Coleman Taylor hopes to win $500 for Pink Hill Elementary School, where he’s a fourth grader, with his entry of a rock painted with the image of a tractor in a contest advertised with the hashtag #MichelinRocks. Photo by Patrick Holmes / Lenoir County Public Schools

Fourth-grader Coleman Taylor collects unusual rocks and he likes tractors. Those traits made the Pink Hill Elementary School student a natural to enter a national contest advertised with the hashtag #MichelinRocks and designed to – in the words of its sponsor – “show us how you keep it moving.”

If he wins the online contest, his school will win $500 – money Pink Hill Elementary plans to use to erect a barrier to make its car-rider line safer

Coleman’s entry in the 5-17 age group is a green tractor painted on a favorite rock he found on vacation at a pond off the Blue Ridge Parkway near Mt. Airy.

“There’s a little mill pond there, Mabry Mill, where we go every year,” said Amy Taylor, Coleman’s mother and an exceptional children’s teacher at Pink Hill. “He always picks up a rock from there and brings it back home and puts it on a shelf in his room.”

The painted image of the tractor blowing exhaust as it plows a brown field against a blue sky was no accident either. “I love the brand of John Deere,” Coleman said. “I want to be a farmer.”

The picture of Coleman’s rock is online at the contest site https://www.michelintruck.com/keepitmoving.

Supporters can vote by logging in with their Facebook account. Votes are limited to one per email address. The deadline for voting is Jan. 31.

If he wins, the $500 first prize would be paired up with a $1,000 grant Pink Hill Elementary recently received from LCPS for campus beautification. It would help build a safety fence along a sharp curve in the driveway to the school.

“Our goal is to put up a really bright colored fence – almost like a Crayola type of fence – that would make our car rider line safer,” Amy Taylor said. “Different groups of students would have a section of the fence and decorate it.”