Chicago – Powerful, loud mowers have been showing lawns who’s boss for decades. But now contraptions that couldn’t cut butter without a good shove are quietly – really quietly – making a comeback.
Manual lawn mowers, long the 98-pound weaklings of the tool shed, are pushing their way, or, more accurately, being pushed around more yards all over the country.
“It’s phenomenal,” said Teri McClain, inside sales coordinator at the 112-year-old American Lawn Mower Co. in Shelbyville, Ind., which she said is the only manufacturer of reel mowers in the United States. “Sales continue to rise every year.”
“Phenomenal” might be a little strong. Exact statistics aren’t available, but McClain estimates 350,000 manual mowers are sold in the United States each year – most made by her company. That is just a fraction of the 6 million gas-powered walk-behind mowers that hit the market last year.
Still, that number is about 100,000 more than what was sold just five years ago, McClain said.
According to buyers and sellers, the resurgence of these quaint reminders of yesteryear is due most notably to growing environmental concerns and an increasing number of women who do the mowing.
Headlines about global warming, pollution and vanishing natural resources have people – and not just those wearing Birkenstocks – making changes.
“I’m not a tree hugger, but I think we all think about being more environmentally friendly and leave less of a footprint on the world,” said Ben Kogan, a Chicago architect who started using his new mower this spring.
“It’s an introduction into green gardening and a more green lifestyle,” said Jim Grisius, 45, of Homewood, Ill.
And the mowers provide one way to respond to pollution from gas-powered mowers, not to mention the warnings from at least one former vice president.
“I definitely see a bigger selection of people all the time, especially since the Al Gore movie (“An Inconvenient Truth’),” said Lars Hundley, the owner of Clean Air Gardening, a Dallas- based gardening equipment retailer.
The mower also is appealing because it is inexpensive – about $200 – and so simple.
It looks different from the one invented in England in the 1830s, but it works pretty much the same way it always did: Just push it and it cuts.
“I don’t have to worry about gas, repairs and getting it (the mower) started,” said Eric Skalinder, a 35-year-old Chicago teacher.
Kogan and Skalinder said that, considering their yards are the size of apartment bedrooms, power mowers didn’t seem necessary.
“I felt a gas-powered (mower) was a little over the top for my needs,” said Skalinder, adding that he didn’t want to use the kind of screaming power mower that keeps him awake when he’s trying to nap.
