Alexander Botts and the Earthworm Tractor: Botts Goes to War, Vol. 5
Alexander Botts and the Earthworm Tractor: Botts Goes to War, Vol. 5
ITEM 264AP
By William Hazlett Upson
The world’s favorite tractor salesman calls it quits and joins the army in the fifth installment of the Alexander Botts series, Botts Goes to War. In this volume of short stories written in the 1940s and set during WWII, farm machines have proven themselves indispensable to the war effort, and who better to equip war-torn Europe than Alexander Botts?
Throughout the book, Botts encounters shortages of necessary materials, including rubber tires, cable, structural steel, and even civilian housing. Botts responds to each situation with characteristically unique and ill-advised approaches, such as sinking a tractor not once but twice to hide it from competitors or using priceless one-hundred-year old apple liqueur as fuel. Whether he finds success or failure so devastating that he is shipped off to another command, he survived to take on another assignment.
Alexander Botts was created in 1927 by author William Hazlett Upson, a WWI veteran. The stories are based on Upson’s work as a service mechanic and troubleshooter for the Caterpillar Tractor Company. For almost half a century, Botts was beloved by The Saturday Evening Post readers in more than 100 short stories. This book features two stories that did not originally appear in The Post. The series will be the first to present the collection in its entirety along with the original illustrations.
Paperback, 304 pgs., 6” x 9”; ISBN: 9781642341065
That’s right fans, Alexander Botts returns with 18 short stories written during World War II, documenting his efforts to help the nation become the Arsenal of Democracy. While the first story begins on May 1, 1941, it does take one aback with its appearance in the Dec. 6, 1941, issue of The Saturday Evening Post—so close to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In the story, our intrepid hero enlists in the Army. Intent on promoting mechanization in the Army in general and Earthworm tractors in particular, Botts is first assigned to a Missouri cavalry regiment—so much for the mechanized Arsenal of Democracy Botts envisions. However, as we have come to expect, all ends well for Captain Bott’s efforts to use Earthworm tractors to solve the Army’s problems. The stories, employing the established format of an exchange of letters and telegrams between him and Earthworm Tractor President Gilbert Henderson, offer adventure and misadventure in a variety of locales including Washington, D.C., Virginia, Canada and the Alaska Highway, Florida, Illinois, locations in the Pacific, England, France, Germany, and Washington State. Botts even gains a promotion to Major and notes “who can beat the United States Army?”
Book Review by Robert Gabrick
