[July 9, 2026] Last night, while I was trying to fall asleep with a stuffed-up nose and under medication, my mind wandered a bit, and a question popped into my head. It was an odd question. It went something like this: What tool best describes you? Or me?
What tool have I used that has given me the greatest advantages in my life? The following morning, I asked my wife what she thought it might be. She knows a good bit of my upbringing and adult life in the U.S. Army, and how, when I was growing up, I went hunting, camping, fishing, and running around with my young friends (and, miraculously, didn’t get murdered or eaten by an alligator). She knows that my guns are important to me.
She said, knowing she had the correct answer, that the answer was surely the shotgun. Her explanation was based on the story I often tell about receiving the best birthday present ever when I was very young. It was a shotgun given to me by my father, who had received it from his father when he was also a young boy in the years leading up to World War II. My namesake, my paternal grandfather, passed that gun along to my dad in the 1930s.
And she knew that I loved to hunt with that shotgun, and she could repeat many of the stories I told her about it, the only shotgun I ever owned to this day. Her memory is excellent, and I learned not to waste ammunition because that J. Stevens Arms Company Model 94A single-shot shotgun is in my gun cabinet to this day in our home.
But what tool best describes me?
The answer I gave was totally unexpected. My answer was the lawnmower. Specifically, a manual push mower. It was a rotating reel of blades powered entirely by pushing it across the lawn. I put a lot of sweat into pushing that mower across many of the lawns in my hometown.
What did a manual lawnmower do for me? It was mine. The mower was given to me by my maternal grandfather (we called him “granddaddy”) and used by both him and my grandmother to mow the very large yard where the Smith homestead sat. Somewhere, I have photos of them both posing with that mower, a powerful symbol of their strength and endurance.
“A lawnmower?” My wife asked, incredulously. “How could it not be a shotgun?” I could hear it in her voice; she didn’t believe me. The shotgun would certainly be a second choice, but nowhere near that lawnmower. Behind that mower was an enormous amount of sweat, frustration, and tired, sore arms. But it was also a symbol of my ability to never give up, to work beyond what I thought were my limits, and to take full responsibility for a difficult job and never give up on it.
Where is that old, rusty, wooden-handled push lawnmower today? Sadly, I have no idea. By the time we moved away from my childhood home, it had been replaced by a motorized lawnmower. I was quick to switch to a gasoline-powered model and to discard that old push mower. One day, I might buy an old one just to keep in my garage as a reminder of the old days.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that the push mower helped shape who I am. I was blind to the fact that being happy was not the goal of a good man; the goal was to make something of myself, and the path would always be difficult. Perhaps that is why the local families who paid me to mow their lawns always seemed to give me a tip. Maybe they were rewarding me for doing something other kids would never dream of doing.
So there is the answer: a manual lawnmower. I understand that that very lawnmower became the symbol of suburbia after the end of WWII. People moved out of the center city and into the surrounding towns, and they began to own their own homes. Maintenance was what all men had to learn to do, and a neatly mowed lawn was one of the things that showed how successful you were.
Today? I don’t even own a lawnmower. I hire someone to care for my lawn. Those old days are gone for now, but I’ll never forget them.
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To read a full accounting of Letters to My Granddaughter, read the following (link here).
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- “55 Rules for a Good Life,” on Amazon (link here).
- “Our Longest Year in Iraq,” on Amazon (link here).
There is something mesmerizing about mowing the yard. You get into the rhythm of doing one row after another, getting the mower ready by checking it over and fixing anything broken or about to break. These are simple machines made for those who just want to cut their grass to look nice and inviting to your neighbors. It’s like keeping yourself clean and presentable.
Great article, sir. Enjoyed it. Your reflection on the manual push lawnmower really hit me as a fellow veteran who grew up doing real work. That old reel mower wasn’t just a chore; it forged character through sweat, sore arms, and the quiet satisfaction of a job well done. I can picture a young Douglas pushing that thing across those yards, earning tips and learning that happiness isn’t the goal, but responsibility and grit are. The shotgun would have been my guess too, given your hunting stories and family legacy with that single-shot Stevens, but the lawnmower makes perfect sense. It embodies the blue-collar foundation that carried into your Army career as a Combat Engineer. Tools like that taught us never to quit, even when the task felt endless. In today’s softer world, stories like this are a needed reminder of what builds real leaders. Thanks for sharing this personal insight. It’s the kind of honest reflection that makes TheLeaderMaker so valuable. I’ll be thinking about what tool best describes my own path now. Keep these coming. 🇺🇸
I enjoyed this article. Nice!!!!!! 👀
Yeah, me too. It sure got me to thinking. And that is what Gen. S likes to do with us. Thank you for that, now my brain won’t stop figuring this out. I asked my brother, and he gave the same answer as Gen. S. 🌱🚜
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To read a full accounting of Letters to My Granddaughter, read the following (link here).
https://www.theleadermaker.com/granddaughter-letters/
For us, this is the kind of article we love to read. It’s a quick look into what makes leaders tick. They have a development from childhood that shows them that the respect they build matters more than getting “things” like toys or money. Sure, those things are okay but it is the character development that matters most. We see this as a regular theme here. Don’t ignore it. Read these daily articles and if you can, be sure to get a copy of Gen. Satterfield’s books. The one I like most is “55 Rules for a Good Life.” You can’t go wrong by reading it. And y9ou will be rather popular if you give a few of them away to young boys coming of age.
Sir, great article. And most folks most likely would not chose a tool for their yard as a symbol of their personality, but hey, I get it. It molded you into someone who valued hard work, good customer service, learning how to get along with people, and taught that persistence matters. Plus, you learned that grit matters. 🎯 On target.
Yep, & I too mowed plenty of yards growing up in the northeast US. We used to walk around to ply our trade. “Mind if I mow your yard?” They would ask how much and we would say, “5 dollars.” And that was in the late 1990s. That was super cheap and many of the locals were very happy to pay that amount, especially in the hot part of the summer. Gen. Satterfield has a wonderful idea by asking this question. So, “What tool best describes you?” For me, it is the powered lawnmower. I know that’s not origianl, and much like the answer by Gen. S. but it’s true, THE LAWNMOWER. I think most of us young boys made some money the same way. Or working in a store, a mom and pop store owned by a neighbor. Thanks to Gen. S for allowing us a little time to look inside what made him a real man. No pussies alllowed here.
Nice! I would have never thought of this. I’ll try a “book” as my childhood symbol.
Sir, that manual push lawnmower fits me too from childhood yard work. For me, it built responsibility. Shotgun ranks high for hunting lessons. Hammer for building fixes. Wrench for repairs. Level for balance. Saw for cutting through problems. Drill for precision. Shovel for digging in. Axe for tough decisions. These tools shaped persistence. Family legacy drives it all. Keep pushing forward.
5 things picked: lawnmower, shotgun, hammer, wrench, shovel.
A CAR … DOES THAT COUNT?
I’m not sure Sweeney, if that is what Gen. Satterfield was getting at, but I gotcha. Maybe I would say that power boat could be one of the choices if we were going big. Personally, I am going to chose something relatively small. I would choose a broom. I got to sweep the house, sidewalks, and front of the street at my house and I got to thinking that I might have used up one or two of them during those “formative” years.
Something simpler works best here. Above, Good Dog 🐶 gives us a list of examples. I prefer computer becuase I worked on them and used them since I was about 6 yo. Nothing like having a piece of the future in your hands that can make a huge difference.
Yes, I think a car does count. America is a country of cars and trucks, as they make us who we are. They are more than tools. But they are the culture.
Well, what can I say about this question? The question is getting at what we are as a man or a woman. And, I know all about the mental illness of the recent “trans” phenomenon, so I will ignore their ignorance and illness for my purposes here (and I believe General Satterfield is in agreement with me, even if he doesn’t say it). I would be a paint brush. Growing up, I was painting fences on my grandfather’s ranch out in Montana. The sun is harsh. The fences are many. The way to prolong the life of a fence post was to paint it. That’s why I choose the paint brush. Others can chime in, but I think that’s a pretty good tool to describe me. 🫡. A salute to our veterans and their families and those, like me, who support them. 🇺🇸