A Test for Julio

Right now I should be out refilling the five gallon water bottle, but my car's trapped behind a dead lawn mower, one with a sign telling everyone it's free for the taking. This is how, when I don't rent roll-offs, I get rid of oversized trash.

It's now been out there for an hour and a half. I hope it's gone soon, but scavengers answer to no one. I can't remember how long it took for my last prize to be claimed, or even what it was, but things usually disappear by sundown.

When I first moved back home there was a lot of cleaning up to do. My parents wisely decided that instead of fixing up and selling the house that it would be easier to basically give it to one of my sisters and me. We took it over for a tiny mortgage, and I moved back in.

One of my earliest discoveries was that I not only inherited a place to live, but a fully equipped one. My parents, maybe, took a few suitcases with them but everything, otherwise, was just as it had always been.  Not only was all the horrid furniture here, all the crap in the drawers or piled in unused rooms, too. My parents had lived here for about fifty years and one would be challenged to prove they'd ever thrown remotely usable away (not that I'm all that much better). Anyway, for the first few months my sister and I hauled out to the curb all kinds of junk. Near the beginning of this process we spied a beat up, white pickup truck that had fashioned into a stake bed truck picking up our trash. Julio was written on the side, and a legend was born.

I have no idea if Julio was even driving, or the man we saw, but ever since then whenever I drop something at the curb I call it "putting things out for Julio," and right now it's a broken gas-powered mower. I don't know if anyone will take it, but in my day we'd have snatched something like up pretty quick. Old lawn mower engines, if nothing else, are great for go-carts and mini-bikes, but I can't remember the last time I saw anyone riding any other than a commercially produced one.

Of course, in my day, I also would have made more than a passing effort at fixing the damn thing.

If someone takes it in a few weeks they'll also be able to pick up a busted electric mower. I'd put them both out there now except for a few issues. One, while a good argument could be made that I broke it since I was the one using it when someone ran over a hose buried in the lawn and froze the motor, it's my sister's. She bought it, and I'm not sure if it's okay for me to toss it.

Also, more importantly, I don't want our neighbors to know that we have two dead lawn mowers. That's simply beyond the pale, especially because we don't have a working one. If this one gets picked up I hope to put the other one out there when enough time has passed that no one will remember I just got rid of one. Things are embarrassing enough.

The good news is, if the mower gets picked up, I get to cross one thing off my phonebook sized "to-do" list.