BIGELOW --While some people in Bigelow started preparing their trucks the moment they found out about the first Swampy Days Truck Pull, Jim Russell discovered he was driving in the event the night before it happened.
"I didn't intend to drive in it until last night," Russell said Saturday. "My son or son-in-law was supposed to. Last night they voted me in."
Friday night the rain came down, and Russell was unsure whether Bigelow's North Central Plains Pullers truck pull would still happen. But on Saturday morning, along with his son-in-law, he drove by the field where the pull would take place and saw a man in a tractor pushing dirt around, and he knew the pull would occur as scheduled.
"We started working on the truck at 8 a.m. and finished at 2 p.m.," Russell laughed.
In order to get his 1976 Chevy pickup ready for the event, Russell and his pit crew of one had to fix the rear end of the truck and jack it up.
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The truck, the only one he has ever bought new in his life, has had a few revisions in its lifetime, Russell said.
"It was new five transmissions and three motors ago," he joked. "I have a different truck also, but every now and then I get a crazy urge to take this one for a drive around Lake Bella."
When Russell pulled up to the starting line Saturday afternoon for the first time, his only experience was driving in an antique tractor pull 20 years ago. He said he joined the competition just for fun, but that didn't stop him from getting a bit of advice from Troy and Todd Dykstra, who run regularly with the North Central Plains Pullers.
"I never intended on winning," Russell laughed. "I just wanted to go."
Because of some technical difficulties as the pull got started, Russell got to pull a few times.
"It was really fun," he said afterward, but admitted he couldn't hear the way the crowd screamed his name and encouraged him. "I couldn't hear anything but my motor struggling."
According to Swampy Days Chairperson Connie Reitmeier, the response to the truck pull was good. When the 2006 Swampy Days was still in the planning stages, Reitmeier said a representative of the North Central Plains Pullers contacted the committee to say they had that particular weekend free.
"That's how the whole thing got started," she said. "The city council OK'd everything."
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Russell Drainage offered the piece of land for the pull to use, and many local businesses stepped up to donate cash and prizes for the event, including Mark's Diesel, Todd Dykstra Repair, Cliff's Repair, Jepson Gravel, United Farmers Co-op, T&J Trucking, Russell Seed and Charlie's Firestation Bar.
As the action started on Saturday, the crowd whooped and hollered, encouraging the drivers to "go, go, go!" The green flag would come out, a motor would rev, mud would fly, and the screaming would begin.
The drivers yelled in triumph or groaned with frustration at the appropriate times.
"What is wrong with you?" one man yelled into the open hood of his pickup, causing a few interesting comments from the competitors around him.
"And there goes Jim Russell," the announcer yelled exuberantly after one of Russell's runs. "He made 43 feet 2 inches at about two miles per hour."
Russell ended up taking third-place in his class, something the old, rusty, green Chevy with the mismatched red door can be proud of.
