I wish I was up there :)

You will have a lot larger body of water to play with before you know it.

True, but there's something about the upper Great Lakes...

We have been hitting one each year. Last year was Ontario and Erie, but we were really only in Erie.

Neighbor lady asked me to cut her lawn as her knee is messed up again. She normally pays the kid across from her to do it. I like cash so I agreed to do that and detail her van for a tidy sum.

My son was home so I suggested he come with me and earn some money. I let him mow whilst I did the trimming. I was proud to see him working hard and tried not to micro-manage too bad. I gotta work on that...

He has never shown any interest in helping with yard work. I think I saw a light bulb over his head when I told him I would split the cash with him. :D Now he is all interested in helping with the van job. I didn't tell him about the "Dad" tax yet.

When I was 11/12 I was cutting grass for quite a few of our neighbors. I only quit when I got my first real job.

Rick,
You could always go play games with the Kurds for a few months. The pay is non-existant, there than the satisfaction of opening the hearts and minds of ISIS.... 7.62mm at a time.

I think Rick has a preference for .62mm less.

I started mowing grass for a cash back when I was 12. When we moved to Hawaii my brother and I had fights over whose turn it was to use the mower all year long. No off season ever. I saved enough money to make a decent down payment to my dad for my first car. Then I get a job in photography and stopped mowing, except for my own yards.

I just got an email from a client looking for historical imagery of an area in the middle of nowhere in 100 miles from here. They wanted imagery from 1960 to 1970. It looks like we flew that site for the oil company that drilled there back then. We flew it every year from before drilling to finished project. It blew them away that we had it.

Now bill them big bucks for it.

It is funny how some companies think we should just let them have it for cheap and others understand we are only here to make a profit, just like them. The worst are lawyers. They will charge the the client $$$$ per hour and then get all upset when we want a few bucks for something no one else on the planet car provide at any cost.

Years ago one lawyer threatened to sue us if we did not let him look at our image. We told him flat out, we are not a library, we sell photos for a living. We will sell you the print (at a slight markup over normal for the a-hole fee) to look at it all you want. We reserve 100% of the rights to the image. You are not allowed to reproduce it in any way. It is copyrighted property of our company.

I started mowing yards when I was 8 years old. I could only mow the front yards because the back yards were too thick for me to push the mower thru. Dad would mow the parts I couldn't push the mower thru for me mowing as much of his yard as I could for free. By the end of the summer I was able to mow everything myself.

Opened a passbook savings account at 8. When I went to deposit my first check for mowing I got teased by the tellers and even had to go see the bank president because I couldn't sign my name in cursive.

Quit mowing two years into college.

Great, now he's negotiating how we will split the van detail cash. :rolleyes:

I tried explaining that I pay for the water, soap, cleaning products, etc. but he wasn't understanding.

The boy has some learnin' coming his way.

He also needs a stronger deodorant peeee ewwww.


Seriously, I am happy that he is wanting to work to get things he wants but we are going to make him save a percentage of it. Both kids have a savings account with a few dollars in them.

I think they are doing it wrong.

http://www.alloutdoor.com/wp-content...ield-XD-05.jpg

When I waxed cars, my Dad would show me the customer invoice were he itemized materials and labor and split the labor with me.

I was able to use Dad's lawn equipment because I took care of his Acre with fruit trees and a large garden. And if anything broke I got to fix it.

When I started mowing the yard at the company I work for now I was 12. It was a big yard and killed our craftsman 20 inch lawn mower. But, buy the time it died I had earned enough money to buy my own Toro commercial lawn mower. I had to replace the motor on that mower every two years. I tried a Snapper, then a Honda. Neither lasted more than a week mowing 5 hrs a day.

When we got into mowing we used Dad's Toro. His only cut was he did not want to hear a peep about his yard being mowed. Just get it done, he did not want to negotiate which son's turn it was.

That poor mower ran all year long from the moment school was out until sundown and a lot more in the summer. My brother still has that mower. It has been rebuilt several times and the crank is flat worn out, but it will still fire up and mows.

I bet a modern one would not be as good or last as long.

Well, they did buy an XD.....

For what the kids are charging to mow yards today if I mowed yards today like I did back then I would be making $42K and only work 6 months a year. And I was only mowing 4 hours a day at most.

My toro had a tecumseh high torque engine and would oval the cylinder and start burning oil after 2 years. So put a new motor on it for $50. When I just used it on my yard it lasted another 25 years. Sold it for $20 and got a new one. Don't use it enough to keep the carb from gunking up even with stabil in it.

I liked the tecumseh engine because it had a sealed carb with no adjustment. It just ran.

I have an old troybuilt rotor tiller with a tecumseh engine on it. The carb leaks all the gas out over night when it's not running. After almost never finding a carb kit for it discovered the float has a hole in it. Instead of trying to find a new float I just put a fuel shut off on it. Guess I should try to find a new carb for it.