The Trimmer Which Showed Up Just in Time

A Summer Job

I love old stories (and this one is also a new story) but I’m curious if anyone else has had this kind of experience.

Ok, our evergreen bushes in the front of our house had gotten way too tall, and needed to be trimmed. On a recent Thursday, I was happy to finally dig into that project. Those bushes seem to love growing, and that’s fine, until it comes to trimming.

So, I got out my small trimming sheers that basically lets you snip snip snip one at a time, or maybe 4-6 small branches at a time. I was snipping away (while my husband was prepping wood stacking for the coming winter—don’t you love hot days for such projects?). Then I started remembering when I used to trim trees or bushes at a neighbor’s yard when we lived in north Florida, (between Marianna Florida and Mexico Beach Fl.) Fred was a divorced fellow at this time and also a very busy farmer, and my Dad also did farming adjacent to Fred’s acres. So we knew Fred pretty good, even though we’d only lived there one year at that point.

I was looking for a little summer work and before I got a summer job, our neighbor mentioned that he was looking for someone to trim his bushes in his front yard. Dad suggested me (I had just graduated from high school there) and so for a week or so I trimmed a bunch of bushes for Fred. He paid me well by local standards and I was happy to earn a little cash of course. I’m pretty sure I used an electric trimmer, hooked up to some electricity. Made the job easier. Less time consuming.

Fast forward about 55 years…. And all of a sudden I thought, hey, I think we still have an electric Sears trimmer in our basement. I was not at all sure that it would actually work, but I thought it was worth testing. I think my memory was frowning because I was pretty sure it had not worked the last time I tried to use it. And I had to snip snip snip one at a time. Not fun.

So I plugged it into one of our basement plug-ins. It did not turn on, not even try. I tried the other slot. Nope, nothing. But I thought it was worth at least checking with my husband to see if he thought he could find a plug to turn on the trimmer.

Eureka, he did, out on the porch and while there is one plug that does not work, most of the others on the porch do. So I put that old trimmer to work and halved my project time almost in half. On a hot day. Yay!

It doesn’t look too bad if I do say so myself. I finished in probably an hour. Yay.

You never know what will happen!

And my middle daughter reminded me that the old Sears trimmer was one we used at least 20-25 years ago at the house they grew up in, when we trimmed the bushes in front of that house. A pretty good machine, eh?

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What is your most hated summer chore?

Your favorite one?

Who does the trimming at your house?

Kudos if you can name this type of bush…