I seem to be on a jobs kick.
Probably the first job I had was mowing the lawn of the woman who gave me piano lessons. This was in exchange for the lessons. I’d sit at the piano for half an hour, going through very elementary instructional books—the playing of actual music didn’t fit into her pedagogic theory—and then go outside and push the mower around her small lawn. I began to dread the lessons because I associated them with lawn-mowing, which is one of those remarkably boring activities with no redeeming value unless you happen to like shorter grass than when you started. I tended to be a grass agnostic.
As I said, my piano teacher had been my third grade teacher. She was also the church organist, a vast round presence banging away up in the loft, a fixture in the place. She was one of the series of teachers that I shared with my mother. That is, my mother also attended that same grammar school, Our Lady of Mercy, back when she was a kid. My first grade teacher, Sister Agnes Mercedes, had been the principal in my mother’s day. Sister Mercedes was the epitome of old age to us first graders; we were relieved the second year to move up to a nun fresh out of the nunnery, who even we recognized not merely as the breath of youth in comparison to Sister Mercedes, but as being genuinely and intrinsically young. We literally sent her into a nervous breakdown about halfway into the school year, and spent the rest of second grade in a mixed class with the first graders under the watchful albeit ancient eye of Sister Mercedes. Then, in third grade, we moved up to Miss Marino, my future piano teacher. Sister Mercedes, at this point, retired, becoming a presence on the convent porch across the street from the school, waving at the children year after year as she got older and older, and then older still. Old nuns just fade away, was the lesson we learned from this.
Miss Marino was one of two lay teachers in the school, which spanned kindergarten to eighth grade, with the exception of a steady flow of kindergarten teachers. There was Miss Marino, who had been my mother’s third grade teacher as well as mine, and there was Miss Doyle, who had been my mother’s fifth grade teacher as well as mine. These women had staying power. My mother would complain that the prodigiously large Miss Marino spent half her time in my mother’s day sleeping on the job. As third graders, this didn’t bother my generation much. Then my mother would complain about the imperious Miss Doyle, who was legendary as the meanest teacher ever to walk the earth. As fifth graders, we were able to gainsay this, as halfway through the year, Miss Doyle disappeared for two weeks, reappearing reborn as Mrs. Peterson, the sweetest little old lady you ever met. That is, she appeared to be a little old lady to us, and let’s face it, she had been teaching in my mother’s day so she was no spring chicken. But then again, all newlyweds, however long in the tooth, are spring chickens to some extent.
When my piano lessons ended, roughly around the time Mrs. Peterson was our teacher, my lawn mowing career also went on hiatus. Unfortunately, our local newspaper had an annual event for a week or two when children were able to place free want ads. Being an industrious lad (for which read, being made to do it by my parents), I put in an ad as a lawn mowing professional, and sure enough, I got a job mowing a lawn just down the street. I want to say that my employer was named Mr. MacGregor, but that may have been the name of his dog. Both were Scots. The human MacGregor was a dandy, dressed to the nines for no apparent reason, with bright white hair and mustache, quite the neighborhood character, always walking his little white Scottie. I vaguely recall a Mrs. MacGregor, but I could be wrong about this. And as I said, Mr. MacGregor very well could have been the dog. In any case, he (the man) hired me, but was not satisfied with the quality of my work. This shocked me because, well, it was just lawn mowing, and you pushed the (manual) mower around for a while, and eventually you had covered the entire territory, and there you were. But Mr. MacGregor, who I also recollect as a drinking man, felt otherwise, and even went so far as to complain to the managers (i.e., my parents) about my performance. Since my parents were well aware of the crappy job I did mowing our own lawn, they sided with him rather than me. So much for defending the family honor. My lawn mowing career ended for a second time, never to be revived, at least for profit.
When as an adult I owned my first house, I proudly purchased my own manual lawn mower, and occasionally pushed it around the villa, an older version of my young landscaping self. The only excitement I derived from this was one time using the mower to chase a big green snake into the neighbor’s yard. When we moved into our present house, we had been there barely a day when a large sweaty fellow bearing gas-powered equipment on his back like Atlas supporting the earth appeared in our driveway claiming to be named Pete, and also claiming that he had been the lawn guy for the previous owners. I embraced him warmly, welcoming him into the family and telling him to carry on as before.
There is, in my garage, a barely used lawn mower, if anyone is interested. Best offer, and it’s yours.
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