July 20, 2004 @ 7:10 pm
Axes & Alleys:
The World’s Greatest Tractor Related
Magazine. Now Featuring Tractors!
A Special Tractor Related Issue!
Axes & Alleys has received numerous letters over the years, which we often publish. Recently, a disturbing spate of letters decrying Axes & Alleys’ move away from tractor-related phenomena. This flow of negative energy has increased proportionally with the number of such issues published.
As Axes & Alleys’ new Editor-In-Chief and former cover girl, I vow to address these issues. While we will continue to publish content of various natures for the foreseeable future, we have decided to bring you, our readers, a special treat.
This month’s issue will be solely related to tractors, tractor history, tractor maintenance and tractor repair. Each subsequent issue will not follow this format, however we offer you this special, collector’s edition, full black and white spread.
Axes & Alleys’ readership and advertising sales have grown 2138% and twenty-fold respectively in the past year. Many of our readers are no longer interested in tractor repair and maintenance, as evidenced by the past seven letters sections. Furthermore, a growing number of our employees are drawn from non-tractorial fields. Axes & Alleys’ is only a magazine without its employees.
This issue is also new in that it is sponsored by AgroFarm™, a Daniel Bester, Inc. Company™. We felt a special issue required a special offer, so we brought AgroFarm™ into the fold with this one.
In addition to the normal journalistic content, you will find a special, subscribers-only extra. In addition to two unique covers, each magazine will also include a sample of AgroFarm™’s space-engineered microfertilizer or instructions on how to build your own nuclear powered farm or a genetically modified tuber from AgroFarm™’s parent company, NuLife, which can withstand the effects of aging.
xxx ooo
Delores R. Grunion
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@ 7:28 pm
Written correspondences from good natured gentlemen who have read our previous installments and wish to comment on some aspects thereof.
To the Publisher,
Ms. Grunion, I would just like to point out that you are one hot piece of ass. You’re good at that editing gig, too. But damn! What a nice rack! I mean, I’ve never spent so much time in the bathroom reading a tractor magazine (except for the John Deere Catalog, 1988).
Well, anyway, I just wanted to find out more about you. Are you married? What is your favorite sexual position? How can I make my wife be more like you in every way? Are those natural? When can we expect a full nude pictorial spread in Axes & Alleys?
Please let me know if I’ve been too forward.
Sincerely,
Dr. John F. Kennedy (relation)
Pembroke College, Cambridge, UK
To the Editors,
I would like to take this most momentous and grand opportunity to craft a proper response, for publication in your letters section, to Mr. Ilich Ramirez “Carlos the Jackal” Sanchez’s letter of last month (Written Correspondences, Vol. 456-BR7 Issue 2, April 2004) stating that “there is nothing quite as cool as Quakers.”
It is a well recorded fact in scientific circles that the source of Pennsylvania’s magic is not, in fact, Quakers. Quakers have done more to denude Pennsylvania of its magicalness than any other single group.
Pennsylvania is magical because it was seeded with magical grass by an ancient Red Injun sorcerer, who thereby imbued the area with paranormal properties. As is the nature of grass, it spreads and some of these magical properties have been passed into parts of surrounding states: New York, New Jersey, Montsylvania and
by passenger pigeon to Ohio.
This dilution of Pennsylvania’s magical powers threatens the tourist industry, the environment and thus the unique nature of the state. Quakers have only sped up this process through their “peace” and their “farming.” I urge all readers to protest such acts of Quaker aggression wherever they arise.
Yours truly,
R. Bud Dwyer
Harrisburg, PA
To the Editors,
I am deeply disturbed by your recent move over the last decade towards non-tractor-related subject matter. I find this trend obscene and ask that it be stopped forthwith, returning Axes & Alleys to the pristine state it once enjoyed in tractornalia.
Once I was a businessman in a big city with a nice condo, a supermodel wife, seven figure income and the rest. At that time, forty years ago, such things were commonplace. No one was poor, mismoral or gay.
As a child I had a fascination with tractors. This waned with age as my interest in women and money grew. However, a great aunt of mine, as great aunts do, never forgot this childhood fascination and forty years ago gave me a subscription to Axes & Alleys as a birthday present.
Boy did it open my eyes! I straight away divorced my wife, quit my job and left the city for the country, shunning such a life of excess. I purchased a large tract of land in western Iowa, married a pretty farmer’s daughter and increased my profit share over the years.
I am now the Chief Executive Officer of the world’s largest agricultural interest, having brought prosperity and wealth to my adopted town, now a bustling metropolis thanks to my enterprises. I ask that you turn back to a simpler time with your magazine.
Sincerely,
John Henry,
CEO AgroFarm™
West Liberty, IW
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@ 7:32 pm
Denizens of Trendy Williamsburg, NY Areas Adopt New Tractor Fad
“Tractors are cool” -Grand St. Resident Steve Silachs
Despite the fact that she is pictured
naked, Katie Valencia is a world renowned
expert on clothing styles and clothing-
related-item styles. She is director of the
International Garment Consortium and also
collects rare or misshapen weasel skulls.
The neighborhood of Williamsburg, in Brooklyn, NY, has seen many interesting new fashion trends in the past few years since the light-industrial zoned area became a haven for artists, trendniks and other malcontents.
The trendniks’ fashion sense is inherently tied to nostalgia, especially ironic nostalgia. Thus, the trendniks can often been seen sporting circa 1950s Soviet paraphernalia, circa 1960s unkempt haircuts, circa 1970s tight jeans, and circa 1980s Pumas.
Essentially, the idea of trendnik fashion is simple; the older and more lame the garment, the greater ironic appeal it possesses. Thus, when this idea is carried to its natural conclusion, the average trendnik begins dressing for the 2000s by wearing the clothing and accessories of a rural farmer in 1980s Kentucky; including but not limited to trucker hats, Pabst Blue Ribbon, and Johnny Cash records.
The latest trend to hit the L train follows this progression. Recently, many twenty-somethings in Bedford and Alphabet City have been seen raising chickens, hunting for deer, and most importantly, driving tractors from their studio apartments to their various destinations; art galleries, faux dive bars, Thai eateries, and organic natural food stores.
Tractor popularity amongst urban post-youths is, according to the trade journal Annual Tractor Sales Quarterly, at an all time high. Though tractor dealers are pleased with current popularity of urban farm equipment and accessories, most dealers are realistic about the trend.
“While my sales are up 200% for this quarter” stated Greenpoint tractor dealer ‘Honest Hank’ Gronjez “I figure this fad will go away just like pet rocks or parachute pants.”
Fashion insiders are skeptical that the trendniks will continue the tractor trend, especially since Agro-Farm, a division of Daniel Bester Inc. had recently signed a deal with VonDutch and Steve Madden Shoes to sell the “Infinity Mark VIII Tractor” in H&M retail outlets throughout the five boroughs, no doubt increasing the popularity of tractors to the point where trendniks will no longer favor them. The fact that Agr0-Farm has recently hired Ashton Kutcher as its official spokesman for the “Infinity Mark VIII” seems to back up the idea that the tractor trend has a limited lifespan.
Either way, next time you walk down Lorimer Street, make sure you don’t get run over by the tractor, the newest ironic Williamsburg trend.
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@ 7:46 pm
By Rev. Jeremy Rosen
Rev. Jeremy Rosen is the Clem Pickford Scholar
in Residence for Tractor and Farm Implement History
at Montsylvania College for Agriculture Technical
Design Arts’ Astronomy Department. In his spare
time he enjoys bocce ball, studying ancient
soothsaying entrails sites to see if they were right
and balcony construction.
The first tractor was the mule or ox, whence the modern terms for an engine’s power, oxpower or the less popular horsepower. These early meat tractors replaced human power in agriculture. Mechanical creations built around fantastic dynamos eventually replaced the meat tractor as the ideal farming tool late in the 19th Century. The development of such mechanical creatures is the story of humanity and civilization.
Until around 1920, meat tractors were seen commonly in the company of steam or dynamo-powered tractoring contraptions. Steam engines were mounted on carriages and became self-propelled, prompting manufacturers of gasoline and dynamo powered tractors to do the same. With one brief resurgence in the 1960s, steam power has all but been replaced by internal combustion in the last century.
In 1891, contrary to establishment claims of a latter date, Edwin Pomeroy constructed the first tractor which could go backward. Subsequently, he built a tractor with left turn capability and a cup holder (the first recorded use of such a device). His Replacement Meat Tractor Service was later purchased by what we now know as AgroFarm™.
The Pomeroy and other such early marvels caused many farm accidents, even though they lacked speed and oxpower until the engines were improved. Many migrant farm workers were so entranced by these mechanical beasts that they stood stock still as the machines bore down upon them. As a proper break had not been invented yet, the drivers were unable to stop.
During World War I tractors became the initial basis for modern tank weaponry. The first true tank, the Abelson Mechanotillery Mk. V was built upon a Pomeroy frame. The Great War saw a lack of farm labour and increased demand for all agricultural products, due to the requisitions of the U.S. armed forces. The Age of the Tractor began.
In 1917, Luscious Delacroix, of the Delacroix Motorworks stepped in to meet the demand. Delacroix used the increased efficiency offered by Henry Ford’s assembly line system to manufacture Delax tractors cheaply, with the initial cost being $200 dollars or less. Delacroix, incidentally, also invented the idea of annual percentage rate financing (or APR) used by the modern automobile industry. The oft forgotten servitude clause of his tractor loans has been discarded by an increasingly liberal and skittish public.
The Delax was so named because Henry Ford had several high-placed spies in the Delacroix Motorworks who informed him of Delacroix’s intention to manufacture and sell tractors. So Ford hired a young man also named Delacroix and began manufacturing his tractors under that name. Only a few bogus Delacroix’s were ever built, however, because Ford soon pushed Delacroix out of business and renamed his company the Ford Motor Company.
In 1932, nearly three times the number of tractors produced in 1929 were used on farms across the U.S. Maizebelt. The Zelbit DRX-274/B.25 DD was introduced that year, bringing tractoring to new heights of glory. It introduced several features that were to become a trend on the tractor market.
The Zelbit DRX-274/B.25 had five wheels instead of four, included a spare wheel kit for long distance tractoring and was the first multi-purpose tractor. It’s distance tractoring capabilities allowed it to function in the field and on the road and the extra wheel allowed greater buoyancy for pleasure boating in nearby lakes.
This was wholly due to the Ford company’s introduction of rubber tires, which gave a smoother ride and more speed. Racing engine enthusiast Thomas “Sonny” Bonaventure took a Zelbit DRX-276/B.26 out during this great age and drove the rubber-tired tractor to an astounding 55MPH, thus setting the eventual speed limit on most national highways. Sonny even got a moving violation ticket on this adventure!
The 1940s saw the emergence of a new ethos in tractor design, luxury! Tractors took on streamlined appearances, sporting huge headlights for night driving, propellers for pleasure boating and cushioned seating for four. One idea was most prescient.
The Kalisotta-Bestoria Company, in 1938, thought to itself that a design should be implemented where not only could a farmer plow his fields, but take the family to the show, into town for an Italian dinner, or to even greater heights of tractordom. The result was the ComfyTract, complete with flashy hood ornament, headlights, an optional closed cab, dining compartment, compass and, with optional HEMI, a top speed of 47MPH.
New York ad firms maintained a nice run of publicity with the ComfyTract. Pictures of socialite couples in formalwear dismounting their ComfyTract in front of New York landmarks were not uncommon. Farmers didn’t buy it, however and thus the ComfyTract didn’t sell.
Though the initial tractor/tank hybrids were not entirely successful, the tractor manufacturers spent many years under contract to the U.S. armed forces of light and good. After the War for Ultimate Freedom, tractors were further upgraded again and again, some featuring fantastic new options, increased performance and usefulness. One tractor was even built on the chassis of an automobile!
AgroFarm™ was the first company to introduce electric dash lights and key-fired ignitions, forcing other companies to do the same to compete and making the upgrades come into general use. Ailerons and five point power traction (most notably on the Bester Technologic & Farm Implements, Ltd. SuperFarm Cab Tract around 1959) improved the versatility and performance of tractors everywhere. The introduction of transmissions using more than one gear, shift-on-the-go, nuclear power steering, and reclining seats relieved John Q. Farmer of the awkwardness, anxiety and discomfort of farming. Turbo-charged diesel engines began to replace their gas-powered predecessors, raising maximum oxpower to 150 and making the tractor race a popular national pastime.
The modern agriculture enabling nucleo-mechanical furrowing device, like the 1979 AgroFarm™ Technotract would be unrecognizable to Delacroix, the farmhand who died at such a machine’s hands or the farm owner who bought his Delax in the earlier part of last century.
In the unsurpassable comfort of an air-conditioned cab, listening to his stereo eight track, with optional cup holder and nuclear powered steering, the modern farmer might be found in his field opening 4 furrows at a time at speeds of nearly 6MPH. On the other hand, he might have to pay $575,000 for that comfort and ease-of-work. Humanity has come a long way from the days of the meat tractor and the future looks bright for all things tractorial!
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