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With the daily rains and the high temperatures and humidity, it looks like you could cut your grass in the cool of the morning and it would need another cutting by late afternoon. There’s nothing like the combination of lots of water and hot temperatures to make a lawn look dark green and healthy.

Just a few weeks ago during the annual month of May dry spell, the lawns at my two churches were looking brown and down, but not now. The twice a month cutting could be once a week. So that’s why the landscaping companies have broad smiles.

I never saw so many pick-up trucks pulling trailers loaded down with zero-turn mowers and weed eaters. I hope they are making enough money to pay for that equipment. I understand they’re not giving those mowers away these days.

When I was growing up, the lawns were called yards and my and brother and I had three yards to cut: ours, my Granny’s, and my neighbors. We had a push mower that Daddy made sure worked and we cut our yard for free. That means “no pay.” Of course all the work we did around the farm was for free.

Daddy didn’t look at it like we did. When everybody else was getting paid their $4.00 per day for working in tobacco all day and we held our hands out, he’d just say, “Y’all are the most expensive workers I’ve got!”

Saturday was the days for cutting the three yards. We had other chores on the other days and Saturday, besides taking our weekly bath, was the day for taking care of that business. As I said earlier, we cut our yard for free and our neighbors for $.50 cents. That’s right. $.50 cents! It took about an hour and the minimum wage bill hadn’t found its way to Stagecoach Road.

We got paid a little more for Granny’s yard. The actual money was the same, $.50 cents, but she was kind enough to put us one of those six ounce Co-colas in the freezer. Her yard took about an hour, too, but by the time we finished, that Co-cola had semi-frozen and had those little giblets of ice in it. Man, were they good!

After we finished cutting her yard, my brother and I had made a whopping whole dollar! I remember one year, we decided to double the cost of our work and charge a dollar per yard. The only problem with that transaction was that we didn’t clear it with the boss. That’s Daddy. He vetoed our raise. In those days, young-uns didn’t rule the roost.

There’s another thing about those days. We might have made only a dollar for our morning’s work, but, oh, what we could do with that dollar.

When you lived in the country, back then, you didn’t just go to town on a whim. You waited until Saturday when the groceries were bought. Another thing. When going to town, it wasn’t just a go to the store, buy groceries, and go home.

My brother and I would go to the show. The show is now called the Super Duper Cinema Multiplex 250 and it costs a bank loan to go. When we went back then, we might take a quarter. That’s $.25 cents for those who are counting. Unbelievable, right? Wrong! We did it every week.

A ticket costs $.15 cents. With the remaining dime, there was a hot bag of popcorn and big drink to be bought. A double feature was playing and there was, hopefully, a Roadrunner cartoon. All that for a quarter!

Here’s the weird part. It really wasn’t all that long ago!