Kurt Lundgren- again

I have tried to translate one of his essays earlier. The man has such a dry humor that the tears of my laugh emideitly dries off into stalactites on my cheeks.

I will now give my translating skills another chanse of another of his blogposts. Here is the original. (SWE).

LIFE IS SHORT-THE GRASS IS LONG

The lawn mower starts- big attention, the whole family gathers to see the commotion.

I have now reached the mature age in my life where I can look back and summarise it. Therefore I can constate that the hardest and most bitter fights allways have been with lawn mowers of different fabricates and models. A latin proverb- Ars long, vita brevis- means that "Art is long, life is short".
I would like to travestite it and say:
The grass is long
Life is short

***

My first battle with a lawn mower was held when I was a boy.
- I'll go out and play with Lars-Gunnar, I told my father.
- Mowe the lawn first, boy, said my gentle father and pointed at our lawn mower which had iron wheels and wooden handles. It was so heavy to move that you cut about a meter of grass and then had to back down two meters, take aim and run for another meter.
- If you cut four runs a day, you might be done in a week, said my father.
I did that, and I have to admit that when I saw what I had accomplished, a short cut and nice, all smooth and dark green lawn, I felt a sensation of joy. And I had done it all by my self.
Then we got a new lawn mower. It had rubber wheels, it was about the same time as we got a TV, and life was like a playground on the lawn, you could just dance away cutting the grass.

***

My next contact with a lawn mower was when we bought a cottage in Tävelsrum, with the buy there came a motorised lawnmover that had the brand name- Klippo [Cutto]. It was a fantastic mower, strong as a bear, it could mowe down not only grass but also Juniper bushes and Hawthorn. It had only one fault, but it was on the other side and imperial one: If the engine had been running, but for some reason had stopped, you had to wait for 28 hours before it could be restarted when the engine was guaranteed to be cold.
No matter how much you pulled at the starting string it would start.
No craftsman on the whole island of Öland could explain what was wrong or could do something about it.

The Klippo- klipparen [Cutto-cutter] was hangin along to Lenstad when we bought a house there with a hang-on lawn, but when the mower finally had to cool off for 48 hours before it could be restarted, I bought second hand mowers in Påryd, one for every summer, everyone with their knicks and knacks; after a while the whole storage was filled with lawn mower junk and I had to move. I can't feel anything but symphaty for the poor American who after a futile hour of trying to start his mower, went in to the house for his shotgun and in anger shot the thing to pieces. It could have been me!

***

By inheritance we accuired some real property with an enourmous lawn, 10000 square meters of lawn with a house in the middle. With the inheritance followed a Husqvarna ride-on mower, Easy Rider or Lonesome Rider was it's model name. One of it's pecurialnesses was that it collected the cut grass in it's cutting machinery and every other 100 meters it dropped a ball of grass out on the lawn, so when the lawn was freshly mowed there were 100:s of grass balls laying all over the lawn, it really did not look freshly mowed, just scrappy.
You had to walk around with a rake and collect all the grass balls so it would look remotely good. This mower died a natural death, something like a human- sort of, it got all weaker and weaker and finally it took it's last breath with a sigh and a puff, it just could not go on anymore, it was just seriously tired of all the grass, as in my case should be granted for EU- hand outs regarding the principle that if you don't culture your property, you should be handsomely rewarded.

***

For a few years now I'm owning a Jonsered ride-on mower, it drinks about 10 liters of gasoline every hour and it sounds like a Jumbo jet; it cuts crookedly in some way so that half the strip that is cut consists of upturned dirt and the other one of 5 mm long grass; it looks a bit strange when it is freshly mowed, but it grows on so after 14 days or so it looks allright again, but then of course it is time to mowe the lawn.
This Jonsered as all lawn mowes has it's pecurialities, to start it up I have to bang on the starter motor with a hammer, and then jiggle around with the starting key a while, but then, then it fires up with a roar.

The "Jonsie" have the tailpipe... In the front. Not in the rear end were it should be as it is most commonly found in motorised vehicles, which means that you are constantly breathing in the engines exhaust fumes- after an hour or so you have breathed in so much CO2 that you are almost uncontious when you step off it.
But I soothe myselfe with the fact my body then has worked as a CO2 trap, thus I have physically, with my own body, hindered the global warming and therefore saved the lifes of atleast 13 polar bears and an uncounted numbers of lemmings.

This translation have been done by pela. Everything wrong is my fault. I have not spell checked- and I will not do it either. Some of the nuances have ceartainly got lost in the translation. I have also edited some passages that just could not be translated otherwise. I hope you enjoyed it.