When I was around ten years old my dad bought a new lawnmower from Western Auto. It might have been a Wizard, but I'm not sure. It had a small two-stroke Tecumseh engine. I think he paid under thirty dollars for it in the early 1960's.
We used it primarily to mow a river lot he owned. We would mow the lot every two to four weeks for several years. The grass and weeds would be too tall to mow normally, so we had to tilt the front end of the mower deck up in the air and completely mow the lot this way. Then we would cut a second time using all four wheels on the ground. (It was way too small a mower for this kind of use.)
A few years later I was mowing our home lawn with this little mower and I filled it up with straight gas by mistake. While I was mowing the engine started running slower and slower, and finally seized up. I thought it was DRT, but my dad suggested taking the sparkplug out and squirting in some oil. We started turning the blade by hand and freed the piston. I filled it with some mixed gas and kept mowing. A year or so after that it finally broke the piston rod while I was mowing. We got our money's worth out of that mower. It was a tough little machine!
I wish I had some pictures of this mower, but we trashed it in the late 1960's. After it died I finally convinced my dad to buy a riding mower. It was an Ariens Fairway 4, similar in appearance to a Snapper mower. It was another good mower that faithfully served us for years.
:biggrin: