Truth and Tall Grass

Truth matters.
When I was fourteen my family lived in a small house in an unassuming neighborhood. A quiet and friendly neighborhood where I had a number of friends and two best ones. We rode bikes, played football and baseball, explored the woods, shot our twenty-twos, set pennies on the train tracks, and were generally encumbered only by a curfew. For money I collected bottles from the roadside, worked on an occasional home improvement project for my father, and mowed a few lawns. It was a good time in my young life and I was innocent.

The neighbors to the left were pleasant enough people. Clean-cut thirty-ish couple with two young kids. They moved out a couple of months after we moved in. During the brief time we were neighbors I never visited but we did say hi once in a while. One day the man – Tim - approached me as I arrived home from school. He told me they were moving to Texas tomorrow and asked me if I would be interested in earning a few dollars. Tim led me to his back yard which was enclosed by a chain link fence. Though his front yard had been maintained, the back yard was completely out of control. The grass and weeds were probably three feet high covering the whole yard. No exaggeration, three feet. Tim told me he was unable to mow it before he left town and asked me how much I would charge to cut it down. No bagging, just a cut. I told him I was interested in the job but wasn’t sure at the moment what to charge. Tim suggested twenty dollars and offered to pay up front. I wasn’t sure if the job was worth twenty dollars, since it wasn’t a huge yard and – with a little effort - my mower should handle it OK. I told Tim how about if I contact him after the job is done and advise him the price. He agreed that would be great.

The weekend came and Tim and his family were gone. I dragged my mower next door and realized the grass was way too much. For some reason we owned a sling sickle which hung in the shed. I took that sling sickle to that grass, and after a couple of hours and a couple of trips to the garden hose, I had knocked down the top of the grass to a height of less than a foot. I followed up with the push mower which stalled in the thick grass a dozen times before finishing the job. So about three hours in the sun on a job unexpectedly challenging.

Still, twenty dollars seemed a bit steep. I decided ten dollars was fair. I went home, put the equipment away, cleaned up a bit and wrote Tim a bill in the form of a note. I wrote that the job was pretty tough but not really worth twenty dollars, and I was asking for ten. I placed the note in an envelope, sealed it, addressed it to Tim’s new address in Texas, rode my bike to the corner store, bought a Mr. Pibb, and dropped the letter in the mailbox.

A month or so went by and nothing. I sent another bill. Nothing. I never got that ten dollars and never heard from Tim again.

I have childhood memories but I’m sure I’ve deleted many more than I recall. This one somehow remains burned onto the permanent section of my brain’s hard drive. I think I learned the value of one’s word, and the displeasure caused by breaking it.