Bird; Is that according the math used by the White House, the Congressional Budget Office or by Al Greenspan? /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif.
BTW: I found another earlier article on this mower man today while continuing my search. Turns out he's a felon. Really. He claims that it was all a mistake (of course).
Article from the Champaign-Urbana Illinois Gazette (his home town):
Lawn-mower man shares tales of woe
By PAUL WOOD
Published Online June 24, 2000
Copyright 2000 The News-Gazette
NEAR RICHMOND, Va. - Roaring along at 9 mph on a souped-up lawn mower, Gary Hatter is proving charity begins at home and eventually extends to the 48 contiguous states. The Champaign man says he needs $100,000 for a back injury that has kept him out of work for 21 years. Hunched over the lawn mower's steering wheel, the former truck driver travels from town to town, greeting well-wishers, making a name for himself in the world and soliciting funds. Hatter, 46, lurched to a start May 31 in Maine, piloting an orange Kubota lawn mower, model BX-2200, complete with a plastic roof. The mower was bought for the trip. After three weeks on the road, he's still in the hole for the mower, having raised all of $475, through donations and selling checkered flags for $5 that he autographs. On the plus side, Hatter has met the staff of David Letterman's TV show, who gave him front-row seats; bonded with his son, who serves as his support crew, and become something of an expert on motels. "Everywhere we go, the motels put us up for free, and the restaurants give us dinner," he said. "Everybody has been really great. Nobody has given me any trouble on the road. It's been a great adventure." He plans to drive his mower 14,000 miles through all 48 contiguous states, reaching Champaign-Urbana about Aug. 1 and only shutting down the mower, should it survive, this winter in Florida. So far, he has managed to do all of this without cutting a blade of grass. "I've seen concrete and asphalt. I've been through all kinds of weather, from the 40s to the 90s in Boston, and at first it was raining all the time, but it's dry now," he said. "People have been extremely nice, waving and honking. The only bad part was I slept in a car three nights because we couldn't find a hotel anywhere, and that was kind of hard on my back," he said. Even when things have gone wrong, he said, people have stepped in to help. When Gary Lee Hatter Jr.'s 1989 Chevy Cavalier lost its exhaust system on Thursday, it got fixed for free. Hatter Sr. has had a life of ups and downs. The ups are his family, his bowling trophies and his success as a Go-Kart racer. The downs include his injury, bankruptcy and a domestic life that is short on domesticity. <font color=red>He last appeared in the pages of The News-Gazette in 1989, when he pleaded guilty to kidnapping his former girlfriend at gunpoint. It was his ex-wife who called the police. "It was a completely screwed up situation. I'm still to this day confused about what happened," he explains. "My ex-wife and my girlfriend got together - they literally sat down and planned this to get my business away from me in Urbana. I had a Jiffy Oil that went down the tubes." Champaign County sheriff's Capt. Walt Wolfe, who was on the scene, says Hatter may have viewed it as a misunderstanding. "But we had to get the SWAT team to extricate him," Wolfe recalls.</font color=red> Hatter's bad luck started a decade earlier, when he was a truck driver for a dairy. "I injured my back unloading some milk. I pulled the stacks all day long, and every stack weighs 250 pounds," he said. A stack of crates snagged and came to a quick stop, while his back kept going. "June 11, 1979, is the last day I ever worked." That same year, he said, he had surgery for a herniated disc in his back. "The doctor took the wrong disc out," he said. "In 1981, I had a second operation. After that, I thought it'd be hunky-dory." But hunky-dory it was not. He said the insurance company decided that since the surgeon took the wrong disc out, the insurance company was no longer responsible. He filed for bankruptcy. Since he can drive a mower for eight hours a day, Hatter figures that he can probably work somewhere, but he said employers are wary of his medical history. "I'm in pain all the time," Hatter said. "It hasn't really gotten any worse, but I know what my limitations are. "When you go and fill in applications and tell them you've had five operations, nobody's going to hire you," he said. But his luck could change the next time he returns to Champaign. He also is hoping to break the current world record of 4,039 miles and 51 days of straight driving. He figures Urbana will be about Mile 4,040, roundabout Aug. 1.
