Penny Sanford Designs

Lawnmower Wars!

This story is fiction, but it might be based on true events. The names of the participants have been changed to protect the innocent and the egos of the men involved if this is indeed based on any true events, which I am not admitting.

The pictures have nothing to do with the story. They are just included to bring peaceful images into the story.

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Lawnmower Wars
by Penny Sanford Fikes

The riding lawnmower triumphantly returned to the farm yesterday afternoon from yet another trip to the repair shop. Peggy was so relieved! She went to sleep last night with a grateful heart, expecting the next day to bring a better sense of order to the areas immediately around the house, studio, Grandma's house and barns.

The tall grass was growing fast with the frequent rain showers, even going to seed. The seed was getting in the hair of the Westies  which in turn was causing skin reactions. At least one rat or chicken snake had been killed close to the house. They never saw snakes when the yard was kept mowed.

Life was just more ordered and peaceful when the yard and meadows were kept mowed. Even the sound of the lawnmower or weed-eater or tractor and big grass clipper was soothing to Peggy. It was as much a part of summer as the nightly song of Whip-o-wills or the calming chatter of cicada on sweltering Mississippi afternoons.

The day, however did not dawn as peacefully as Peggy had expected or hoped. She was puttering with household duties when her husband Griffin stomped into the house, grumbling that Peggy's 84 year old Uncle Chuck had just come outside and stopped Griffin from mowing just to tell him his coffee was ready.

Uncle Chuck just wanted to get Griffin off of the riding lawnmower so that he could get to drive it around the yard and mow, Griffin complained! Both men loved operating the riding lawnmower...when it was operating properly.

The continuing problem, though, was that both men approached the general operation and maintenance of the lawnmower from different perspectives.

The older man would not wear his glasses while mowing, so he often ran over stumps and bent blades or caused parts to break. Then there were years the riding mower had not received basic maintenance before Griffin had married Peggy and they had moved to the family farm.

Griffin, younger by 40 years than Uncle Chuck, approached farm equipment from a different perspective and understanding of modern maintenance and modern equipment limitations. The way modern equipment was handled and maintained was far different than the way tough tractors made from thick metals were maintained in the 1950's, for an example.

The Lawnmower Wars had been preceded by the Tractor Wars on the family farm, so Peggy's nerves were particularly sensitive to any testosterone-driven competition over equipment.

At the present, the almost-new farm tractor had multiple broken parts because it had been repeatedly tasked to do work it was never designed to do. Griffin now wanted to wait on getting those expensive repairs (around $1200) made because when he had repaired the tractor before, the same parts were quickly over tasked and broken again.

Now a broken disk and something else had been added to the list of problems with the farm tractor. Peggy had ceased to want to know any more details about the tractor.

An uneasy truce existed in the house regarding the farm tractor. 

So when Griffin stomped in to complain that Uncle Chuck has used coffee to lure him away from the lawnmower, Peggy decided it was time for her to take a mid day bath retreat.

She did this when the men became territorial over something. She took the four Westies, spread a quilt on the tile bathroom floor, brought in a full thermos of peach tea, and settled in for several hours of brushing and grooming the Westies and washing at least two of them in the shower with her.

No phones, no TV news, no MEN! Three Westies napped while she groomed the fourth one. Being surrounded by their soft snores and muffled yips and muscle jerks from dreaming about chasing critters were as relaxing to Peggy as one of the little pills a doctor could prescribe.

The men never admitted if they figured out that Peggy escaped to the bathroom to get away from the two of them and their testosterone tirades . If they ever wondered why it took so long for her to get a shower and wash a couple of dogs, they never dared ask.

If the extended bath time kept Peggy happy that was all that mattered. Neither man wanted to push her into one of her full-fledged Southern Woman Hissey Fits.

Peggy had thrown only about half a dozen full-fledged Southern Woman Hissey Fits since she and Griffin had married and moved back to the family farm in Mississippi. Those full-fledged Southern Woman Hissey Fits were powerful enough that neither man wanted to trigger one...ever!
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From the bathroom retreat, Peggy heard two pair of work shoes stomping down the hall, followed by a slamming of the antique front door. She was glad she was locked away and did not have to hear the huffing and puffing and blaming and complaining. Well, she at least HOPED she would not be able to hear the latest chapter of the Lawnmower Wars that was being written today.

It was the fault of the repair shop in Winona. "They wanted to make us buy a new lawnmower last year, and they messed up something on purpose."

"They don't make belts the way they used to, so that is why we have to put on a new $40 belt every time we need to mow!"

"We should have let the repair place in Kilmichael fix the lawnmower all along. They fixed the belt problem right away, but now we may have alternator problems."

"When did you put in the new battery?"

"I don't remember."

"We always need to write down the date when we get a new battery?"

"Well I cleaned off the battery terminals, and it is still not starting"

"Well it ran fine when I was driving it this afternoon."

"Yes, and it ran fine when I was driving it earlier. Then when I got back on it when you ran it out of gas, it started choking up and the engine started dying."

"I just jump started it with the pickup, and it ran a full circle around the yard and then died in the same place it died last time."

"I'm so sick of this xxxxxxx lawnmower and it not running! I'm ready to take a shotgun and just shoot the damned thing!"

Peggy had heard the exchange all the way from the front porch to the locked bathroom door. Neither man was directly accusing each other or verbally attacking each other, but they were both venting their anger and frustration into the air around them, and Peggy did not want to be anywhere near that stress!

She heard the antique door slam again and the lock thud, followed by just one pair of footsteps stomping back down the hall toward the den, passing by the bathroom without stopping. Her ears and one Westie's tail told her it was Griffin who had locked the front door and was stomping back to the den to cool off...temperature-wise and temper-wise."

Peggy, in a previous year, would have called out to Griffin and asked him to unlock the front door so that Uncle Chuck could come inside from the front yard if he got thirsty or tired or if the lawnmower stopped on him in the front yard. That would have given Griffin the opportunity to vent all of his frustration into the air in the bathroom, and that was precisely what Peggy was trying to avoid, so she remained quiet and hoped the older man did not need to get in the house from the front door.

There was another factor. Last summer, the older man, who always had difficulty starting the weed-eater, started to walk through the den and then down the long hall toward the front door...with the weed-eater running at full speed because it was shorter than walking around the house to reach the front yard.

Peggy had caught that disaster-in-the-making before the running weed-eater reached the family antiques that lined the long hall. Weed-eater string would have left horrendous scars in the walnut and mahogany bookcases, wardrobes and marble-topped tables and hall-tree.

That was last summer, and it was the last time Peggy had needed to unleash a full-force Southern Woman Hissey Fit. The explosion and verbal shrapnel had apparently left enough of an impression that Griffin was willing to lock the front door to keep the older man from taking a short cut through the house with the riding lawn mower JUST IN CASE Uncle Chuck got the notion to do so!

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Peggy emerged from the extended bathroom Westie spa treatment, having washed THREE of the Westies.  As she sat on the bed to brush out her hair and put it up to dry naturally, she heard the ongoing Lawnmower drama entering from the back door.

"It has run just fine for me for years! Did you check to see if grass was clogging the air filter?"

"I cleaned out the air filter first thing when it started choking and dying on me."

"We're taking this damned thing back to the shop first thing in the morning and let them fix it!"

"Well it's not the belt problem any more."

"NO! It's now SOMETHING else!"

"I cleaned the battery terminals," Uncle Chuck reported to Griffin with an undertone of "If I had been driving the mower it would not have stopped today".

"Well, I cleaned out the air filter and checked the spark plugs and fuel line", Griffin retorted with a similar tone.

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Ten straight hours of Lawnmower Wars was ENOUGH for one day. Peggy dove into a big bowl of mulberries smothered in chocolate sauce, served over vanilla ice cream, and she blocked out the verbal volleys being lobbed across the room.

She remembered her father's oft-repeated words, "You have to be smarter...."

Actually the rest of the phrase was "...than the dog to train the dog." Her father was teaching her how to train dogs as a young pre-teen breeder of Border Collies...but the phrase worked for men as well. A woman had to be smarter than the man in order to train him.

Peggy smiled inside, remembering the bit of Southern Woman wisdom she had learned early in life and had seen proved many times in her 47 years. One cannot CHANGE a man, but a woman sure can train him!!!

A drop of chocolate syrup dripped off the mulberries on the spoon and onto her arm where a watchful Westie quickly licked it up. Peggy's mind escaped to potential recipes for mulberries, replacing Lawnmower Wars with thoughts of chocolate liqueur dripping over beautiful ripe mulberries. She wondered how much chocolate liqueur it would take to give one a relaxed, peaceful mood?

If Quilts Could Talk

"Wha... what was that?"

She heard it again, a scratching, rusty metal- against- metal sound.

She struggled to remember where she had heard that sound before, but she just could not quite focus her thoughts. It was all a dark, dusty... musty with time.

Wait, someone was opening the trunk! Finally! Fresh air! Light!

"Oh, hurry! Let me out! Please, hurry!"

It had been so very, very long.  She had struggled so hard for such a long time to keep up with the number of days... then months... then years since she had been carefully folded and lovingly placed into the trunk with the other younger quilts, the wedding dress, the embroidered pillowcases and those uppity lace underthings

In time, the others quit trying to talk away the endless hours and days; quit trying to remember the happy times. One by one, the treasures in the trunk fell into deep sadness and then fell into the black silence.  Heartbroken. Forlorn. Forgotten.

Red, as the other quilts called her, had been the strongest, keeping the others talking, remembering...for as long as she could. Then she, too, had no more energy, no more words...and fell quiet.

The lid to the trunk screeched open, and dust sprinkled down on her.  As she adjusted to the light, she caught a glimpse of two young faces just before she was jerked out and tossed aside. The Girl picked her up and looked her over quickly before flinging her on a pile in the middle of the floor.

"More old junk!," The Girl said with an unattractive sneer on her upper lip and a coarse tone in her voice.

"We can get a few bucks for this old trunk," The Boy said, and with that, he dumped the rest of the quilts and the embroidered pillowcases and the wedding dress and the uppity underthings on the floor.

The Girl snatched up the wedding dress and the uppity underthings, holding them up to her body. She twirled around and taunted the boy, and he chased her nosily down the steps, their crude cackles fading into the depths of the house.

Red lay for a good while in a state of shock...crumpled in a heap, her folds in distorted, uncomfortable angles. She watched the dust particles suspended in the beams of light that penetrated the attic through one small window.

The light was fading fast. She could not see the other quilts, but she softly called out to them.  In a few minutes, she heard their muffled, scared replies. Then night shrouded the attic in blackness, and the only sounds she heard were a few scratches of claws scampering over the boards and a few arthritic moans of the old house as it stretched in place.

The next morning The Boy reappeared in the attic and began carrying away items from the pile. Red saw the other quilts being carried away, but they were too scared to even cry out.

"Don't worry, girls," she said with forced cheerfulness. "We're just going to have a good airing in the sunshine."

She could hardly wait for The Lady to drape her over the clothes line and let the wind whip through her folds. Why, she was even looking forward to being thwapped with that metal thing The Lady used to shake out the dust and make her clean and fresh.

The Boy reappeared, little beads of sweat forming on his pock-marked brow. He did not look like a happy person, Red thought to herself. She did not remember that face among The Lady's children.

He picked up an old broken lamp and the radio that had been in the bedroom for ever so long. Then he yanked at one of the folds of the red and white quilt and rudely pulled Red over the radio in his arms, letting part of her drag along the dusty floor of the attic, down the steps and out the front door.

Red abruptly felt herself flying through the air, but instead of being unfurled to bask in the sunshine, she found herself falling in a heap in the back of a pickup truck with the old radio and the broken lamp and other familiar objects she had seen around the house. The other quilts were there too, some of them whimpering.

The engine of the pick-up truck strained and then growled to life. Smoke belched from the tail pipe, and they all lurched forward on a bumpy ride on a gravel road, dust churning up, fighting with the burning oil smoke of the old pick-up. The suffocating cloud of dust and smoke blocked the sunlight, leaving Red and the others to gasp for air.

"This was just too much! Where was The Lady? She would not let this happen to her things!"  Red felt a helplessness and a despair greater than she had felt during any of the hard times she and The Lady had survived.

Images chased memories, faster and faster. Red recalled The Lady as a very young woman buying her in a big piece of red fabric, cutting her up in pieces and then sewing her back together with the quiet little white cloth. Hours and hours Red and The Lady had spent together, on the front porch, as The Lady dreamed out loud of the man she was to marry and the children she wanted to have and the happy times she just knew they would have.

The husband came later that summer.  Red was spread out on the bed for the first time the day the wedding dress came to live with them. That first night, she covered her Lady for the giggles and the whispers and the kisses and the loving.

In time, Red and the rest of the house anxiously awaited the first baby to join the family. Not long after those first cries, many unfamiliar but happy faces came by to look at the new baby and beam at The Lady, both tucked under Red's proud blocks.

Red was never jealous of the other quilts that The Lady made for cover for her growing family. They were mostly made with scraps left over from the clothes The Lady made for her brood.

Red was always special. She only covered The Lady's bed, lovingly stroked each morning as the bed was made. She could always make her Lady feel safe and loved. Many an hour, she spent wrapped around The Lady  as she privately cried over the never-ending hard times and the disappointments and the shattered dreams and feeling so alone, even in the midst of such a large family. 

The pickup stopped bouncing, and the engine coughed and choked to a stop. The boy got out and started tossing items into a very large metal green box, sort of like the trunk back at the house, but much, much larger.

Red and the other quilts were flung into the big metal trunk, pinned between some crushed cardboard boxes and some crinkly bags. First, Red smelled stale beer and whiskey. "Ugh," she thought, "The Lady will not like this at all!"

Then rotten food smells reached her, and she felt something dripping on one of her corners.  The lid to this very large trunk slammed shut with a deep thud. Then the pickup strained and growled back to life. and bounced and clanked away into the distance.

Red did not even have time to try and collect her thoughts before she felt the box being lifted, up and up, and then it turned over, and the other crinkly bags fell over on her and pressed against her, and the beer cans and whiskey bottles and rotten vegetables tumbled across her red and white blocks.

She tried to call out to the other quilts, but she could not hear them above the noise. Then suddenly, the tumbling stopped, and Red heard two strange human voices shouting over machinery noise.

One voice was a woman's voice! Oh, it must be The Lady!

The huge box trunk slowly lowered to the ground, and there was the woman reaching for her, her eyes wide with intensity. There were laugh lines firmly etched around the edges of her soft brown eyes, and creases at the edges of her mouth, etched by years of smiles.

Once again, Red was flying through the air, the beer cans and whiskey bottles and rotten garbage being flung from her. 

Then she saw the other quilts being dug out of the big metal trunk, the garbage shaken off of them also. The woman scooped them all up and quickly put them in the back seat of her car while the deafening machinery noise resumed.

"Where was The Lady?" Red had never seen this woman who rescued them, but instinctively Red sensed that she and the rest of the quilts would be safe and appreciated again. This New Lady had a kind face, and she had seemed angry that someone had thrown away quilts like them.

Exhausted, Red and the other quilts melted into the upholstery of the back seat of the New Lady's car as unfamiliar music softly played on the radio and the New Lady hummed along. Warm, clean sunlight flooded the car, and it felt so delicious to all the quilts who had not felt sunshine for...well, they had no idea how long.

The car purred over the miles, and Red drifted into an exhausted sleep, her dreams a mix of her first Lady and this New Lady smiling and laughing and sewing together on the front porch in the rocking chairs.

©2008 Penny Sanford Fikes
All Rights Reserved
Please do not reprint or excerpt without asking first.
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This little fictional short story I wrote about the life of this quilt was inspired by A Dress A Day, a blog about vintage dresses. (My next blog post will tell the true story, as far as we know it, about the discovery of six vintage quilts dumped at a county dump in North Mississippi!)

But back to my inspiration: Erin's short stories about The Secret Lives of Dresses are listed and linked on the right side of the home page of her blog, below some ads. Those short stories absolutely mesmerized me when I first discovered them a bit over a year ago. I've re-read them all in the wee hours this morning, again mesmerized!

Here are two of my favorite descriptions written by Erin:

The Secret Lives of Dresses, Volume 6:
"She was typing--she did a lot of typing--but it was much slower than her usual rat-a-tat pace. There would be the crash of a single key hitting the platen, then a drop, then a pause, then the crash again. For a minute, I wasn't sure what the drops were--had she spilled coffee, and, more importantly, was it staining me? It was only when she started rummaging in the desk for a handkerchief that I realized she was crying. Crying! That's one of the worst things you can do in a dress, you know. Every time you cry in a dress you grind sadness right into it, deep down into the fabric, and it never comes out. Laughing in a dress -- now that's good. The laughter lodges between the warp and weft in little bubbles, like champagne. And kissing, kissing in a dress sets up a kind of vibration in the fabric that keeps wobbling there forever. But crying, even the drip-drip silent kind, that just grimes a dress up. I hate it. She'd never cried in me before."

The Secret Lives of Dresses, Volume 8:
"I think it got a bit too much for me then, and I don't remember much else until I felt the nice warm massage of the iron over me. I felt just-washed -- I must have been just washed -- and I was being ironed, which, truly, is just the best feeling. You can be all jangly and cross-grained and overwhelmed but the iron just makes it all go away, and there you are fresh and smooth again. It's better than anything."