So, our lawn needs to be mowed. The mower has crapped out and we’ve tried to fix it to no avail and will take it in to get repaired when we can but we don’t have a truck and in the meantime, it’s been raining and the lawn needs to be mowed. It’s turned out to be a bit harder to find someone to do that than I ever would have expected. I was searching around on Internet last week but kept pulling up all these highly rated sprinkler maintenance people and no one had any rates posted and so we just went out of town for the weekend, but now the lawn really needs to be mowed. Fortunately, someone put a flier in our door for Popeye’s Lawn Service and it even had rates on it, so I was off to the races. This morning, on the way to a lesson, I called Popeye’s and it was just this fella named Manuel’s voicemail, so I left him a message. Got back from my lesson and there were some guys mowing the lawn next door just right then putting up their stuff. What fortunate timing! I jumped out of the car and asked if they would like to squeeze in our little yard real quick this afternoon for some tax-free cash money. Only one of them spoke English, but he talked it over with the other two and they concluded that they would not like to do that because they had other obligations this afternoon, though for a minute there, it definitely seemed like it could go either way. I shrugged this off and went to my front door, where I found another flier from Jose Lorenzo of Lorenzo’s Landscaping. Now, normally I hate these fliers for pizza places and political parties that everyone always leaves in my door for me to throw away, but I was feeling grateful for Jose and called him up as soon as I walked in the door. It sounded like he was maybe driving with the window down and blasting some righteous tejano. Or at a serious birthday party where the wind was blowing, maybe. I told him my name and that someone had very recently left his flier in my door and this was really fortunate because I definitely could use his help, today, tomorrow, whenever. He responded with, “Que?” I gave him the whole spiel again, simplifying how fortunate we were to find one another and just hitting him with the facts. “What?” Now, he was starting to sound a little bit aggravated. I took a second listen to the music and tried to get a read on whether or not Jose was kicking it in some club this afternoon or what. Because wouldn’t you turn down your music at this point? I tried once more, just the facts. “Whaaat, man?” That was it for me. I hung up on Jose and went back to Internet, where I found a service called Total Lawn Care that everyone on Yelp seemed pretty over the moon about. Run by a guy named Jason. Only fourteen reviews but they were all five stars. Well, this was surely the deal. I called immediately. Jason did not answer and his voice-mail was full. Of course it was. I went for a run. Last week on a run, I saw three guys who had just finished mowing a lawn sitting in the back of their trailer just chilling on their equipment and I kept an eye out for a repeat of that situation for the entire two miles, but no gig. Saw one guy with one truck, but it was pest control. When my heart leaped after seeing someone get into an AT&T truck, I realized that I maybe needed to dial this whole lawn-mowing situation down a bit. I went about the rest of my afternoon grading papers and a little while later, Jason called back and we made a plan for him to come give an estimate tomorrow for service on Thursday or Friday. Finally. This was magnificent. Not one hour later, I was giving a piano lesson and the doorbell rang. A man stood there on my front porch and told me that my lawn was looking like it maybe could use some work, he would be happy to mow it right now if I liked. My face must have executed some sort of involuntary bug-eyed are-you-shitting-me? maneuver because he immediately grinned and tilted his head and raised his eyebrows at me. “Are you shitting me?!” I asked him. “No, sir,” he said, shaking his head, still smiling. “I am not shitting you.” It seemed quite tragic to send him on his way, but I already had a deal with Jason, taken up his time and what not, so I thanked the smiling fellow very much and that was that. And now to bring it all full-circle, Manuel from Popeye’s has just now while I’m writing the end of this texted me back saying that if I will send him my address, he will be happy to come by and mow my lawn in the morning. There might be more than one thing to be learned from all this, but it seems to me like the most important one is to always take real good care of your lawnmower.
Posted on: Wed, 21 May 2014 01:49:51 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015