Mr. Weed Eater

As I was trimming around trees, sidewalks and mail boxes yesterday, I thought of the first time I ever saw a Weed Eater. 

It was the early 1970s, and I had recently gone to work for 3M Company as a copier service man.  After a service meeting at our office in far Southwest Houston, the dispatcher gave me a call in Greenway Plaza on my way back to my territory Northeast of town. 

I was in the elevator, headed back to my car for a part, when I met a man carrying a strange looking device.

It was a local dance studio owner named George Ballas, who invented the contraption, and he had brought his prototype to Greenway in search of investors. 

Although he had to know that I was in no position to help him, he happily demonstrated his invention to me on the lawn at the edge of the parking lot – maybe because I was the first person at Greenway Plaza that day to show any interest. I, for one, was sold.  I would have invested in his scheme immediately if I’d had two nickels to rub together.

He did scrape up enough money to get the company off the ground, and eventually sold it to Emerson Electric.  Emerson/Poulan took his idea and made Weed Eater a world wide household name.

FYI – in fact checking for this piece, I learned that the Ballas family kept dancing.  George’s son Corky was an international ballroom dancing champion, and his grandson Mark is a dancer/choreographer on Dancing With the Stars.