Old drag strap works on carpets with same results as pulling deer

Back when we made the decision to move upstairs with all the antiques just in case the levee did not hold The Great Flood of 2011, we drafted several friends to help move the heavy stuff, then fed them steaks in appreciation. The next day I was faced with what was left downstairs, which was mostly light stuff that could be moved up on counters or tables in case we got waist-deep water. However, I had forgotten the rugs.

Rugs are just kind of there, you know? At least for men.  You walk on them, you don’t mirate over them. Yet my Bride had decreed that they had to be above water too, so I shrugged and went to rolling them up. Most were small, and I could balance them over my shoulder, rolled up, and tote them up the outside staircase with no problem. I saved the two biggest for last, of course.

The big rugs in the den and dining room were 9X12 Persian-type rugs. No matter, they roll up too. I done that, then tried to lift one onto my shoulder.

Lordee! I don’t know what the Persians were using for carpet weaving back in those days, but it was sho’nuff heavy! Yak hair, maybe? Camel hair? What else do they have over there in those deserts? Whatever, I was not going to throw those suckers over my shoulder and trot up the stairs, that was apparent.

Years ago, I killed a large buck that durn near herniated me dragging him out of the swamp to where I could get him in a pickup. That Christmas, Dear Old Santa put a drag strap in my stocking, and I have used it gratefully ever since to drag deer out of the woods. Would it work on a rug?

 Yea, verily! I hooked that two-inch nylon strap across my chest, looped the dragging end around the rolled-up two feet of one end of that rug, and bowed my back. It slid out the front door, into the bed of my pickup, which I then backed up to the outside stairs, and up we went, with hardly a grunt. Didn’t break a sweat!

So, once we’d finished refinishing and polishing downstairs floors, I simply reversed the process. I hooked up the drag strap to the rolled-up rug upstairs, leaned into my job, and drug the rug out onto the balcony. The pickup was already backed up to the bottom of the staircase. I started downstairs.

A couple of years after Santa gave me the drag strap, I wrote a story some of you may remember about killing a really big buck (“The Man-Eating Mossyhorn of Big Hongry Territory”) out at Cuddin Jack’s place in the hills.

After field-dressing the monster, I hooked him up for the drag to the pickup, which was fortunately mostly downhill. Onliest thing was, I had no experience in dragging on pine needles, since the Delta ain’t got no pines in the woods.

The dang deer was heavier than I was, and halfway down, he passed me at speed. I lost my footing on the slick pine needles, and ended the trip with the deer dragging me down the hill!

I should have remembered that experience to apply to my rug-dragging.

As I got four or five steps down the staircase, I realized that my drag was getting considerably easier, then glanced backward to see that the Persian Revenge was gaining on me! Luckily, I had real shoes on, but a reconstructed knee has made going downstairs sideways a necessary thing since 1982.

But this was an emergency.Me and that rug were neck-and-neck for several steps, again at speed usually impossible for a crippled ex-footballer to attain.  Then I gained a step.  This was going to be close!  As I hit the bottom of the staircase and jumped into the pickup bed, I grabbed the dragstrap behind me and gave a hoist to lift the end of the flying carpet just above the level of the tailgate.  We both ended up jammed against the toolbox, me betwixt the rug and the corrugated metal.

However, neither the rug, the strap, nor me suffered any apparent damage, though I shudder to think what would have happened had I donned flip-flops earlier that day.  I just hope the drag strap will get another workout deer season!