The Tractor Incident

This little house belongs to a much bigger old house in neighboring Gloucester, near the public landing on the Ware River (down the road between Hodges & Bryant and Long Bridge Ordinary). As interesting as the house is the big old tractor. I've always loved tractors, and it's a good thing, because all we do around here is cut grass from March through November. Speaking of cutting grass, let's revisit an episode from last April involving a tractor.

Chesapeake Bay Mother wrote some more posts for me (your applause is deafening), one of which recounts a particularly unfortunate episode on a circa-1975 Cub Cadet riding lawn mower.

Before I share her version of events, here's what I had to say about this incident last April:

Mother, Age 60-something, riding a "fixer upper" that my Father had re-engineered (using Legos and Tinker Toy parts), loses complete control when mower does not respond to brake, clutch, gas, emergency brake, or prayers to God. Mother decides to ram tractor into huge cedar tree to get it to stop. Tractor decides the fun is not even close to over and, upon slamming into tree, goes into REVERSE and even more out of control. Mother sees impending death when tractor, now going 35 miles per hour in reverse, picks up speed and begins heading towards clothes line AND car. Mother dives off tractor. Tractor runs over top of her. Mother gets up bruised, battered and shaken but thankfully ALIVE to tell the story...regrettably to her gynecologist the next day at her regularly scheduled appointment. Because the mower deck managed to impart a bruise the size of Texas right near where the doctor was checking.
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I think it is important to emphasize that every bit of what I said above actually happened.

CB Mother's version of events follows.

Runaway Lawn Mower: Part I
by Chesapeake Bay Mother

"Under the heading of Things You Should Never Do comes frightening cats into the basement by loud noise emitted by a speeding Cub Cadet, which you are riding. While this requires considerable explanation, for our purposes I will just condense it down to: you should never herd cats with a lawnmower even if the blades are off, because it will become deranged and try to kill you. When the aforementioned lawnmower has a defect involving a component of the transmission called a "governor," you have hit the disaster trifecta. So it was with me.

Every evening I would make sure the young cats next door* spent the night inside to avoid contact with wild animals and other things that go bump in the night. I accomplished this by opening a basement window and shooing them in by driving by on the lawnmower, dismounting and shutting the window. On this occasion I got back on, shifted into 3rd and sailed home....."

...To Be Continued Tomorrow, and *Rest Assured* It's Good
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Chesapeake Bay Woman's One Point of Clarification
* Those young cats? They were her cats I volunteered to watch while she and Daddy went out of town one weekend. We put them in my basement, and 3 years later she's never come to retrieve them--although she would come over to "herd" them back inside (my house) at night on her riding lawn mower.

She does not trust any animal to sleep outside, except her water fowl, which she zips up in a nylon tent. There were no errors made in that last sentence, up to and including the words "nylon tent."

This happens in your family, too, right? Mothers herding cats on riding lawn mowers? Zipping up ducks and geese in tents? Ramming lawn mowers directly into cedar trees--on purpose?

I thought so.

Be sure to come back tomorrow for the conclusion of Cub Cadets Gone Wild.