Fire the Mutha Up! Bad inventions Part II

But I met Ray today and asked him about his invention.  He told me that he is an old man an he needs to keep his hedges trimmed, but the old way was destined to kill him.  He lives next to a busy highway in Yankton and he thinks it’s important to have a buffer between the street and his house.  But because his hedges are so big, he was forced to stand on a trailer and have his daughter drive it ahead while he ran the hedge trimmers.  As he got older, he would lose his balance when his daughter accelerated.  He told me he almost broke his neck once and had to come up with a better solution.

He said he hasn’t really thought about how much time he’s put into the contraption.  He feels it’s very safe.  In the original pictures I shared ( http://hanten.posterous.com/a-sign-you-have-a-crazy-neighbor ) you probably noticed there is a little mesh grate at the bottom of the trailer.  I learned today that this actually attaches to the back of the riding lawn mower to protect his head from any branches.

I asked him about the sides of his hedges.  He said he’s been searching for an Old Lawn Boy mower that doesn’t have a separate fuel and oil tanks.  Then, he believes, it could be rotated to do all sides of the hedges.  He also looked at getting a sickle mower, but those were pushing $600.  “I could hire it done for that.”   His other memorable quote was, “This isn’t for everyone.  If you had somebody running it who wasn’t watching it every second, they’d probably kill themselves.”