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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: "homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org" <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Homestead] Naming the backhoe
  • Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 19:40:30 -0500

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.






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