Objectified: Lawnmowers: Illustrations by Jason Cring
Upstater Magazine Summer 2016 | By Peter Martin
Upstate living comes with everything you’d expect
and plenty of stuff you don’t.
Like, do you want to drive from your secluded converted barn to the grocery store? You’re gonna need a car. And, come winter, do you want to dig said car out of several feet of snow so you can get out of the house and escape cabin fever? Now you’ll need a shovel. But when it comes time to manicure your lawn, you’ve got some options to consider. Back in the city, you probably waxed idyllic about primping each blade of grass with hand-forged Japanese pruning shears, or daydreamed about schlepping a hand-pushed vintage reel mower for the perfect cut. Well, get ready for an awakening. Lawn mowing is a thankless slog the likes of which would make Sisyphus shoot sidelong, glowering glances at the green stuff, muttering, “Yeah, I think I’m good with my rock here, thanks.” You’ll be lucky to last a season behind that push mower before thinking about how abandoned your house could really look if you let the whole darn lawn grow unchecked. But it doesn’t have to be that way. There’s a third path, excessive and indulgent though it is, but we’ll brave Promethean punishment to clue you in: Get a ride-on mower. Is that unforgivably lazy? Yes. Will it cause you to question your highfalutin morals and ideals? You bet. But is it worth it? Definitely. The ride-on mower shifts property maintenance from a miserable, seemingly never-ending chore to a glorious opportunity to survey your estate from atop two raging cylinders of iron. Feel the wind in your hair as you sit back on your plastic throne, sipping lawn soda as you make short work of what was once a sweat-inducing bore. Sure, fatigue is still one of the task’s perils, but now your exhaustion can be brought on by the soothing-yet-virile purr of 20-plus American horsepower and the familiar foibles of drinking in the sun. So give in to the ride-on mower. Forget who you thought you were, and gorge yourself wantonly on this machine’s forbidden fruit. Is this thing abhorrent? Indubitably. But if the ride-on mower is wrong, believe us, by the time midsummer rolls around, you just won’t want to be right.
