, fought cancer and diabetes. I’m half blind, can’t hear anything quieter than a jet engine, take forty different medications that make me dizzy, winded, and subject to blackouts…have poor circulation, can hardly feel my hands and feet anymore … can’t remember if I’m 85 or 92…have lost most of my friends. But…thank God! I still have my driver’s license.

The nice thing about being senile is that you can hide your own Easter eggs!!!

I feel like my body has gotten totally out of shape, so I got my doctor’s permission to join a fitness club and start exercising. I decided to take an aerobics class for seniors. I bent, twisted, gyrated, jumped up and down, and perspired for an hour. But, by the time I got my leotards on, the class was over!!!

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Subject:Diann'e Loss

Chip Smoak

Class of '66

It is a shame that all we who know Dianne Hughey McClure personally or through her contributions to Lee's Traveller are unable to do more than offer our condolences and pray for God to strengthen and comfort her in her time of great sorrow. We know her loss is very difficult to bear but trust that she will endure because of God's love and the wonderful memories that she and Ronnie created. I'm sure that the thoughts and prayers of all the Fami-Lee are with her.

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Subject:Grady Hospital

Jim Bannister

Class of '66

John Drummond is right. Grady Hospital is a war zone. I was the Atlanta District Service Manager for Instrumentation Laboratory in the early '80's and Grady was one of my least favorite places to call on. Even during the day the sidewalks around the hospital were full of homeless persons, panhandlers, muggers, and common street thugs. One of our dealer's service persons was robbed and killed in the parking deck. Her body was found in her car by one of my service engineers. We had a blood gas analyzer stolen from one of our salesman's van. It was never recovered, guess it is hard to pawn a blood gas analyzer. I had a service engineer quit because he had been robbed at gunpoint on a call to Grady and refused to go there again. I have been to most of the large hospitals in the eastern U.S. and Grady wins the "Battle Zone" award.

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