A mercy mission for water-logged mowers

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By Bill Wundram | Thursday, July 31, 2008 9:53 PM CDT | () comments

THE first time Chad Pregracke saw a mud-covered lawn mower snagged against a tree in Cedar Rapids, he thought, “Someone is going to need that mower someday to cut the grass in this city.”

At least 30 to 40 lawn mowers later, Chad has become the savior of mud-slogged, water-logged mowers. He has recovered them from piles of flood debris in Cedar Rapids, one of the Iowa places hard hit by flooding earlier this summer.

Chad, who runs Living Lands and Waters, turns them over to his friend, Tom Frazier, who owns Tom’s Small Engine Repair on the edge of Hampton, Ill. Without a penny of pay, Tom cleans the mowers, does needed repairs and turns them back over to Chad.

Chad returns the mowers to Cedar Rapids relief agencies.

“The flood’s over for Cedar Rapids, but the grass is growing and people need to cut it,” Chad says. “Fixing mowers for free is just a small thing, but it helps a city return to life.”

I found Tom in the small shop of his Hampton repair service, working on a mower that had been clogged with mud from the rush of the Cedar River. It had likely been tumbled for blocks in the floodwaters. Tom and his wife, Sandra, were cleaning out a gas tank and threading in a new spark plug.

Tom, at 72, is an active working retiree who explains, quite humbly, “I just like to help other folks.”

It’s not just lawn mowers. There is an occasional snow blower. It’s an odd sight to see Tom working on a snow blower on a sweltering day like those of this week.

“Most are in pretty good shape after being power washed by Chad. They just need some help, stuff like air filters,” says Tom. He points to a lineup of mowers that are waiting for attention under the shade of a tree. “Altogether, I’ve rejuvenated 28 mowers.”

While Tom works for free, parts are paid for by Living Lands & Waters.

“It’s a cool deal that I’ve worked out with Tom,” says Chad, whose hometown is Hampton. “We’ve spent a month in Cedar Rapids and have pulled out 170 loads of debris. I got the lawn mower idea after seeing lots of repairable law mowers in a pile of stuff at one corner and figured they were too good to be junked. I talked to the EPA and they said it was all right to take them, otherwise, they’d go for scrap.”

It hasn’t been just lawn mowers and snow blowers that Tom is restoring. He is working on a $1,500 cement saw that had been washed away. The owners have been found and it will be returned to them in working order.

“It’s amazing the stuff we’ve recovered and cleaned up, like a box marked ‘Cargill.’ It had $5,000 worth of industrial fittings inside. We cleaned it up and returned it to the company. They were really grateful,” Chad says.

“We even recovered some riot gear that belonged to the Cedar Rapids police department.”

Cleaning up Cedar Rapids is a familiar chore for Chad and his crew. They have worked the southern US., including New Orleans, clearing the muck of floods or worse.

“It’s always the same, terrible losses and despair,” he says. “But the work ethic of the Midwest — places like Cedar Rapids — really shows.”

Bill Wundram can be contacted at (563) 383-2249 or bwundram@qctimes.com.