Tractor pull may be in offing

About 14 years ago Mike Hueston got hooked on the sport of tractor pulling.
“I went to a garden tractor pull and I got bit,” Hueston, Iola paramedic and firefighter from Mapleton, told Iola Rotarians Thursday.
His enthusiasm was stoked further when he found a garden tractor at a garage sale and began refitting it for pulling. Now he has half a dozen, all of which he has reconfigured for the sport.
Hueston gave club members, who are considering sponsorship of a pulling event with the small tractors, an idea of what they may have to do.
Iola Rotarians are sponsors of the Neil Westervelt Memorial Car Show at the Allen County Fair and will add sponsorship of a barbecue cook-off this summer. The fair didn’t have a cook-off in 2013 for the first time in years. They thought adding a garden tractor pull would make the first day of the fair all that more appealing.
That apparently won’t happen this year. The fair has a two-day rodeo scheduled, which means there won’t be space for a pull. An alternative may be a pull at  another time, or it is possible that another venue might be identified.
 
HUESTON is vice president and promoter of the Bourbon County Garden Tractor Pulling Association, which he said would be eager to work with Rotarians to bring the sport to Iola.
“Kincaid (during its early September fair) is our biggest pull,” he said, with a stop last year also at Moran Day.
The sport is growing and it isn’t unusual for as many as 140 tractors to be entered in a show, Hueston crowed. The Bourbon County group is the largest in Kansas, with enthusiasts in several other areas of the state organized.
The point is to pull a sled with a weight that shifts as the sled moves to make it more difficult to pull. Ten classes of the little tractors compete, from basically stock models such as those seen often on weekends mowing lawns to behemoths outfitted with a powerful V-8 engines.
Kids as young as 4 years old drive in events, with, Hueston was quick to note, adults nearby to ensure their safety.
He told Rotarians what they would have to provide — a dirt track properly prepared and other amenities — which seemed no deterrent.
“Maybe we can put dirt on a parking lot” so a pull could be held during the fair, said one listener, which City Administrator Carl Slaugh, a Rotary member, answered with a wry smile.