The first mow

The first mow Rust Cohle infuriates Marty Hart at regular intervals in True Detective. Despite the obvious ones, a smaller moment stuck out to me.

At one point, Hart returns home to find Rust mowing his lawn. It seems as if Rust is attempting to goad the philandering Marty into being a better family man. Look at the anger Marty flashes – Rust has crossed a boundary. You don’t mow someone else’s lawn, not without permission.

I can sympathize. When an engine dormant for the winter putters then roars, the time has come. Everyone has their sacred acts of spring. My favorite comes by wiping away their first growth of the season with the lawnmower. I went many years without mowing.

When Nancy and I moved into our new house in the Donelson neighborhood of Nashville, our landlords included a gas-powered lawnmower. There’s nothing self-propelled about it and I couldn’t care less. I feel every bump of the yard, the roots of the vanished, aging trees and ever vein of earth rumpled by moles. I had only mowed sporadically since my four years on Lunar Drive in Columbus. That was usually due to more senior tenants taking up the duties.

Then I became the senior tenant again in 2011. On my first attempt, I twisted the blade irreparably on a chunk of fallen tree. One new blade later, I spent the summer churning through the well-tree land on Greenland Avenue. A shortage of time forced me to give up mowing several years later.

With the move to Donelson, the duty bounced back to me. Now I can’t trust my lawn to anyone else. In the duplex and other rentals where I lived, I could. But not here. Aside from a few weeks when the mower was in mothballs, it’s been my gig.

I have always enjoyed the action. This lawn takes about 40 minutes. A self-propelled or riding mower would shave that time, but I see no point in switching. Pushing the mower around gives me some needed exercise. Now that I’m staring down 40, I find solace in the ache that comes with pushing the mower over bumpy ground. It runs deep in the muscle, and it’s strangely satisfying.

In fact, if I had to pick a way to die, I would be sorely tempted to go with keeling over after finishing one last mow so that any part of me not stuck in this body could disperse with the graceful odors of fresh-cut grass.