[RKDinOKC]

Thought TWA sounded more like TNA.

Glen, at least that Boss isn't making you sleep in a shed out back.

I don't have a shed out back, but did at our old house. There were evenings that Dad spent a LOT of time "working" on stuff in that shed, and don't bother him. Our house intercom had a intercom out there. He did sewing machine repair as a side line among other things.

If something went wack with one of our lawn/garden gas engines or devises, he made me fix it. We had a lawn/garden tractor, push mower, edger, chain saw, weed whacker, chipper/shredder, RotoTiller, and Sprayer. Once had to completely disassemble the riding mower weld the broken frame back and put it all back together by myself. But hey, I was the one that broke it popping wheelies with the tractor. It was fun right up until it broke in half.

I used the tractor to mow a field at the company where my Dad worked. After I got it back together and was mowing, several of Dad's co-workers came out and checked it out. So am sure he told them all about how his 11 year old boy busted it popping wheelies and then fixed it. Told them I wanted to put some light weight spoked baby buggy wheels on the front and chrome the rear rims. Dad told me I was NOT doing that.

Years later when I could drive I had a couple of lawns that were big enough I used the tractor. Once while I was mowing Dad came by. He didn't like where I had parked the car and lawn trailer. When he moved it he ran over my push mower destroying the frame. I found another frame and went nuts building the mower up on the new frame. Didn't put anything back on that didn't explicitly have something to do with making it operate. Ground a bunch of metal off the frame and even the motor. Replaced the front wheels with plastic rims and drilled holes in the to save weight. Replaced the rear wheels with metal rims and drill holes in them to lighten them too. Put metal bearings in so the rear wheels could pivot without wearing out the bearings or breaking the rims. Raised the governor so it would spin the blade faster. When I was done it looked funky but I had a super light weight push mower i could jog with that did a great job cutting.

It was my hot rod mower. The only problem was because I raised the governor and worked it so hard over a season it would oval the cylinder, start losing a little power and burnt oil. So every season I just replaced the engine with a short block. It was $40 and some work, but worth it for spending less time cutting grass.