What’s In A Name
I knew him as The Mower Man. The whole town knew him as The Mower Man.
As the old joke goes: ‘One donkey! Once!’
He lived on Sun Valley Road, in a townhouse with a yard filled with busted mowers and his real name was Barry.
We met a couple of years ago because he lived next door to someone I visited regularly.
The first time I wandered up the drive he called out, “Waddaywant?!”
“Waddayagot?”
He was sitting on a stool in the opening of his garage, dressed in a singlet and shorts. He was literally surrounded by mowers in varying states of distress. Mowers of all shapes, sizes and colours filled his carport, front yard and probably his loungeroom.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
I told him, then asked the same.
“Barry,” he grunted and we shook hands.
When he learned I was visiting his neighbour he gave me the scoop.
“Ah, he’s an idiot! Waste of time! Wouldn’t bother!”
I learned later their falling out had come just after his neighbour had bought a mower off him. There had been some disagreement and, whatever it was, the cause of the original argument has been lost in the mists of time.
Each week, I’d fire up his neighbours’ mower and run over the lawn. Barry would shake his head and growl afterwards, “Too good a mower for him!”
Let the record show, it actually is an amazing mower. It’s old, but gold. Starts first time, every time, uses bugger all fuel and a touch of oil. I’ve used it to cut down grass the size of sugar cane without missing a beat.
Before I left, Barry would call me over for a chat and point out anything I’d missed or give me a list of things to tackle next week.
One day he announced, “You’re too good hearted!”
“Yeah, and you’re too grumpy,” I replied.
He agreed, then added, “Smartarse!”
I quickly learned in Barry’s world, outside the small inner circle of family and friends he genuinely cared about, there were only two categories of people:
Idiots and Smartarses
Most people were Idiots, and a few Smartarses were tolerated. Barely, somedays, especially if Australia was getting toasted in the cricket.
Anyway, this was Gladstone, so if I don’t know you, I’ll know someone who does.
We kicked things off with a comparison of places we’d worked.
I rattled off my list and Barry shook his head, “Sounds like you can’t hold down a job!” he said.
When I pointed out I’d lasted many years longer than the three days he put in at one place we’d both worked at, he smirked and said, “Ha! You were an idiot for staying so long in that dump! Place was a death trap! Full of idiots too!”
Anyway, turned out he was mates with, or related to, several people I knew. This is, after all, Gladstone aka: two degrees of separation round here, not six.
We got along alright in spite of our differences and only once did he have a shot at me.
The afternoon I ran the blades over the small strip of grass separating the two properties and some of the cuttings blew into the opening of his shed and over his safety thongs.
“Why doncha use a bloody catcher you messy bastard!” he yelled.
Look, it was hot, I was cranky, dusty and a bit dehydrated, so I shouted over the mower’s noise, “Because I’m hoping the mower picks up one of the hundred and twenty fucking bolts you’ve tossed into the grass here and it hits you right between the eyes!”
His eyes popped wide open and the cigarette nearly fell out of his mouth. It was the only time I heard him do a full belly laugh. It ended in a coughing fit so bad I thought it was going to kill him.
When he finally caught his breath he rasped, “Piss off smartarse!”
Later he told me how close to death he actually was. “Veins in me leg are rooted,” he announced, waving his cigarette around.
“Idiot doctor in Brisbane says, if I can give these up, he’ll have a crack, maybe, but I’m nearly eighty and he reckons the op could kill me anyway. Useless idiots. And the doctors up here, they’re worse! Complete idiots! So basically, I’m stuffed!”
I looked around his shed and yard. “Reckon you’ll clear the backlog before you cark it?” I asked (oh yeah, I’m Mr. Compassion).
He shrugged, “I could get rid of all these tomorrow and by the end of the week the yard’ll be full again. Too much cheap shit on the market now.”
The last time I saw Barry was a few weeks ago. We chatted about not much in particular then he said, “If you ever need any parts, or a spark plug, you come to me, I’ll look after you.”
I’d been upgraded from ‘Smartarse’ to ‘Mate’!
A week later, I noticed he wasn’t seated in his usual spot, tinkering and surveying the comings and goings of the street. I didn’t think anything of it and carried on mowing.
The next day, as I was strolling by, I saw a team of people carting gear out of his shed and house and tossing them into the back of a large truck.
All the mowers were gone.
‘Shit no!’ I thought.
Shit yes.
I don’t know how, or when, he died but this week, I mowed his neighbours’ lawn and it was a bit hard to look over and see Barry’s yard, completely empty and the shed door closed.
When I got home my neighbour popped over; her mower wasn’t working and could I take a look at it please because the Mower Man had died. She was a bit distressed about it.
Well, I eventually got the thing going, then told her not to tell anyone who’d fixed it.
I have a strange feeling this was how Barry got started.
One mower. Once..