"I'LL BET YOU COULD WRITE ME A STORY!"

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"THE BOY AND THE OLD PUSH MOWER"
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We were talking again this morning over coffee.
boiled eggs, and toast. 

I was reading along on my iPad and saw that The
Great Courses was promoting a brand new course:
"The Creative Thinker's Tool Kit." "It says that one 
thing it does is to help writers overcome 'writer's
blocK,'" I said. 

The Beloved Editor eyed me a moment and said:
"Well, WRITER'S BLOCK is one thing you don't have!
I'll bet I could give you a subject--on anything-- and
you'd have a story or poem in an hour!"

"Try it," I said. "Um......lawn mower," she said.
*************************

The sidewalk was bumpy from tree roots...as the
little ten-year-old kid bumped along, pulling his 
dad's old beat-up push mower, purchased at
Monkey Wards, in 1939, for $13.95.

The year was 1944. The town was Clovis. The 
street was Edwards. It was July and it was HOT!
The temperature was 97, and the kid was sweating.

The country was the wonderful old USA...before
the politicians had ruined it. Times were tough.
WWII was on and everyone was affected--one way
or another.

The kid did not have an allowance. Oh, he did get
ten or fifteen cents along, for the necessities, like
a movie and popcorn at the Lyceum Theater every
Saturday afternoon at 1:20 p.m.

He was ten and he was out hustling. He mowed
lawns in the summer and shoveled snow in the
winter...anything to get that most beautiful and 
marvelous coin ever minted in the USA---the
Walking Liberty Half Dollar, made of silver!

"Clovis is a pretty good place to live," thought
the kid as he plodded along the sidewalk, pulling
the mower and awkwardly dangling a grass-
catcher over his shoulder.

Sweat was dripping out from under his country-
style-work-straw hat…like his mother bought him
every summer. "My kids are going to have  decent,
respectable, straw hats every summer---if I have to
miss meals..." she always said. (The kid's hat was
misshapen quite a bit from filling it with water from
the garden hose, and dumping it over his head!)

"Boy, I'm hot," the kid thought. "If I could just get 
a good lawn to mow, I'd head up to the Pleasant
Inn on Thornton--up there toward Todd's house,
and get me a five-cent twelve-ounce Pepsi-Cola,
a sack of five-cent Tom's Peanuts, and dump them into
my Pepsi!"

Oh, oh---there's a big lawn over there---needs mowing
bad. "KNOCK,  KNOCK." 

"Ma'am, I'm a little kid and I mow lawns to buy ten cent
War Stamps, and also to make a little money for the
movies. Do you need your lawn mowed?"

"What? Front and back plus trim the shrubs? You'll give
me a dollar?"'(Wow, who has a dollar in this day and 
time?) "But, ma'am, I don't have no clippers. I can use 
yours?! Okay!"

The kid did the job. It was a hard, hot job...just a mere
sample of life and a lesson that---if you want to get 
ahead---you have to hustle.

The kid left there with two Walking Liberty Half Dollars
in his pocket. They jingled nice. He hated to "break"
one of them, as the saying went in those days, but it 
was going to be necessary.

Oh joy! Clovis was good! Life was good! He could 
already taste that cold Pepsi trickling down his hot
throat, with the bumpy peanuts flowing along--- over 
there at the Pleasant Inn, toward Todd's house!

And he'd have enough money for a good model
airplane---maybe the new P-51...from Woolworth's!
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"How'd I do," I asked the Beloved Editor? "Twenty-
eight minutes," she said. "Er, do we happen to have
any twelve ounce Pepsi-Colas in bottles...and some
Tom's Peanuts...I'm kinda thirsty," I said.

******30*****
BY MIL
12/13/13