Thinly Read: Hunting for a reasonably priced lawn mower

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There is no way I am paying $500 for a lawn mower.
As a new homeowner, I have quickly become aware of the many hidden costs that go into buying a home. Once the big purchase is made, there are dozens of smaller purchases that suddenly present themselves.
As an apartment dweller, one may not realize that a home needs a lawn mower. It may, in fact, take weeks of homeownership to realize this. Two weeks is about all it takes to get dirty looks from the neighbors and completely obscure your cat, save for his periscopelike tail.
Suddenly, the general need becomes an acute need. And suddenly, one finds oneself at the lawn-mower dealer, looking at very expensive lawn mowers.
My arrival at the dealer began with the apocryphal tale of the Everlasting Lawn Mower. My wife's parents purchased a lawn mower of a specific brand sometime in the mid-1980s for an exorbitant sum of money. This lawn mower, they were told, would be the last lawn mower they would ever buy.
Perceiving this as a promise rather than a threat, they took a second mortgage on their home and sold two cars to purchase this miracle mower. And a quarter-century later, though its salesman has likely passed into the great lawn in the sky, the mower itself mows on.
With this in mind, I tried to justify to myself the purchase of a $500 lawn mower. And as a new homeowner, responsible for a new mortgage, I could not. Never mind the return on investment, the quality reviews, or the Legend of the Everlasting Lawn Mower. Five hundred dollars is too many dollars for a mower that does not pour cold beer.
I left the lawn-mower dealer and headed for Craigslist. And surely enough, some hurried searching found a lawn mower of the same specific brand for a much more reasonable sum of $100.
The lawn mower was for sale 25 miles away, and having completely lost the cat earlier that afternoon, we could not wait another day. I made the drive, cash in hand, and returned with a gently used specimen ready for mowing.
Ready, I suppose, in that it ran. After a few dozen pulls and a great deal of coaxing. Its lack of a self-propel feature I took as a temporary inconvenience. Yet after submitting my patient wife to a hot, miserable slog of a mow, in which a minor grade in our lawn became an alpine ascent, I understood that a few repairs might be necessary in order to save my still-young marriage.
I returned to the lawn-mower dealer who watched, with a knowing look in his eye, as I dragged in my ailing mower of a certain brand. The repair would take three weeks and require a $200 part. In the interim, we would have to pay someone to mow our lawn.
In the end, between the gas to get there, the mower itself, the parts and labor for its repair, and the emergency mow purchased from a neighborhood child, I have paid more than $400 for my lawn mower.
But I have managed to save my reputation with my neighbors and my fledgling marriage, both of which are priceless.
And, of course, I've saved $100!

(Ben Grabow writes for the young, the urban and the easily amused. Contact him at thinlyread(at)gmail.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
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