The Lawnmower Of Tomorrow, Today
Why mow the lawn like some kind of regular suburbanite? The summer sun beating down on you, the sweat dripping down your brow and not even a cold drink in your hand to keep you sated through this messy and unfortunately necessary weekend chore, doesn't that sound horrific?
The Lazy Man's Power Mower was a futuristic vision of summer chores. It offered an ease that until then didn't exist in the world of lawn care. This kind of futuristic design peaked in the 1960s as manufacturers attempted to mass produce products to make the toil of every day life as simple as pressing a button. Impractical and beautiful, this lawnmower brings the dreams of the space age generation to life.
The Lazy Man's Power Mower is an absolute beast of a machine. Even modern riding lawnmowers are like driving around a miniature truck with the turning radius of a cart and buggy, but this futuristic riding mower from the '60s was a huge pain to maneuver unless the rider was going back and forth in a straight line. The design is right in line with retro-futurism. Its space age design looks more like a flying car or a UFO, but in the '60s the closest thing Americans had to flying cars were riding mowers.
This riding mower allows the rider to stay cool with an air conditioning system inside its bubble, as well as drink holders to erase the chore aspect of mowing your lawn. Even though the mower looks less than functional, that's not really the point of its futuristic design. The atomic age designs of the '50s and '60s represented a forward thinking vision that pointed towards a better tomorrow.
Yesterday's trash
It's not entirely clear if these mowers ever made it to the market, but from the lack of busted up domed lawnmowers in vintage stores it's safe to say that the only version of the Lazy Man's Power Mower was the prototype. The unfortunate side effect of the clean lines and beautifully cumbersome design of the futuristic designs of the 1960s is that the products were expensive to produce. By seeking to create sleek and stylish designs that ignored the past while looking to tomorrow, manufacturers and designers threw out practicality. The sky's the limit with space age design, unfortunately the products that are the most futuristic are the first to be grounded by the economic realities of their production.
The race to ease the strains of domestic life
Most of the atomic age inventions and updates on old products are meant to make domestic life as clean as the their designs. Why fuss over dinner when you can get the taste of a home cooked meal and all of your nutrients in a pill? And why spend your mornings cleaning the kitchen when the house of the future can take care of that for you?
The 1950s and '60s were full of concepts for products that did all the work while the user kicked back and enjoyed the convenience that comes with the future. As more homeowners moved to the suburbs with its tract housing and manicured lawns, manufacturers sought to sell this way of life as a world filled with homes and products that took care of all the things a person dreads doing on their day off. Much like the futuristic lawnmower in question, a simple future is easier to imagine than it is to actually construct.
The future is louder than you think
It's hard to imagine sitting in the Lazy Man's Power Mower and having a good time. Sure, the model in the picture looks like she's living it up. Sure, her husband (or lazy male friend, it's unclear who that guy is) is enjoying his drink but this riding mower looks like a huge pain in the neck. Never mind the fact that mowing the lawn will never be fun no matter how may gadgets are introduced to erase the tedium of the chore, that remains the operative word: chore.
With an AC unit, a radio, and massive carburetor and engine to power this mower it looks like an incredibly loud afternoon. Hopefully the lawnmower of tomorrow comes with a set of ear plugs to keep the user from damaging their hearing. And where do you take this thing for repairs? Do you have to pack it into your station wagon and drive it to the far away future of the year 2000? There are no answers here. The Lazy Man's Power Mower was never sold. It remains a better idea than it does a product.
The world of tomorrow
We never made it to the future imagined by all of those futurists in the 1950s and '60s. We haven't even progressedd to the future that many of us imagined in the '80s and '90s. The future of yesterday, or the present if you prefer, is one that's much more lived in. Our technological breakthroughs have little to do with mowing the lawn and more to do with watching our lawns on our phones.
You can eat dinner in a pill, or have it in a shake, but that's not as satisfying as it sounds. Cars don't fly, although some of them can park themselves (not well, it should be noted). This sounds darker, more gloomy than it should. The future imagined by whoever designed the unwieldy metallic beast that is the Lazy Man's Power Mower is a thing of beauty. It's a place where everything is easy, where everyone can enjoy their weekends thanks to technological progress. We're not their yet and we may never get there, but as long as humanity imagines a better tomorrow the possibility of its existence still remains.
