Two Pilots and a Tractor

The old tractor has moved on to greener pastures....literally.

We went through several mowers when we lived in Houston where we had to mow over an acre of land. We started with a push mower.

"It is good for your heart," I told DH.

Well, that is what all the studies were saying and that is what we had. The push mower lasted about 2 trips around the front yard before we moved on to a power mower. The power mower seemed quite good at first, but it was only a tentative step up. Mowing 1+ acres every week meant a short life for the power mower and took most of one day on the weekend. It was obvious we needed something better.

DH was very excited about the riding lawn mower we brought home. Put wheels and a seat on an engine and most men are happy. Mowing time was only about a half day with this new machine and everyone was happy for a while. Unfortunately, a lawnmower is still a lawnmower even if it can be ridden. Its lifespan was about the same as the walking kind.

We entered the era of the garden tractor. A garden tractor is more powerful than a lawnmower but not as large and powerful as a farm tractor. It suited our needs perfectly. Over the years, we wore out two of these and were working on the third one when we moved to a house on a regular sized lot. Since the third tractor was working fine, we moved it with us. DH thought it should be used on our lawn since we had it. I found it too large for the lot. Poor thing had outlived its usefulness for our family. The question was, what would we do with it?

The answer to that question came in a round-a-bout way. DD heard a friend talking about the large expanse she was having to mow with a push lawnmower. Her soldier husband was being cycled in and out of Iraq and she was trying to care for everything, as most of the military wives do. Bingo! The tractor found a home. The only difficulty was getting it there.

After several weeks of coordinating times, two Blackhawk pilots showed up on my doorstep. They had not been able to find a trailer to transport the tractor and told me they would lift it onto the back of their pickup. I had explained on the telephone that this was quite large and heavy, but they didn't think there would be a problem. Young men, especially Blackhawk pilots, see the world from a different viewpoint.

One of the young men was a particularly wiry, thin fellow.

"I used to make a lot of money off him," his friend told me. "I would bet that he could bench press 180 pounds three times, and people always took me up on it."

"Yes," the wiry fellow said, "I only weigh 130 pounds. I hold the handles of the body fat meter and it rings up ERROR."

I could believe it, but how were these two guys going to get that tractor onto the pickup I wondered.

The wiry fellow lifted the heavy end of the tractor rather easily.

"Well, I can lift it but not up high enough," he admitted.

They still weren't deterred. We found two boards, moved the truck down an incline, and managed to push the tractor onto the truck. It worked like a charm. Off they drove with the little green tractor riding proudly in the bed of the pickup to its new home. Life had come full circle except that now I have a lawn service.