Greetings from Spring Break. As we type this, we hope you’re having as great a time as this fellow off-roading in his John Deere “weekend freedom machine.” After all, who among us wouldn’t want to cut an extra-wide swath?
This ad, while eye-catching, leaves us craving more historically accurate lawn mower lore. Fortunately, it exists. Buckle in, we’re about to go on a little bit of a yard journey here: This John Deere ad ran in Life magazine in late April 1967, which makes it fair game for the Good Life. But it also provides an opportunity to reminisce about one of the more epic episodes in country music history.
The ad ran around the same time that country music icon George Jones was stuck at home. A legendary drinker, “Possum,” as he was affectionately known, was marooned in the midst of a bender. His wife Shirley needed to leave the house, but wanted to make sure he couldn’t go anywhere to buy more hooch. This is the guy who wrote whiskey-infused songs like “White Lightning,” after all. So like any good caretaker, Mrs. Jones hid the keys to his assortment of cars.
“Once, when I had been drunk for several days, Shirley decided she would make it physically impossible for me to buy liquor,” Jones wrote in his 1996 memoir “I Lived to Tell It All.” “I lived about eight miles from Beaumont and the nearest liquor store. She knew I wouldn’t walk that far to get booze, so she hid the keys to every car we owned and left.
“But she forgot about the lawn mower. I can vaguely remember my anger at not being able to find keys to anything that moved and looking longingly out a window at a light that shone over our property. There, gleaming in the glow, was that 10-horsepower rotary engine under a seat; a key glistening in the ignition.”
Reader, she forgot about the
lawn mower.
If John Deere ever needed a better tagline, there it is. Galloping with the power of 10 horses, this mower will not only crop your lawn high and tight, it will get you to Beaumont in just under two hours, hopefully before the liquor store closes. How’s that for a miracle of maneuverability?
“I imagine the top speed for that old mower was five miles per hour. It might have taken an hour and a half or more for me to get to the liquor store, but get there I did,” Jones wrote.
With a John Deere lawn mower, you too can “cut a wide swath to a free, swinging weekend,” as this ad promises. Just pray that Shirley forgets about it.
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