Good Neighbors

Some guys live for yard work, but not me.

It was the first weekend after Christmas and all I wanted to do was lay around on the couch and watch TV. Instead I had two lawns to mow. Too bad yard work doesn’t take Christmas off in Florida, I grumbled as I crossed to the lawn next door.

Five years ago my 72-year-old next-door neighbor collapsed in the driveway. We both happened to be working on our lawns that day. Lucky for us, we’d stopped to chat. I caught Glen before his head hit the pavement.

“Hang in there,” I urged, whipping out my cell phone. He lay semiconscious in my arms until the ambulance arrived.

I rode with Glen and his wife, Grace, to the hospital. Glen needed emergency surgery to remove a tumor restricting blood flow in his neck. Over the next few weeks, I cut his lawn.

Sadly, Glen never fully recovered. He could barely walk. I took care of both our lawns now that he couldn’t. Within two years, he was dead.

I ached for Grace. With no one else to help, I’d been taking care of her lawn ever since. What else could I do? I liked to think someone would take care of my lawn for my wife if anything like that happened to me.

But that didn’t make the commitment any easier. I needed to buy twice as much gas—not cheap. Plus, my old mower regularly went on the fritz.

Grace let me use Glen’s lawnmower and chipped in for fuel, but eventually that mower started acting up as well. All that time bent over the engine gave me a wicked weekend backache and sore biceps from yank after yank on the starter cord. By the time I got the old engine fired up I was almost too tired to face the mowing itself.

I drooled over the fancy new models advertised. “Light as a feather.” “Turns on a dime.” “Almost does the job itself.” But I didn’t have the money for that right now.

Glen would do it for me, I reminded myself as I walked over to Grace’s garage. Maybe I didn’t want to spend this gorgeous, Floridian, post-Christmas day wrestling with an engine and getting covered in grease, but I wanted to let Grace down even less.

I lumbered up Grace’s driveway with a half-full gas can and pulled up the garage door. The old lawnmower was gone. In its place sat the latest and greatest mower on the market. It was cherry-red and shining. Taped to it, a sign read, “Merry Christmas, Gary. Hope you like your new lawnmower.”

One gentle pull of the starter cord and it came humming to life. It was Christmas all over again.