Mowers eat their dust, not their grass

SPIRIT LAKE – Curt Green’s lawn mower looks like a modest machine – until he revs it up.

A guttural roar emits from the 11-horsepower Honda mower, equipped with a wheelie bar and custom graphics, including “Your Grass Is Mine” plastered on the machine’s back end.

The riding mower can go from zero to 40 mph, covering 200 feet, in less than eight seconds.

Mower Trouble doesn’t trim grass – it burns asphalt.

“You can’t leave the line without doing a wheelie,” said Green, of Spirit Lake.

Green and dozens of others will put their lawn mowers to the test Sunday in the seventh annual Big Back-In parade and race in downtown Spirit Lake.

Some of the mowers will be stock and still are used for cutting lawns. Others, like Green’s, will be transformed, “Monster Garage”-style, into speedsters with names such as Mowerdacious, the Mowertician and Mower Tower.

The high-octane event has raised thousands of dollars for Parks and Recreation projects in the community. Proceeds from Sunday’s race will help fund bathrooms under construction at City Park.

About 2,000 spectators – more than the town’s population – are expected for the wheel-filled fun, organizer Marc Kroetch said.

“It’s turned out to be a great family event,” he said.

The event will rev up with a parade and poker run down Maine Street around noon.

Anyone with an alternative motorized ride, such as scooters, can participate, Kroetch said. Last year, 74 people joined in, he said.

A beer garden and food vendors also will be featured.

Drag racing, with both stock and modified divisions, will begin at 1:20 p.m. Awards will be given for the racing divisions and best of show.

Raffle tickets for a two-seater dune buggy will be sold for $1 each to raise money for the Big Back-In group’s civic donations. The group has donated more than $30,000 for community recreation projects since its inception, Kroetch said.

The annual event got its start after a group of Linger Longer bar regulars watched bikers back into parking spots across the street. One day, the men decided to back their mowers into the motorcycle spots in good-natured fun.

“We just all had a beer and we all drove around town a bit,” Green said. Since then, “it just kept growing and growing.”

Kroetch credits Green for raising the stakes by beefing up the lawn mowers. For the event’s second year, Green cruised in a canary-yellow mower with a flame-painted seat cover, chrome exhaust pipes and a lowered front end – starting the tradition of tricked-out lawn trimmers.

“I keep making fancier ones and fancier ones,” Green said. “You just get carried away.”

A group of mower racers tested Green’s current rig last week, hooting as he popped wheelies along Maine Street.

“You can see air under those tires,” Kroetch hollered.

The event brings out the best in the community, said Wayne Vanek, who is part of the Big Back-In group.

“It’s cool for a little town like this to come together,” Vanek said. “This is too much fun.”