When I was sixteen, I cut the grass in the town park.
It was the very first of April. Only the redbuds and lilacs had begun to bloom. The fields would’ve been faintly purple and frosted. It was “tractor day.”
You see, tractor day has been an annual event here at Bloomfield High School for as long as I can remember. It’s an opportunity for members of the school’s Future Farmers of America club to show off their families’ prized work horses prior to their necessity back on the farm. Anyone with a tractor capable of making the round trip to school and back was encouraged and celebrated for making such a journey. Many of my friends participated, but I was a “town kid.” I may as well have been from Baltimore.
But I was insistent, because back then, the only real difference between a townie and a tractor driver was the type of shoes you wore to school…and an available tractor, of course. And while I may have chosen a sneaker over a boot, I wasn’t without my family’s own four-wheeled implement. So, on the morning of tractor day I conceived a brilliant idea that would surely garner the appreciation of my FFA friends and admiration of all townies who hadn’t dared to be so bold. It was, I believed, the ultimate display of clever and comedy come together. So, instead of heading for the Locust Drive bus stop that day, I trudged through the back yard, sogging up a pair of clean white Converse on my way to the shed behind our house. Through the crack in the door I could see my good idea in waiting, begging for realization. I flung myself inside, mounted our family’s Craftsman, and choked the motor while turning the key. Next thing you know, I’m making a beeline through the back lot in a bouncing roar of morning dew and teenage swagger.
“It says ‘lawn tractor’ right here on the side,” I chuckled to myself as I rolled down Cleveland Street. I had to convince myself this was a good idea every time a passing vehicle approached. “Wyatt, what are you doing?” yelled a neighborhood mom from two cars behind me. “I’m fine,” I yelled back. It was true, I was fine and dandy in that moment. I may as well have been David Wooderson. I was young and cool and fun. But just a few blocks from my big moment, as traffic began backing up near the school, I became the center of a yellow bus sandwich. And all of a sudden, I got nervous. I could feel the roar of a diesel engine behind me as I endured an onslaught of confused stares and laughter in front of me…those cool kids in the back of bus #2 made me feel more insecure at every stop. “Have they never seen someone having fun?” I wondered. Now I felt silly, like the butt of my own joke. Maybe I should turn back? I could return the mower and walk to school, show up late to biology…no big deal…this was a dumb idea. And then, just as I was about to let go of my last thread of confidence, I saw a friend of mine one street over, chugging along on his dad’s 4450. I was recharged.
Throwing my limited knowledge of traffic law to the wind, I crept past the back half of the school bus in front me, made an abrupt turn through the corner of a front yard, and blasted past a stop sign. I cut through a few more lawns, dodging plastic chairs, shrubs, and dogs on chains, until I popped out on Harrison street, right beside my buddy and his John Deere. Between his belly laughs, I could see him miming words I’d heard before that morning…” What’re you doing?” From where we now sat, side by side on that little side street, like David and Goliath at the Indy 500, we could see the school’s parking lot…only Highway 54 and the town park separated us from the finish line. His enthusiasm for my antics gave me all the confidence I’d previously lost and then some. The sounds emanating from our machines were deafening, like a locust humming on an earthquake. I looked him in the eye, pointed vaguely in the direction of our destination, and slowly lipped with raised brow, “Wanna race?”
Before he had a chance to respond I was turning onto the highway. His big machine was quickly in tow…a cat and mouse sort of chase now entering the view of every high school student waiting for the morning bell. I was getting everything I had wanted. Atop the small hill between the school and I was surely a captive audience of teenagers who’d find my antics amusing. We sped towards the northwest corner of the park, overtook the turning lane, and then waited for opposing cars to pass. I could hear cheers from the parking lot now, or at least I thought I heard them, and my newly discovered testosterone began to bubble over. When traffic cleared, my Craftsman mower jumped to life and to the left. I leaned into the turn and hit max speed. I was flying. But I couldn’t escape the 4450…its shadow loomed over me as we moved southward and up the hill, its shape silhouetted between the rising sun and me. I did the math in a moment of panic…there’s no way I could win…he was just too quick. I was just too slow. With eyes upon us and the checkered flag waiving, I felt prematurely defeated. I was embarrassed. But all of a sudden, in a dark cloud of exhaust smoke, I found my road to victory. It wasn’t the paved path curving up and over the hill, but instead, a straight line pulled tight between my fans and me. So I turned left again, veered off the asphalt, and tightened my grip on the steering wheel.
I was on wet grass again, using trees and a fiberglass hippopotamus to zero in on the parking lot ahead of me. I could hear the opponent’s tractor whining the long way up. My impromptu racing career was little more than a math problem at this point. So long as I drove straight through the town park, instead of around it, I’d reach my victory lane to fanfare and fun. The Craftsman was proving its worth, closing in on the finish line like a magnet near metal. I could make out the expressions on faces now. Some of my classmates were frozen with mouths agape. Many were smiling, I think, pumping fists in the air and presumably cheering my name. A few may have rolled their eyes, likely jeering instead. No matter, as it was just the attention I needed. And I was sucking it down like my mower was sucking gasoline. This was a prank of legend, I thought. This is what fun should feel like. And as I saw my rival crest the hill I could see I had won the day regardless, as all eyes were on me. And then…empty.
My locust’s hum had halted. My tank had run dry. The Craftsman didn’t creep to a stop, but instead, snapped to a standstill with such violence I thought I’d gone backwards. The little motor gasped and fumed and sizzled. I was between a gazebo and the parking lot entrance now, a stone’s throw from a vacant spot at the end of a row of real tractors. I turned the key a time or two, jostled back and forth a bit, and then whacked the engine cover with both hands. No dice. The slight incline of the south end of the park, paired with an embarrassing fuel gauge oversight, had left me stranded. My racing buddy crept past at a snail’s pace, had another visible belly laugh, and slowly backed in at the end of a line of respectable future farmers. He was a reluctant winner, I think, as he skirted by a group of our classmates focused more on the ridiculous runner-up…a sneaker-wearer. I dismounted as gracefully as a loser could and strut towards the crowd that had gathered. “What’re you doing?” I heard another time or two more. “It’s tractor day,” I’d reply with a dismissive smirk. I felt like I’d accomplished something. I felt happy. I was victorious in my defeat…a showman specializing in self-destruction, a loner who finally found the attention he sought, an idiot. “Idiot!”…that’s what the principal exclaimed as we locked eyes. The boss man was in the back row of my audience with arms crossed…another fuming and sizzling machine.
He was right. I was an idiot…might still be. And the principal was a good man, too. In fact, after publicly stripping me of my new celebrity status with a wave of earned insults and threats of punishment, he helped me push my good idea out of the park and into the school’s front lawn. My little lawnmower was now a monument to my own moronic behavior, parked far enough away from my farmer friends to prohibit any confusion between us. They wore boots, after all, and I was wearing wet and grass-stained Converse. The Craftsman looked rough…still huffing from its exhausting sprint. The principal told me the “little toy tractor” would wait for me right where we were leaving it, “to finish the job I had started.” I didn’t understand this turn of phrase until he pointed to the place where we’d started pushing. Now, with my tail between my legs and adrenaline faded, I could see the damage I’d done like bloody tracks in the snow. It may as well have been US-40 through Baltimore.
From the gazebo to my feet were a couple of dewy tire tracks. And from the gazebo for as far as I could see, presumably all the way back to my little shed, was a path of clumped-up grass clippings and destruction. Like the boss man said…idiot. You see, I had managed to take that mornings half-mile joyride with mower deck down and blades a whirlin’. In all of the excitement I had been trying to create for myself, I guess I’d forgotten how to pilot a lawn mower without simultaneously chopping everything in front of me down to a uniform three inches. Front yards, back yards, shrubs I didn’t quite miss, garden hoses, a yard sign…everything…three inches.
So, at 3pm, after spending a week’s worth of lunch money on gasoline, I spent two hours mowing the rest of the grass in the park as punishment. Even back then, I thought it was a fair price to pay. “To the victor belong the spoils,” we say. And it seemed my morning crowd of fans was more than equally entertained that afternoon. I don’t remember as many fist pumps, but they sure did laugh as they pointed. We were all happy and the park had never looked better, if I don’t say so myself. The trusty Craftsman finished strong after all. And that evening, after my second performance, I mowed my way back home and tried my best to remedy all I’d run over earlier. I ended up replacing a rose bush and a Bush/Cheney sign.
Many tractor days have come and gone since my big adventure. Now, I’m the art teacher…and more of a Birkenstocks type of guy, go figure. And I gave up lawnmower racing years ago, even though I get the itch every April. So, I guess things have changed and I suppose they’ll keep on changing, thank God. But I’m certainly glad I can talk about tractor days in good company. Because everyone here still knows the gazebo and the hippo and what it was like to be young. Here’s to history…so long as we have Bloomfield in common, we all have a story to tell.
9/29/2025
Wyatt LeGrand
