Black Heels to Tractor Wheels

When I read Carrie's review of Black Heels to Tractor Wheels:  A Love Story by Ree Drummond (aka The Pioneer Woman) it sounded like just exactly the light read I needed.  The subtitle "A Love Story" would likely have put me off normally, but the review of the story sounded just a little too familiar and I had an inkling I would be able to relate to it.

I was right.  There were so many parallels between Ree's love story and my own that I got all sentimental and took my own walk down memory lane.  Her style was funny and easy to read and considering the recent stresses of moving and changing jobs and all that stuff, it hasn't hurt a thing to be reminded of those days when love was fresh and new.  Some of her stories took me back more than twenty years.

• I wasn't really planning to marry Alan.  We started dating the end of my senior year and I thought we would date through the summer, then I would go off to college and get on with my life.  Like Ree, I found it more than a little difficult to move on to a life that didn't include him.

"Logically I knew I couldn't possibly allow this new man to derail me from where I really wanted to go in life.  But it would take a little more time for me to work up the gumption to put the brakes on our ever-increasing momentum.  I simply wasn't finished kissing him yet" (43).

• The summer before we got married, Alan came to visit me at the apartment I shared with my friend, Heather.  At that time, Heather was moving progressively toward vegetarianism, but she would eat chicken and turkey.  I had the bright idea to cook them supper instead of us (poor college students!) going out.  I don't know what possibly possessed me to put ground turkey in a can of cream of mushroom soup and call it supper, but they gamely tried to eat my horrible concoction.  After I took one bite, however, I pronounced it inedible and whisked their bowls away (and we ordered pizza, of course!).

"I watched as he dutifully ate my dinner, unaware that, as I later learned, throughout the meal he seriously considered calling one of the cowboys and asking them to start a prairie fire so he'd have an excuse to leave" (44).

• Dare I share the story of my love visiting me at college and as he prepared to leave (amidst some kissing and a close embrace) I whispered that he smelled so good, I wished I could hold that smell forever.  He ever so romantically (giggle) drew away from me and whipped his shirt off over his head in one smooth motion.  He leaned back in for a quick peck and left me with his shirt!!  Oh, how that memory makes me smile.  I thought he was so romantic, as I pictured him driving all the way back home with no shirt on.  I put that gray Tshirt (oh yes, his infamous gray Tshirt, worn a size small to emphasize those broad shoulders I so admired) on a bear he had given me and slept with it, my nose nuzzled into his smell, for many nights afterward.

"I'll miss the smell of his shirt" (45).

• Then there was the time, shortly after we had begun dating, that my friend Angie and I were driving a bit too fast down a gravel road near his house and I lost control and ran off in the ditch.  We hitched a ride with a passing neighbor to Alan's house and he and his dad brought the tractor over to pull my car out.  As we reminisced over this event recently, he grinned as he told me "I'd have gone out and rented a tank to get you out of there if I had to, you know."  awwwwww  His dad called me "Crash" for some time after that. . .

"My car was stuck, the right two tires wedged inextricably in a deep crevice of the earth on the side of the road.  On the list of the Top Ten Things I'd Want Not to Happen on the First Meeting Between My Boyfriend's Mother and Me, this would rate about number four" (84).

• I couldn't believe my eyes my husband's frequent phrase popped out on the page!  Seriously, who says that?!

"Time to make the doughnuts," he said, peeling back the covers (275).

• My hubby grew up on a dairy farm.  Sometimes I have been thankful for his matter-of-fact approach to. . .sensitive. . .subjects as a result of this upbringing.  The man simply doesn't get embarrassed or uncomfortable.  There are topics, and have been situations, that I find embarrassing and uncomfortable to talk about or share, but my farmer husband takes things in stride and that has made many situations that occur in marriage, childbearing, sickness, etc. a little easier to experience with him.  Thus I couldn't help but laugh in commiseration at the advice Ree received shortly after delivering her first baby.

"'You know, you need to be careful not to get a sour bag.'  I sat there, staring blankly ahead.  Little did I know it was but one of the many times my brother-in-law would draw a parallel between me and livestock" (303).

There were lots of fun parallels in our lives that made the book enjoyable to read, especially at this season of my life.  I laughed out loud several times--both because I could relate and because she is simply a wonderful storyteller.  But I was surprised at one experience we shared that was no laughing matter and which Carrie didn't mention (obviously, it just didn't stand out to her in the same way it did to me).  Ree's reflections on  her parents' divorce were particularly well-written even as it wasn't a commonality one would like to share. 

"I'd worn that label like a badge, that pride of being one of the minority of twenty-somethings whose parents' marriage was still going strong, whose family's foundation hadn't been shaken by divorce.  And just now, in the blink of an eye, all my illusions of a stable, perfect home life had been shattered" (87).


"As an adult, watching the marriage of your mother and father implode and disintegrate is like watching a train wreck happen in slow motion.  And your parents are the conductors, and the passengers on the train are family, and many lifelong friends, and all the future grandchildren, and a community, and memories and hopes and dreams.  And they're all about to die in a fiery, deadly accident.  Oh, and you're on the train, too.  But you're also watching from outside the tracks.  You want to scream, to try to warn the operators of the train of the devastation that's about to come.  But it's a nightmare, and your voice is squeezed and squelched and nothing comes out.  And you're powerless to stop it" (114).

 Overall, I enjoyed this light read, although I will borrow Carrie's phrasing to warn the reader of a few "steamy make-out scenes".  This is not an account of God writing a love story, I don't want to mislead anyone, it is simply her story which instigated my own little stroll down memory lane.