“Did you really tie a rope to a lawnmower to mow your yard?” Publisher Rick Rogers asked the other day.

Yeah, I really did. It worked OK, but really made my arms tired. And it was more work than you might think, as I had to keep my balance at the top of Ford Mountain while I had the weight of a Craftsman lawnmower trying to pull me off of the hill.

So nowadays, I use the mower on the more level parts, and a weed-whacker on the steeper slopes. That is, when I mow.

Because I had work obligations on pretty days, and it’s rained nearly every day I’ve had off, I’ve yet to mow Ford Mountain this year.

I could just put out a sign reading “Federally Protected Tall-Grass Prairie Reserve” in my lawn so the city wouldn’t get after me when the grass grew over my er, shoulder blades, but that probably wouldn’t work.

Being partly American Indian, I could decree my place a sovereign nation and keep my grass as high as I wanted. But then again, half of the people in this area are of Native American descent, so that probably wouldn’t work, either, as we would have thousands of little sovereign nations around and no one would cut their lawn.

Or, I could bite the bullet and spend part of a nice spring day working on the mower and cutting the grass.

I don’t know when the change happened. When I was a boy, I lived to mow the lawn. I loved the feeling of all that horsepower (all three horsepower) at my fingertips. I liked to see a spray of green shooting out of the mower’s chute. I’d imagine the leaves of grass were monsters — evil, green monsters — and I was cutting them down to size.

So I would mow our grass every other day.

One day, I overheard my dad and one of his co-workers talking.

“I can’t get my kid to mow my lawn for love or money,” the co-worker said.

“I can’t keep my kid from mine!” Dad exclaimed.

With those words, a home business was born. Soon, I was mowing this man’s yard, as well as those of some of our neighbors. And ours, as often as Dad would let me.

I got good at it. I’d do a walk-through first, removing rocks, toys and other things to prevent them from becoming flying missiles launched from the mower’s chute. I’d edge people’s walkways and always carried a broom with me to clean up their walks and give their porches a sweep while I was at it. I had a little hand scythe I’d use to cut high weeds and crabgrass down to size. And as a special service to the elderly ladies, I’d weed their flowerbeds while I was at it, as Mom taught me at a very early age which was a weed and which was a flower.

I charged whatever they thought the job was worth. A few skinflints would give me a half dollar or 75 cents, but most were good for a couple or three bucks. One elderly man always gave me a $5 bill, mostly because he liked my added services and I’d help him bring in stuff from his car.

I used to mow the yard of our Boy Scout meeting place too, — not as a paid job, but as a Good Turn — and would cut the front lawn of the elderly lady who lived next door as a bonus, as she would always give us Scouts lemonade and home-made cookies when we were outside during troop meetings. She never wanted her back lawn mowed, though, as she said it was too big of a job for me to tackle for free and she couldn’t afford to pay me anything. It was a jungle of grass, vines, tree limbs — kind of like Ford Mountain is now.

I guess I fell out of love with mowing yards about the time I got a car. Sure, I still mowed the grass for my folks and other people: After all, gasoline for my ’61 Chevy was expensive (about a buck a gallon, but it got like three gallons to the mile). Then there was insurance, and dates, and nights out to McDonald’s and Sonic after the football game, and just driving aimlessly around.

But cutting the grass became just another chore, not the joy I’d known at 9. And it always seemed to get in the way of what I really wanted to do, which was nothing.

Granted, mowing yards paid for the car and all of its expenses, with a little left over to save for a rainy day or college.

I sometimes wish there was a time machine where I could go back to when I was 9 and mowing the lawn ranked right up there with scoring a winning home run or a special run to Quik Trip for a Koolie. I wish I could capture the joy, the enthusiasm, of navigating a big 22-inch, three-horsepower implement of destruction that lad had.

But, as some famous writer once said, you can’t go home again. Oh you could, but different people live there now and probably wouldn’t like you going to your old room, cranking up the stereo and just hanging out. They’d probably want you to get off your lazy butt, go outside and cut the grass.