Sling Blade

I bought my lawn mower way back in the days when I still had a lot of grass, which is to say about fifteen years ago. It was the cheapest one in the store, and had cut a very narrow swath, but every spring I planted more stuff until now about the only grass left in my back yard is along winding paths. Turns out, that little old lawn mower is just the tool for the job.
The first two years that I had it, I changed the oil and had Jerry change the spark plug, but since then the only maintenance it's had is when Nate occasionally takes the blade over to his mom's house to sharpen it for me. The oil level never goes down. I guess the air filter is all right. And the spark plug never got changed.
So it wasn't a big surprise when it refused to start on Saturday. Only a week earlier, while cleaning the garage, I ran across the replacement plug we bought back in 1997. So, no problem.
We have a lot of tools in the garage, leftovers from the days when everyone was a backyard mechanic. Some of the tools are metric to fix motorcycles, but at least three sets of wrenches and sockets are standard, plus of course, a specially sized long socket for the lawnmower. As we dug through them looking for just the right wrench, it occurred to me how this kind of engine maintenance was a common skill.
I once had a 1964 pickup truck that had a V-6 engine. Since the body of the truck was built to hold a V-8, there was plenty of space for an amateur like to mess with wires and bolts. With advice from family or friends, I managed to do some mechanical stuff myself.
Odd to say, but old tools, even obsolete rusty ones, are considered collectibles. Lawn mowers are too big to fit in that category. Maybe when it stops running, I'll use it for yard art.
Nancy Sherer