REDMOND —

It started with a vintage riding lawn mower.

Lee Barker, a 73-year-old retired woodworker, received the lawn mower six years ago as a gift and thought it would be fun to fix it up and ride in the annual Redmond Fourth of July Parade.

Barker didn’t want the mower to look like it was used to cut his grass, though. He wanted it to look like a hot rod car, so he painted it red and added chrome headlights and a bowling trophy. Everyone loved it.

His quirky hobby has turned into a Fourth of July tradition for his family. He has since rebuilt four more lawn mowers for the family to ride. Each is bedazzled with bizarre items, such as a street lamp fixture, a cheese grater for an air intake, and wheelchair and bicycle parts.

The family, on its fleet of five lawn mowers, will cruise in the Redmond Fourth of July Parade on Tuesday. It will be hard to figure out who is having more fun — the Barkers or the crowd.

“They see us and they just laugh,” Barker said. “That’s what I tell the kids, ‘When we get out there I want you to notice how many people look at you and just smile,’ and that’s the reward for putting forth this effort.”

Those riding the wacky lawn mowers span three generations. Barker is joined by his wife, Linda, his stepson, Joe Post, his stepdaughter, Andi Johnson, and four grandchildren — Maya Johnson, 14, Bjorn Johnson, 10, Lilly Post, 11, and Juni Post, 8.

“Once it got started, we just all wanted to do it,” said Linda Barker. “We all wanted our own.”

Linda Barker, a jewelry maker and public service employee at the Redmond Public Library, always rides on a rat rod-style lawn mower at the parade. She cherishes it so much, she half-jokes about having to decide whom she will give it to in her will.

“They will be fighting over the rat rod,” she said.

Could you blame them? It sports a shield, a bowl from a barbecue, fuzzy purple dice and a shrunken head.

Linda Barker says her husband is always following his artistic inspiration. On the Barkers’ front lawn in Redmond is a collection of whirligigs — random objects that spin or whirl in the wind — that Lee Barker built.

Her husband invented the Barker Bass, an upright electric bass that has been sold worldwide. Three years ago, he retired from building the musical instrument and now spends most of his time working on the lawn mowers. He finds items for the lawn mowers at thrift stores or for sale online. He’s spent a few hundred dollars, mostly for the engines and tires.

“Visually, people enjoy watching us in the parade because we are unusual,” Lee Barker said. “It’s like nothing else in the parade.”

Joe Post, a carpenter and custom woodworker who lives in Terrebonne, is the original instigator for his family’s lawn mower obsession. Post inherited the original red riding lawn mower from his wife’s side of the family and gave it to Lee Barker, who is his stepfather.

“He wanted to make something out of it,” Post said. “I said, ‘I have this laying around. It runs and it’s yours.’”

Lee Barker gets help from the family with maintaining the lawn mowers, but the building and design are up to him.

“He will think about how to do something, and it will come to him in the middle of the night,” Post said.

At each Fourth of July parade, the crowd gets a kick out of watching the Barkers motor down the street, Post said. One year the parade announcer declared, “It’s the Barker Family. They encourage everybody to be different and have fun,” Post said.

Sometimes, the Barkers try to match with the theme of the parade. One year, the theme was “I pledge allegiance,” so Lee Barker built a concrete tube on a lawn mower and painted it like a can of the cleaning supply Pledge. His wife then painted the words to the Pledge of Allegiance around the tube.

Another year, Lee Barker attached a pressurized water tank to a lawn mower and sprayed the crowd. “It was hilarious,” he said.

Lee Barker hopes his family’s fun-loving spirit inspires other families to be creative and enter in the parade.

“I’d like to see more families just in the parade showing what they enjoy — fishing, bike riding, playing mumbletypeg, whatever,” he said.

The fleet of five lawn mowers might soon be expanding. Lee Barker is trying to find a couple more for his grandchildren.

The Barkers’ granddaughter, Maya Johnson, said she wants her own, painted like a ladybug, or tie-dye colored. She hasn’t decided yet.

As for their grandson, Bjorn Johnson, he is still content riding on the family’s yellow lawn mower, Banana, the fastest in the fleet.

“When you sit in the back, the engine shakes so much that it feels like a massage chair,” Bjorn said.

But when the time comes for Bjorn to get his own lawn mower, he knows what it must have.

“It needs Banana speed,” he said.

— Reporter: 541-617-7820, 
kspurr@bendbulletin.com

“They see us and they just laugh. That’s what I tell the kids, ‘When we get out there I want you to notice how many people look at you and just smile,’ and that’s the reward for putting forth this effort.”— Lee Barker, of Redmond