Alexander Botts and the Earthworm Tractor: Botts Begins, Vol. 1
Alexander Botts and the Earthworm Tractor: Botts Begins, Vol. 1
ITEM 250AP
By William Hazlett Upson
Botts Begins won gold for the 2021 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award in Humor!
Welcome to the world of Alexander Botts and Earthworm Tractors, a series of humorous short stories about a bumbling salesman’s trials and tribulations selling crawler tractors. His unusual sales tactics send the machines through impervious swamps, murky lakes, and high snowbanks. His schemes consistently backfire but, in the end, he never fails to close the deal! In this book, Botts talks his way into a job selling Earthworm Tractors for The Farmers’ Friend Tractor Company.
Alexander Botts was created in 1927 by author William Hazlett Upson, and these stories are based on Upson’s brief career as a mechanic for the Caterpillar Tractor Company. For almost half a century, Botts was beloved by Saturday Evening Post readers in more than 100 short stories. This book is the first in a series and will be the only publication to present the collection in its entirety, including five Botts stories that never appeared in the Saturday Evening Post.
Alexander Botts and his Earthworm Tractor will charm readers young and old and entertain with innocent mayhem, timeless humor, and twists of fate.
Paperback, 254 Pages
Welcome to the delightful fictional world of Alexander Botts, salesman extraordinaire for the Earthworm tractor. In his Forward to Volume 1, Lee Klancher notes his short stories, first published in the Saturday Evening Post and starting in April 1927, take the reader back to a time when “motorized equipment was one of the wonders of the era, transforming people’s daily lives and physically reshaping the world around them.” The stories’ charm for today, he adds, is their account of the bumbling and usually self-aggrandizing Alexander Botts whose efforts ultimately lead to “results that benefit the honest and the underprivileged.”
Author Upson knew the tractor business well, having worked for the Caterpillar Tractor Co. Volume 1 features the first 12 short stories that begin with Botts’ employment in 1920. Reflecting the primary means of communication that existed in the 1920s, Upson recounts Botts’ exploits via letters and telegrams. The original illustrations by artist Tony Sarg add visual appeal. Volume 2 features Botts’ triumphs over self-inflicted difficulties in 12 more stories set aboard ships with visits to France, Italy, the U.S.S.R., and Germany. Octane Press intends to publish the entire collection of the more than 100 Alexander Botts short stories. I cannot wait.
Book Review by Robert Gabrick
