Our electric lawn mower broke. I wasn’t expecting that. We had it for more than fifteen years and it had always been reliable. Someone famous once said, “All things break down, even the steam iron. And honestly, I never expected it from the steam iron.” I don’t know who spoke those words, but I also never expected the lawn mower to break. I was mowing the grass in my backyard which consisted of a small area with fruit trees, a few bushes here and there, and I suddenly ran over a peony. The machine got clogged, proceeded to cough and sputter, then died. That was the end of the mower.

I expected my Dad to get upset about it – we were working together in the yard. There was a time, when I was little, when I might have even been spanked for such a deed. It seemed with age, my dad had mellowed. He came to me and surprisingly nodded at the lawn mower, “Eh, what happened to it?” he asked. “It broke. It’s my fault.” I responded. Dad fiddled around with the mower and tried to start it, but he was unsuccessful. 

“Don’t get upset over it, Dad. I will buy you a new one.” I told him. “No, I am not upset. I am just surprised. It was working fine. Strange. It must be the coils...” he trailed off. Dad is not much of an electrician. In fact, he is a physician. Back in the day, some old drill burnt out, and the electrician told him it was the coils. Now every time an electric machine breaks, he thinks it is “the coils”. 

“I doubt it costs too much. Probably a hundred levs.” I guessed aloud. “Oh, no! We aren’t buying a new one. Look at it, everything is fine with it.” he exclaimed. “I had just sharpened the blade. One of the wheels had broken and I finally found a new one to replace it. It must be a  simple fix; an electrician just needs to nick it, and it will be like new.” he muttered while pacing about. 

“I know a repair shop Downtown. We will take the machine there for the electricians to take a look at,” he stated matter-of-factly. “Dad, for the time you will lose dealing with that and the troubles you’ll experience, you would be better off buying a new mower. Actually, I will buy it for you. It’s just a headache neither of us need.” I suggested. “Headache? We will just bring it Downtown. Anyway, then we can have a pleasant stroll there.” he quipped back.

So we loaded the mower in the family jalopy – similar to the mower - fifteen, twenty years old, and started for the Center of Sofia. My dad was driving. He isn’t a very good driver, or maybe his approach is wrong. In Sofia, to blend in with the car traffic, one should operate on the thin line of what is allowed by the law and cross it occasionally. That is the norm, what’s expected from you. If you meticulously follow the traffic signs, the speed limit, yield when you are supposed to, and so on - as it is according to the traffic laws, then you become a nuisance and altogether the cog in the machine which doesn’t fit and slows down the whole traffic engine. 

Dad kept driving slowly, maintaining a safe distance between ours and the car ahead of us. Other cars passed him left and right, sneaking into the space between him and the vehicle in the front, honking, and altogether creating a pretty tense situation. Anyway, we made it Downtown without getting into an accident and miraculously found a parking spo?. We quickly paid and got out to look for the repair shop. I, as the younger one, wound up carrying the lawn mower.

We found the mentioned shop but unfortunately, it was currently a furniture store. Dad got a little surprised but didn’t give up. We went inside and stopped next to the register. “Excuse me, this store used to be a repair shop for electric machines. Do you know where it has moved?” he asked aloud. The woman behind the register – a young brunette who wore a bit more makeup than fit her, in my opinion, looked over at my Dad with a bored look on her face. One could tell she was thinking “ Just another elderly cuckoo.”

“I don’t know, sir. I have been working here for two years. This store has been here for the last five years. I don’t know anything about a repair shop.” she answered, annoyed.“Is the owner around? Maybe he would know where the previous store moved?” Dad questioned her.  “The owner isn’t here,” the woman answered back, more catty now. “Even if I knew where he was, I wouldn’t bother him for such a thing anyway,” she added and perked her chin up in a bellicose manner. She meant to say that it’s time for us to piss off. 

“I understand,” my dad said defeatedly. We left the store. Once on the sidewalk, we looked around. We noticed a store in the basement of a building that was situated across the street in the form of a small window on the sidewalk level. Dad went to the store and squatted down exclaiming loudly, “Nice Day!” 

I didn’t hear a response from the other side so I went closer. “A few years ago, there was a store across the street for the repair of electric machines. Would you happen to know where it moved?” dad asked. “No, I don’t know,” a bald man in his sixties – my dad’s age, who seemed to be hiding in the store, answered. “I have a friend, though. He is an electrician and fixes such machines. His name is Ivan - he lives a few blocks up the street.” he told dad. He asked,  “Wonderful! Does he charge a lot?” “Ah, not at all. A bottle of brandy and twenty levs at most.” The man responded.

We took Ivan’s address, bought a bottle of brandy, said goodbye, and started for the expert’s house. On our way, we passed by a store where brand new lawn mowers were sold. There were models similar to ours, which cost about two hundred levs. A little more expensive than I expected, but not prohibitively expensive. Dad stopped in front of the big store window and looked at the mowers for a while – particularly at one that was shiny and red. I offered, “Let’s go in and look around.”

“Do you see how expensive they are?” Dad asked, astounded. “And you say a hundred levs. Such a lawn mower costs two hundred levs! And it’s rubbish. Not like ours. See how long ours lasted? That one will be good for mowing the yard one time and then will probably break.” he exclaimed excitedly. I sighed and took a deep breath. The machine under my arm was getting heavy, and I was getting hungry. 

We finally reached the building where Ivan was supposed to live. The place was on a side street in an old building with chafing and fading paint. We rang a bell next to a big metal door. A dog barked on the other side of the door, there was shuffling. Someone kicked the door; then, it opened with a creak. A middle-aged woman showed at the doorstep, holding a big mutt – somewhat resembling a German Shepard, by the collar. He was looking at us curiously, hesitating, wondering if he should bark at us or sniff us. Then, he did both – first, he barked, then dragged his owner behind himself in his desire to sniff us. “Stop! Enough! In place. George, stop pulling!” his owner yelled.

“Interesting name for a dog,” I thought and gave him a fake smile when he started sniffing my leg. “Yes?” the woman turned around to rudely look at us. She had long, disheveled, undyed, gray hair framing an already lean face. She was dressed in a ragged sweater along with torn, teenager style jeans paired with red Converse sneakers. A mixture of the smell of warm cooked food and moldy corridor drifted from the inside of the apartment.

“Good day! Ha – what a beautiful dog! Hello, George.” Dad smiled and intended to pet the dog, which growled, and his owner had to pull him back. “Well, anyway. We are looking for Ivan,” Dad continued. “ We heard that he is a specialist on electric lawn mowers.” Dad stated. “Is he?” the woman exclaimed in a surprised tone., She then turned around and shouted towards the inside of the apartment, “Maria, Maria, come here!”

A moment later, a young woman of twenty-five or about that age came to the vestibule from a long hallway. She was pretty – long, straight black hair, and green eyes. Nice figure. She looked at me curiously, then smiled. “Where is Ivan, do you know?” asked the older woman – the mother, I guessed. “I think he is in Krasno Selo. Katia’s son has a birthday. 

“Well, we brought him some business - this electric mower. We heard that he is a specialist repairman,” Dad asked with hope. “Ah, a specialist. He has a store for electric parts, but I never heard of him repairing machines.” the young woman said and looked at me. “Down the street, there is a store for lawn mowers. Maybe you can buy one there?” she said. This time I smiled. I liked her.

“Oh, no. We don’t need a new mower. We have ours. May you please give us Ivan’s phone number so we can call him?” Dad pleaded. The mother made a “you must be crazy” face, but the daughter took out her cell phone and dialed. “Hello, Ivan...Yes, I have here two clients with an electric lawn mower, are looking for you...they want to fix it...Yes, someone told them that you could fix it...Aha, you sell parts…” 

“Does he sell coils?” My father suddenly intervened. “Do you have coils for mowers...you can find? Should I give them your store address? Okay.” Maria hung up and looked at me, “I will write down the address for you to Ivan’s store. It’s open tomorrow. Maybe he will have..coils.” she turned around and disappeared in the hallway. The dog tore from the old woman’s hold and followed Maria. 

In a bit, she showed up again, holding a piece of paper. “I wrote down Ivan’s store address here. Go tomorrow. He opens at eight in the morning. This number is for his store.” she said to Dad. “And this is my number, in case you can’t find it,” she said kindly while smiling directly at me. Her mother looked at her, surprised, and my Dad took the paper before I could say anything.

“Thank you a lot, Miss. You too, Ma’m,” he said.  I guess that if he had a hat, he would have taken it off for greeting. I also shyly mumbled, “Thank you” as the metal door closed behind us, and we started down the street. “What a beautiful and kind girl.” Dad said, “Are you hungry? I got a good appetite from that smell of cooked meal inside.” “You bet!” I was nearly drooling.

“There is a place nearby – they sell the best pizza in Sofia. It’s a bit of a walk, but it’s worth it. Dad stated. “How about the lawn mower?” I asked. “What about it? We’ll carry it with us. Look at yourself – a real bear, can’t even carry a mower!” he said jokingly. After half an hour of a walk, we reached the corner next to the park square of the National Palace of Culture. The neighborhood is somewhat trendy, and I expected to go to  some sort of a restaurant and worried about what I will do with the lawn mower. MyDad seemed to have other plans. He stopped in front of an outside stall for pizza and bent over it. “What are you waiting for? Come here. This one – with ham is the best. I advise you to get a piece of this kind.” he said, pointing to a specific piece. “All right,” I agreed without being very convinced. “Two slices with ham and two kefirs,” he said as he ordered our food. We took the pizza and went to the square in front of the Palace. We sat on a bench. A few pigeons landed near us immediately but were chased away by a skater who started practicing tricks. 

My Dad leaned towards me and said factually, “Pirogov (a big trauma center in Sofia) is full of his kind - broken arms, legs, but obviously he doesn’t know better.” “Dad, I honestly don’t see the purpose of that whole Odyssey. We are wandering around. A new mower is two hundred levs. What’s the point of the whole hustling to fix an already old machine? Even if we change the coils – whatever that might be, something else will break.” I said, finally exasperated and exhausted from the day.

My Dad was silent and ate for a while. Then he said quietly, “It’s good that you used the word Odyssey. I think it’s the right one. I like the journey. Yes, I know you will say that on a journey, the important part is the starting and even more the final point, but it’s not exactly so, at least for me. What will happen with the romanticism of the journey, everything that happened to Odysseus if he had come home to Ithaca in a straight line? It wouldn’t be worth writing about it, right? Same as us. It is easy to go to the store and buy a new mower, but it is so much more pleasant to wander around, to hustle even for such a simple thing. It’s not a question of money. But I hate how everything in this world becomes easily replaceable. We replace things...and we replace people, the principle is similar – don’t you think?” he stated inquisitively. Such a notion surprised me. “See what an adventure we’ve been having so far. We met so many interesting people.” Dad proclaimed. “What is awaiting us from now on? How much a broken mower has already given us.” I thought about it to myself. Dad was from the old generation. When he was young, when something like the mower broke, usually its owner tried to fix it. During Communism, it was hard to buy new things, one had to find it first and then to wait in a long line and so on. I guess that was a sort of an adventure as well if you have that particular mindset. 

My generation had learned to save time - time is money, after all, right? During that extra time, one can work more or rest, go on a vacation, whatever they decide to do. Sometimes though, a vacation can be similar to going to the store to buy a mower– you go to a hotel, do this, and that, then go back home. There is not an Odyssey, an adventure, being able to wander about carrying the mower, looking for Ivan – or its equivalent. 

In the same way, we’re searching for Ivan, just like when we were going to the seaside. Mom and dad searched for deserted beaches, ruins, or all kinds of oddities. They turned everything into an Odyssey – for themselves and me and my brother. But like Odysseus, the past belonged in the past. Regretfully, Dad had turned into a dinosaur, a species on the brink of extinction; saving time had replaced experiencing time. We finished the pizza and then started back in the direction of the car. We made it successfully home.

***

On the next day, we went to Ivan’s store. “Well, I don’t have coils for this machine,” Ivan said, a man of about thirty – probably the girl’s brother – the one who gave us the store address. I expected him to be some electrician, who enjoyed a drink or two, but it seemed we’d been conned into buying the brandy since he declined it. Ivan continued, “Principally, parts for this model aren’t sold. Even if you look online, I doubt you’ll find them, and if by a fluke you do, they will need to be imported from abroad – that and the question if you will even get the right part – you are better off buying a new machine.

”Dad seemed quite disappointed. At that time, a man in his sixties approached us. Until then, he had been looking around at the merchandise in the store. “I apologize. I heard part of your conversation. Is that a McCulloch mower?” He indicated to the machine we had placed on top of the counter. “Yes,” Dad answered the man inquisitively. “Strange thing. I have a similar one. It’s a different model though. Years ago, they imported only these and Husqvarna. These were cheaper and turned out to be pretty reliable. My mower worked for about ten years, then the bearing broke, but I saved the machine. I thought it would be easy to buy a new bearing, but that wasn’t the case.” the man rambled on aloud.

“Well?” uttered Dad with hope. “Well, I live nearby. If you want, I can give you the mower.” the man finally said. “Oh, we will buy it” Dad’s eyes glistened, grinning from ear to ear. “No, you don’t have to. What else am I supposed to do with it? I will eventually throw it in the garbage as it isn’t worth anything. I will be glad if someone can use it. Better that way than throwing it out. Maybe the part won’t even fit your mower, but if you want to come to take a look, you are more than welcome.” the man responded. 

Within the next hour,I was carrying our lawn mower  and my Dad was carrying the stranger’s mower until we finally arrived back to the car to go home. A sort of exchange had happened, of course – the man who gave us the broken machine received the bottle with the brandy – a symbolic gift.

***

Dad spent the next few days pulling apart and then splicing together the two machines. A neighbor came to help as well. He was an electrician. He liked to have a drink, and therefore, Dad sacrificed another bottle - this time it was vodka. Three days after the mower burnt out, my Dad and I were in our backyard and he was ready to see how well all of his efforts had panned out. We connected the mower to an extension cord. Dad turned it on solemnly. No response. He tried again. The machine failed to start again.

“Damn” Dad uttered, and at the same time my mom shouted from within the house, “Hey, shouldn’t this extension cord be plugged in?” “Yes!” Dad and I cried out in unison. Then, Dad pressed the start button again. The electric motor hummed on, and the blade started turning. We were in active mode! The machine was mowing the grass. The Odyssey had ended successfully, I thought. 

On the other hand, there was another Odyssey in front of me. I was planning to undertake it, but I had to overcome my shyness first. In my pocket, I still had a piece of paper with a phone number which I really wanted to call...