Baldwin City ? As he stood amid the reconditioned lawnmowers beside his FIXITco. shop, the handlebars of a rooter tiller sticking above a bed of a passing pickup otherwise loaded with junk appliances caught Steve Hibberts’ eye.

Steve Hibberts says his small engine repair shop is a cover for his addiction for collecting and repairing mopeds.

After calling the driver over to his small-engine repair shop at 331 Ames St. in Baldwin City, Hibberts looked over the machine and pronounced it a great find to the doubtful driver.

Keeping an eye out for salvageable items in today’s throwaway society helps keep him in business. It something he’s done since growing up in Meriden, the son of a “fix everything type of guy,” Hibberts said.

“People ask me where I learned to do this,” he said. “I’ve never not done it. I figure if it’s already broke, I can probably fix it. If I can’t, it’s not going to get anymore broken.”

He got into the small-engine repair business as a stay-at-home father to his two children while his wife first went to pharmacy school and then started working as a pharmacist, Hibberts said. He opened his shop in Baldwin City about 11 months ago.

The core of the business is lawnmowers, and eight mowers either sit outside his shop on a trailer for delivery after repairs or are lined up on the grass waiting for buyers. Hibberts also works on chainsaws, snow blowers and rooter tillers. The front room of his shop is also filled with all manner of odds and ends traded from Hot Wheel toy sets to motorcycle helmets traded for mowers or to offset repair bills.

Hibberts says his business model to buy or trade for anything but guns or “things that need to be fed.” He won’t budge on the first rule, but owns there’s a little wiggle room on the second because “it’s hard to turn down a good lizard,” such as the spiny headed lizard kept in an aquarium in his office that provided the payment for an $80 lawnmower repair.

In the shop and his office are three mopeds, a 1960s and 1970s era cheap two-wheeled transportation option with two-cycle engines that engaged after the rider pedaled the bike up to speed. They are part of his collection of nine in various states of repair, Hibberts said.

“Lawnmowers pay the rent and for my veracious addiction to collecting mopeds,” Hibberts said. “Everybody who knows me knows I’m always looking for old mopeds.”

Mopeds, even the better models like the two-speed Czech-made Pugh he uses to buzz around Baldwin City, were bikes made for a couple of years’ use until they broke down, Hibbert said.

“The joke among moped collections is you found it because someone forgot to throw it away,” he said. “Part of the appeal is they are so simple to work on. I love the thrill of finding a rusty hunk of metal in the woods and fixing it up.”

He also collects old Maytag washing machine gasoline engines and hit-and-miss gasoline engines that provided farmers with power before rural electrification.

“With the old mopeds and old motors, they all have stories,” Hibberts said “How were they used? What have they seen? When you get them up and running, it’s like giving them a whole new life.”

He gets the same thrill tearing into lawnmower engines, but realizes what may be fun for him might not make sense for an owner looking to get an older model repaired.

“What I really am is a mower psychotherapist,” he said. “When people bring in an old mower, we see if I can get it fixed by only spending so much money. If not, I tell them it’s been a good mower, but maybe it’s time to let it go and let’s look at getting them something else.”

Although he may not always be right, he’ll always be truthful, Hibberts said. He reveals his honesty with the confession he’s not the best small-engine repair option in Baldwin City. That would be lifelong resident and longtime fire chief Archie Carlson, Hibberts said.

“He’s what I aspire to be,” he said. “I have the upmost respect for him. He’s just like I am — we just like to fix them.”