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There aren’t beer cozies on push reels, but walk outside on a bright summer day, close your eyes and let the sounds of the season cleanse your winter haze: birdsong, buzzing bees, the smell of freshly cut grass and the roar of lawn-mower engines. It wasn’t always this way. Believe it or not, there was a time when cutting your grass didn’t involve gas-belching engines guzzling back and forth across over-fertilized sod.

The first mowers were manual reel mowers, also known as cylinder mowers. All one had to do was push, and the wheels would spin a cylinder of razor-sharp blades, making a sound similar to Edward Scissor Hands grooming your weird neighbor’s miniature poodle.

Of course, a new century brought about the invention of gas-powered reel mowers and gas-powered rotary mowers, but not everybody felt comfortable with this new technology. Many stuck with manual reel mowers, and many continue to use them today. Some switched to electric devices, long extension cords (mended with patches of duct tape) stretched from screened in back porch outlets to impossible lengths. Elderly women were partial to these electric devices, I realized. I was afraid for their safety, to be frank.

But while the basic technology hasn’t changed much in more than a century, manual reel mowers still boast a number of key advantages over their gassy rotary decedents. In addition to the environmental advantages of zero pollution, they cost less, require minimal maintenance, they’re less dangerous, and clean-up isn’t a chore. Push mowers are lighter, smaller, and easy to operate. Most push reels are quite inexpensive and many stores are rising to meet the increased demand.

There are other choices on the market than the typical electric, push and gas lawn mowers. Solar-powered mowers are available, too. According to a feature in Omni magazine, there’s a mower that basically operates on its own, traveling your entire yarn during the day and resting at night. Apparently, a special fence is used to keep it within the lawn boundary. Also, it is installed with a built in alarm to prevent possible theft, which, incidentally, keeps it from pestering the neighbor’s cat .