When my kids were little, back in the late 1980s, we bought our new house and took on a bigger mortgage. I was a stay-at-home mom. After moving in, my husband John got permanently laid off from his job at the defense plant. He was devastated. After recovering from the shock, he came to me, wondering if I would embrace the idea of him starting his own welding business. He was fed up with the big corporations. He had been a shipyard welder for a decade, enduring multiple layoffs, then five years at the aerospace plant. The plant gave John a severance package, and then he would be on unemployment for a while. So I said sure, why not? Money isn't everything. We would make it work.

     He found a portable welder for sale; the seller had taken it apart and couldn't figure out how to get it back together, a real steal of a deal. There were other bargains John found on tools at yard sales, and his welding buddies pitched in with stuff. So he started his welding business on a shoestring out of our garage, fabricating and repairing anything metal. Putting the welder on a homemade trailer, he did welding repairs on location, too. He worked wherever and whatever jobs came his way. No job was too small. I was answering phone calls for welding jobs, taking care of the house, running the kids around, even picking up welding supplies.

     Half a year later, jobs had slowed to a trickle, the next month of bills were due, and we were discovering that welding was not a particularly lucrative business. I told John, if he had a job today, don't worry about tomorrow. But then that day came when he had no work. Trying not to panic, he started working on one of our lawnmowers. It was early spring, and he wanted to get it ready for the coming season, plus he needed to take his mind off our money troubles. I walked down to the garage and watched as he worked on this big, old mower we had brought from the other house. As he started it up, I said, "Wow, you really know what you're doing!" He sighed and said, "Yeah, these old engines are a piece of cake. I could fix them blindfolded."

     A light bulb went on in my head. "You know, you could fix mowers waiting for welding jobs to come in." He laughed, grunted uh-huh, and kept turning the wrench. "So how long does it take to fix a lawnmower?" He said usually about an hour. "What do you suppose people might pay to get their lawnmower fixed?" "Oh heck, I don't know, no more than thirty bucks." With my mind calculating, I told him lunch would be ready soon. I walked up to the house leisurely, but as soon as I was out of his sight, I was shot from a cannon. I rummaged around down in the basement and found an old square of plywood and a spray can of bright yellow paint. In my art junk box, I had some craft paint brushes and a baby food jar of dark green enamel paint. 

     When John came up, not only did I have the kids all cleaned up and lunch on the table, but I had a sign, drying, that read, "LAWNMOWERS REPAIRED $35." He wasn't impressed. "And what's that supposed to do? Save us?" I didn't debate it with him. After lunch, I took a big nail and hammered that sign onto the maple tree out by the curb, facing traffic. Our house sits on a single lane, one-way street, so every car would see it. He came out to go back down to the garage, saw me out there at the tree, standing back, admiring my handy work. He came over and stood beside me, smiled and shook his head. I said to him amusedly, "Oh ye, of little faith." Well, that was late Friday afternoon.

     Saturday morning, a guy came knocking on the door with his mower. He said he didn't know what was wrong with it, but it had crapped out in the middle of mowing his lawn and he had company coming. I followed him down to the garage because, well, it felt a little like a victory lap, and I wanted to see John's face. John checked out the mower, said yeah, he could probably fix it. And he lent the guy our little spare mower. It was lightweight and reliable. When the guy returned with our little mower, his lawn was mowed, his mower was fixed, and that $35 flew out of his pocket. He was so happy, he gave John an extra five for the loaner. So our little mower earned some cash, too.

      It was with a false, modest innocence that I looked at my husband, cocked my head and smiled. He begrudgingly laughed admitting, "Ok, that was a fast forty." Darn tootin' it was! And later that afternoon, another man walked up, rolling his mower. It was new and wouldn't start. When the guy came back, he brought his old mower and told John he could have that stupid mower, he was sick of it anyway. His new mower was ready to go, so another ka-ching, plus now we had a spare mower for what would become the lawnmower parts graveyard.  It was a happy little Saturday night. We took the kids to the video store and treated ourselves to a movie. I made a big bowl of popcorn and even though our money troubles were far from over, for the moment we enjoyed a small success. 

     On Sunday, when we got back from church, a guy was sitting on our front steps with his lawnmower. John didn't usually work on Sundays, but we were in such dire straits, he had to go get changed. And while he was changing, another guy rolled up with his mower. So they all went down to the garage. Within a week of nailing up that little sign, John realized he needed to keep track of all these mowers. He dug up a pocket sized notebook and he carefully wrote the dates, the customer's names and phone numbers, the types of engines, and, of course, the amount of payment.

     My husband was shy, but actually, the most gregarious man you'd ever want to meet, once he felt comfortable with you. He had a way of making people open up to him. Total strangers would just look for reasons to come back to the garage. If he went out for lawnmower parts, he'd make friends with the guys at the counter and get repair tips. If he went to the welding supply house, he'd be on a first name basis with the sales people, who'd give him deals. I learned all about how lawnmowers worked. But make no mistake; I had no desire to turn wrenches.

     By mid-summer, we were paying for some ads for his welding business, and it was doing a little better. But word of mouth was his best advertisement. Now, he was welding Monday through Friday. Lawnmowers were weekend work. We didn't have air conditioning; we had our windows open. And all that summer, on Saturday mornings, we'd be hurkle-durkling, but we'd hear the sound of mower wheels on the street, being pushed from every direction, all coming to our house; time to get up and make hay while the sun shined. 

     When the mowing season came to a close, he did a final count of lawnmowers, and that summer, John had repaired 116 lawnmowers, about $4,000. I took the sign down for winter, added our phone number at the bottom, and nailed it back up in spring. The final count of mowers the following year was 256 mowers, close to $9,000. When John's welding business took off, he landed some fairly large contracts, we were finally getting caught up on our bills, and he didn't have time to fix lawnmowers any more. 

     A maple disease took the tree, so the infamous sign was retired to the basement. But he would still fix a mower if someone came to him. When John died, the world lost one of the great repairmen of all time. Years after his passing, men pushing a mower would come to my door and ask, "The man who fixes lawnmowers, is he still doing that?"