I opened the first entry in this exercise with a confession. Many years ago, a student who’d just discovered Edward R. Murrow’s 1950s radio show “This I Believe” asked me what bedrock belief I’d spend three minutes defending. I was stumped, but a day later it came to me: I’d go with push reel mowers.

The first three posts were my attempts to not sound crazy make a reasonable case, particularly for Galvestonians, for choosing a push reel over a conventional rotary. But like so many things I care about, the most important factors have nothing to do with reason. This – the last unprompted thing I’ll say about reels, promise – is about those other reasons.

From the beginning, now a half-century ago, I’ve been drawn to the sound of the spinning reel. It’s not just the quiet, though that’s a big part of it, and the value of less noise in my life has grown as I’ve gotten older.

Push reels – at least, heavy steel reels¹ – make a crisp, rhythmic whisking sound, a single note struck so rapidly that it almost sounds continuous. It’s a little like Edward Scissorhands clipping a topiary, except that Edward clipped frenetically. The reel whisks away at a regular tempo, like a dozen mechanically driven scissors snipping in unison.

I think I would have liked this sound even before steam- and gas-powered engines began to be grafted onto reels and drowned out the whisk. Today, the particular sound a mower makes is less important than its volume. Noise is one of the under-acknowledged costs of living in the developed world. Silence really is golden, and your neighbor could tell you that quiet is the next-best thing. Reels operate just above the volume of a whisper. Neighborly thoughtfulness is a good reason to prefer the quieter tool, but my enjoyment of the reel’s pre-industrial, agrarian sound is purely selfish.

Believe it or not, others have written about the sound of the push reel, but I’ve not encountered any testimonies to its intermingled olfactory, tactile, and visual pleasures. The smell of freshly cut grass isn’t limited to reels of course, but with gas engines, a mowed lawn’s green leaf volatiles are overwhelmed by fuel fumes. Battery-powered mowers don’t have that problem, but they can’t match the reel’s gift to the nose because they either shoot grass out to the side or into a bag. Apart from a mystifyingly popular Fiskars model,² which shoots grass forward, reel mowers send grass backward, in a gentle spray, wafting the smell toward you. Grass falls like rain around your ankles. With a rotary, you’re smart to protect your legs. With a push reel, you’re better off leaving them bare.

Maybe for good reason, none of these qualities gets mentioned by sales folk, who too often over-promise and misrepresent reels by talking about cut quality and ease of use. For most of us, rotaries require less time and effort and are more forgiving of regular-joe slovenliness, like letting grass grow tall between mowings.

I’m certainly no less lazy than the average bear. But when it comes to cutting grass – and especially for cutting the stamp-sized lawns in subtropical, salt-breezy Galveston – speed and ease are massively overrated.

We live in a place where island time – a leisurely approach to life that gives pleasure its due – is celebrated. It’s the city’s motto! We complain about it when we’re shopping for contractors, but most of the time, we like it.

Those who embrace the Galveston ethos should embrace the push reel mower. It’s the best tool devised to cut grass with human power. It requires more time than a rotary. You’ll have to go over some patches twice. You’ll sweat. But you’ll be doing a job deliberately, mindfully, and, if you’re like me, pleasurably, with a tool that doesn’t burden our over-burdened island or annoy your neighbors. It’s a small thing. To paraphrase John Lennon, give reels a chance.

[1] A few decades ago, manufacturers began making reels lighter by incorporating aluminum and making the reel’s blades of thinner steel, which changed the reel’s sound from a bright, crisp whisk to a duller, janky whunk. I was crestfallen the first time I heard a modern Scott’s. There are more important reasons to be leery of a light push reel – they struggle with southern grasses, for one – but the fact that they sound like shit rankles me.

[2] Don’t get me started.

How do you make the case for using a push reel mower instead of a rotary without sounding like a self-righteous prick?

I don’t know. But I’ve seen enough suppressed eyerolls to know I’ve failed that test many times. Instead, I’ll try to explain what made me fall in love with reels as a kid.

When I was a boy, I cut yards for money, and when our Briggs & Stratton died, my dad took me to Peer Hardware in Springfield, Missouri to buy a new mower. I can’t recall why we decided on a reel. I’m sure I liked the idea of not having to shell out for gas, but I can’t remember if that was the clincher.

It was a Scott’s Silent, maybe one of the first with a no-contact reel: The spinning blades didn’t make contact with the cutting bar; thus the “Silent.” The cooler innovation was a nifty knob that adjusted the cutting height.

Here’s what I quickly discovered. Reel mowers require more effort. (Duh.) They’re far worse than rotaries at cutting tall grass. Unless you mow twice a week during growing season, one pass is usually not enough for a decent cut. They require regular sharpening. Mowing with a reel takes more time because, in addition to usually needing two passes, you can only mow going forward. (Rotaries allow you to mow pulling as well as pushing.) Medium-sized sticks get stuck between the reel’s blades and the cutting bar, stopping you cold. Freeing them requires kicking the reel backwards with your heel.

And yet, I loved the thing. Despite having to work harder and longer, I was actually having fun mowing grass. Why?

I have reflected on this question longer than you might guess. This is what I’ve decided.

Reels turned a chore, something I was eager to be done with, into pleasurable labor. The pleasure came from the satisfaction of using my own power to operate a simple, elegant tool, and – I wish I could find a plainer phrase – the sensory gestalt of using a reel. Mowing grass became like whittling, or, to take a more purposive thing, gardening. It became my Zen.

When I was in my 20s, I owned a 1972 VW Beetle. Because the engine was so simple, I decided to learn how to do routine maintenance myself. I bought John Muir’s How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive and learned, among other things, how to gap my Bug’s spark plugs.

I will assume that this is beyond argument for adults of a certain age: There are any number of occasions when it makes sense to hire someone else to do work you could do. But unless you find the work unpleasant or dangerous or too time-consuming or impractical to master, doing the job yourself is inherently more fulfilling than having someone else do it. Similarly, since I and it were capable, using my body as the engine felt more rewarding than the labor- and time-saving gains of using a fuel-powered mower.

Today, the only things I remember from Muir’s manual are his advice to buy good tools and to take care of them. I’d read this advice before as a teenager in Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Zen is one of those rare books that I re-read decades later and, rarer still, one that seemed as important to a middle-aged man as it was to my adolescent self.

What is a good tool? What is this so-called sensory gestalt that appealed to the teenager then and the old man now? What does any of this have to do with Galveston? And, most of all, why would anyone make reel mowers the subject of their “This I Believe” essay? Tune in tomorrow.