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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

I have a penchant for naming the various pieces of machinery here at 
Heartwood. Writers do things like this. Call it a word fetish, call it 
nuts, but call it true.

The most recent lawn tractor became Arnold when it proved to be capable, 
with nose guard, wheel weights, horsepower and flashing blades, of near 
brushhog work, yearly terminating walnut, persimmon, sassafras and sycamore 
sprouts and reducing them to frayed strands of fiber. The farm truck, a 
1978 Ford 150 4WD, is Sherman, an appelation appropriate to how it moves 
through forest and underbrush; it has the battle scars to prove it, not one 
body panel undented.

So what to name thirteen thousand pounds of backhoe? The weight, the hard 
nose, the steel muscles and the hoses would dictate a male name, perhaps 
Zeus. But a male, as is universally known, is predictable, and this machine 
is not. It has an unfathomable mind of its own and refuses to come alive 
until it is ready. Hence, it is female. And so it came to pass today as she 
and I--she having late in the day decided to respond to my seductive 
starting pleadings--moved rocks and dirt building the new stream crossing 
that will one day be the dam that will make possible the ram pump, gravity 
water and and trout pond, so it came to pass that she became Magnolia.

Her operator's manual is in the mail. A plain, brown envelope, no doubt.