Goodbye to a Friend

On Tuesday, I said goodbye to an old friend. Her name was Ferris.

I first saw Ferris at Family Center Farm and Home in Harrisonville. It was eight, maybe nine years ago. She was a closeout model.  It was love at first sight.

Ferris was punctual, reliable, and a workhorse from the start. A powerful, reckoning machine, she patrolled our little slice of Cass County countryside with precision and grace.  Her stately red frame rolled to and fro, back and forth, zigging and zagging across our groaning creation. She would turn on a dime, and could roar at full throttle, shredding through the toughened fescue like a hot knife through butter. At a clip suitable for the Autobahn, she could sculpt and manicure the once clumpy pasture into a golf course fairway.

But Ferris was more than a zero-turn lawnmower. She was often my counselor, my confidante, and a strong tower of refuge during difficult times. She would be a sort of moving and rumbling sanctuary after sending a child to college, or losing a parent, or through random bouts of melancholy. Pushing the wind through my graying hair, she tossed my cares asunder.

But like many treasures, Ferris was best enjoyed in the community of family. If I could pick the perfect day, or maybe a perfect 15 seconds, Ferris would be in the middle of it.  I shape the images in my mind…I grab a Stihl trimmer after lighting my charcoal grill. My boys are each be atop a mower—one sitting atop Ferris—the other on the John Deere Z-Trac. The girls are outside, one maybe playing in a sandbox, the others running through the creek bed or maybe the three of them around the swing set. In both images a black Labrador retriever gives chase. Sandee is waving to me, getting me to stop trimming, and asking me what time the burgers will be ready. The air is bursting with the most powerful scents—maybe the aromas of Heaven: Freshly gut grass, Kingsford smoke, and the wafting blossoms of Spring. Birds are whistling; a bobwhite calling; a killdeer shuffling across the ground….

As that perfect 15 seconds fades to black, I smile. Those days are gone, and this is as it should be. Our time in the country and the work that went with it had to come to an end. It was the most necessary of endings, as our lives and pursuits and capabilities have yielded to and ushered in the next season of our lives—a season back to a suburban lawn in a residential neighborhood.

Ferris is a casualty of these changes. I held on to her as long as I could. She sat in my garage as I waited for Spring to come so I could get the best price for her. But she was spotted by a man who had come to our house to make a repair. He asked about her, and I shot him a price. We negotiated a bit, and then the deed was done.

Tuesday arrived and the Purchaser came to the city with a trailer to take Ferris away. He handed me an envelope of cash. I took it quickly and placed it in my pants pocket. It was if I had just accepted 30 pieces of silver.

I dressed in a way that befit the occasion, digging out my Carhartt coveralls and a camouflage jacket to properly see Ferris off.

The Purchaser drove her up on the trailer. I helped him ratchet the straps around her, and then we both stood there and looked at her.

“It’s hard to believe that Big Block engine is a 35 horse,” he finally remarked.

“I know,” I said, “most of the units that have 61 inch cuts don’t have that much horsepower. “ I thought this to be true but wouldn’t have staked my life on it.

“Well I doubt if my wife will let me on it once she gets ahold of it.” The Purchaser laughed.

“Well I sure hope you all enjoy it as much as we have.”

We moved away from the trailer--he to the cab of his pickup, me toward the house.

Ferris rode off south, back to Cass County, the place of her birth and the place of her rearing. She’ll now call rural Peculiar home.

Farewell my friend.  I hope it's a glorious homecoming.