The townspeople of White Valley, Pennsylvania smiled and waved as ten-year-old Cameron Bush rode his Simplicity lawn mower up and down the street through town. He’d been bugging his dad to refurbish the old machine that had been sitting in their garage for years, and now here he was driving it in public to celebrate the 4th of July.
“It was fun,” Cameron said.
The parade was his idea. So his dad, Dave Bush, affixed American flags to Cameron’s Simplicity and his own ‘69 Jacobsen and, towing a wagon with Anna, age 7, they kicked off their first annual tractor parade in this suburb of Pittsburgh. Anna has her own tractor, a 1970 AMF, but on this day she was a little too young to drive it.
“Yeah, we rebuild old garden tractors,” David said. “I pick them up wherever I find them and we just bring them back to how they were running originally.”
Dave’s joy of mowing started at an early age when his own father ran a Jacobsen dealership. He eventually took over the business until the state bought him out to make room for a new highway. The dealership was gone, but Dave’s hobby has remained.
“It’s just always been an interest of mine,” Dave said. “I just got into rebuilding the old ones after that, something that I just enjoyed personally.”
He has a few old mowers he’s working on right now.
“Cameron’s always up in the garage, helping me out; him and his sister. She’s up there, too.”
Some he sells, some he’ll keep.
“Right now, I’ve probably got four or five machines,” Dave said proudly. “Cameron’s Simplicity runs great. My Jacobsen belonged to my grand pap, so that’s another one I’m not gonna do anything with. But there were others in the past that we worked on and then sold.”
Some of the tractors Dave works on go back three generations. He hopes to instill this love of restoring old machines in his children.
“It gives us something to do together,” Dave said. Cameron was asked what’s the best part of being on his very own mower.
“The best part is being with my dad,” Cameron answered, “because most of the time he’s at work, so now I get to spend time with him.”
And the family can’t wait until next summer. As Dave posted on Facebook:
For those that saw our now 1st annual 4th of July tractor parade around town thanks for the waves and thumbs up let’s make it bigger next year.
Dave has already heard from nearly a dozen people who want to join in on the parade fun and celebrate both America and their joy of mowing.
“A whole bunch of people are interested in it, so it’ll be interesting to see how many tractors we can get.”
