The lawn mower story! by Chris Keys

THE LAWN MOWER! By Chris Keys-a true story


It was June 13th, 1973 at approximately 1:35 in the afternoon, when I became intimate with an industrial lawn mower. My life crashed to halt and my dreams were left smoldering in a burnt ash heap.

At the time of the accident, I was working for a city run country club in southeast Michigan, called Camp Dearborn, run by the City of Dearborn. It was a summer job between high school and college, the money from which I was going to save for college in the fall. It would have worked too, except for one minor mishap.

I was, a would be, college football player, with a very good chance of receiving a full ride scholarship, starting with the second semester of school. That is, if I could raise my grades to all B’s and I continued to perform on the field, at the level I had performed in spring camp. After having been told I could get a full ride scholarship, I was convinced I’d get to play on Sunday afternoons, setting my whole heart and mind on doing just that.

On that June day, shortly after my mowing partner and I had finished lunch, we began mowing the formal camping section of the country club, where there was a row of large boulders. These boulders were placed between the road and ball fields. They were set just far enough a part, so you couldn’t drive your car between them, which I guess had become a problem, judging by the tire ruts in the baseball diamond, just beyond the boulders.

Anyway, my partner and I had the job of cutting the grass around these boulders, which was no big deal. We had already done the job twice, since being hired on for the summer, two weeks before. We started out just fine. We each picked a side to walk down, just as we did before. After each boulder, we’d crisscross between them, repeating the process all the way down the line of fifteen boulders. It was the most efficient way to cut around the large boulders and it should have been easy. But neither of us had factored in an unforeseen distraction that we encountered, just as we reached the end of the boulder row.

As we started to mow around the last two boulders, the distraction occurred. Two young women in bikinis stepped over the crest of the hill straight in front of us, just thirty yards away. The hill was a landscape design feature that separated the camping area from the general recreation area and the beaches. They were obviously returning from the beach and they looked great!

The girls were wearing bikinis in the barest sense of the word. They were small, very small. Now of course, here we are, my partner and I, too healthy eighteen year old, young men, watching this spectacle of womanly flesh saunter over the crest of the hill. We both looked up to watch, our eyes never leaving them, even when they split up to walk around us and our noisy mowers.

I watched the one who went to right of us and my partner watched the one that went to the left. As they walked by, we continued to mow and to watch. My partner and I managed to do the crisscross between the last two boulders, without any difficulty but when we met on the far side of the last boulder, disaster struck.

As we rounded the last boulder, I either quickened my pace or he slowed his. Because when we came around the far side to the center point of the boulder, the point where we had to make the turn into the straight away, he was a step behind.

The step took less than a second to make and if I had been watching him, I could have avoided the accident, but I wasn’t watching him and he wasn’t watching me. We were stupidly watching the girls. They were quite lovely but in hind site not nearly lovely enough to justify the loss of my biggest dreams.

The mower ran over my left foot and nearly cut off the end it. It required a hundred and ten stitches inside and a hundred and ten stitches outside, to reconnect all my toes back together with my foot again. Unknown to me at the time, because it was never mentioned in an oversight by the hospital personnel, I had also broken bones in my foot and my ankle. I had, the doctor’s theorized, yanked my foot away so fast and violently from the whirling blade, that it had made just one pass through my foot, the wounds edges were so smooth. But the speed at which I had moved and the snapping of the leg and foot at the end of the violent yank, had caused bones to snap. They figured it was a small price to pay, for saving the foot from further trauma. Oh, lucky me!

Two weeks later, I was told, I would never walk again the damage had been so great. They simply explained the nerves, well they were severed. Limiting my ability to feel the ground while walking with the foot and the blood vessels, they were heavily damaged and limited in their capacity to carry blood, causing swelling and discomfort should I put weight on it. The after care physician never spoke about the broken bones, because the hospital had failed to include that information when they sent the records on to him.

My life was profoundly changed at that time. My dream of playing football in the pros was gone right along with my dreams of college too. I had no plans beyond making a pro football team. I had no plan B.

Then while camping in Northern Michigan a short time later. After having been on a week long drinking binge, I made a decision. I wasn’t going to let the doctors win. I wasn’t going to be disabled. I was going to win. I convinced myself, I’d play football again.

It took almost a year, but I walked again. Of course, I had a major limp and no one could touch my leg, but I was walking. It was then I learned, from a new doctor, who ordered the hospital the records once again, that I had done more damage to my foot and leg by walking on it before the broken bones had completely healed! What? The lawsuit I experienced is a tale for another time so it will have to suffice to say, there was one. Despite, the not so good news, I still tried out for the football team again, a few months later but since I couldn’t run very well and anytime someone banged my leg, I either howled in pain or started a fight, I didn’t make the team. I was despondent for months and had strong thoughts of suicide, but I never found the courage to see it through.

Once I accepted, that the dream of football was gone, I settled down, married. We had a daughter and I found work driving a truck for a small company after having worked for a bank and discovered they didn’t pay anything.

For years after the accident, I struggled with finding myself and with discovering something, anything that inspired as much passion within me as football once had done. What college I had attended, was the longest two hours of my life, as I just didn’t have a desire to be there. The only class, in which I excelled, was the creative writing class I took. The professor convinced me though, that the only way I’d be able to be a writer, was if I managed to get a four year degree with very high grades.

So when the rejection letters piled up, I took to heart what he had said and I gave up. I then just lived life like the rest of the people, I knew. They got up, went to work, came home, went to bed and did it all over again, tomorrow. Along the way, they had children and bought houses with mortgages to pay, so I did the same. Though, I had little in the way of hopes and dreams.

The accident with the mower almost destroyed my life and yet, it taught me an invaluable lesson in life as well. Nothing is impossible! If you have a will, you will find a way. No matter how long it takes! It took me almost forty years and another one of life’s turning points, before I found the passion to write!


Chris Keys-Spread the Word! Write what you know, write it with passion-set the world on fire with your dreams!ChrisKeys2010@