When I was a boy at Little River, my grandmother put me in charge of mowing our yard and my aunt and uncle’s yard each week — our way of paying back for the house we lived in rent-free and the water we pulled from their well 200 feet away.
One summer, my Uncle Allen — a janitor up in Columbus, Indiana — felt sorry for a boy pushing an old mower through Bermuda grass in July heat. He bought me a 6-horsepower Craftsman riding mower and had it shipped to Arkansas Best Freight in Jonesboro. He told my grandmother I might use it to mow a few more yards and make some money.
I picked up five yards that summer. $5 a yard. Enough to buy five pairs of Levi’s at JCPenney before school started.
I still mow my own yard today. I own two vacation homes and a farm now. I could hire it out tomorrow. But there’s something in that engine noise that takes me right back to a gravel road in Mississippi County — and reminds me where all of this came from.
Sometimes the smallest gift someone gives you — a lawnmower, a kind word, a little bit of belief — turns out to matter more than they ever knew. More stories like this one are in A Journey from the Turnrows of the Delta to the Front Rows of Higher Education coming soon on Amazon.com
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