Mowing

—When I was 11 or 12, my father tried to interest me in mowing lawns.
He arranged someone to have their lawn mowed, and I would be the mowist.
I lacked confidence, and had no idea how to do anything. I went and mowed the lawn with our humble Craftsman push-mower. Motor? Are you kidding?
The one who mowed our yard in Erlton was me. And we weren’t usin’ no Briggs & Stratton.
When finished I had to contact the owner to get paid. I had no idea what to charge.
Furthermore that meant talking to a complete stranger, and I avoided people.
This, of course, made my father extremely angry. He was a child of the Depression, and was driven to “Get a job.”
My inability to interface with people was just “rebellion” to him. No “you can do it” from my father.
The fact I was so out-of-it with social contact meant I was DISGUSTING (his words).
Finally, guessing, I charged the lady $5. And it was only a suggestion on my part.
I guess my father gave up after that. His son (me) wasn’t the least bit interested in making money. I was just another mouth-to-feed, and be angry at.
That lawn was the first and last non-Hughes lawn I mowed.

• “Erlton” (‘EARL-tin’) is the small suburb of Philadelphia in south Jersey where I lived until I was 13. Erlton was founded in the ‘30s, named after its developer, whose name was Earl. Erlton was north of Haddonfield (“ha-din-feeld”), an old Revolutionary-War town.