Farmer Jones & His Atomic Tractor
In the U. S. the drive was on to unlock the atom before the
Nazis did. They succeeded in dropping an A-bomb on Hiroshima,
Japan, so they could put a quick end to the war. It worked. Now
was the dawn of the nuclear age.
Back on the farm, Farmer Jones was reading his Popular Mechanics
magazine about how soon the atom would be harnessed to power
such things as farm tractors. A man of vision like Farmer Jones
could see the wave of the future, and he knew he had to have
one. Just think, no more worries about gas prices! He ordered
the first model off the showroom floor, the Model “A” (for “Atom”).
The day it was delivered to his farm, everybody in Holloway
County showed up to marvel at this miracle of modern technology.
Why the price tag alone caused some eyebrows to raise, but when
Farmer Jones pulled out onto the lower field with three plows
and took off in high gear, he also dropped some jaws! By the
time he reached the end of the field folks speculated that Jones
was doing around 75 miles per hour, plows and all. (The earlier
models didn’t have speedometers, and the government had yet to
put speed limits on tractors out in the field. Of course, that
was soon to change.)
The early models also had inferior brakes compared to its horsepower,
so when Farmer Jones reached the end of the field in a glorious
cloud of dirt, he misjudged his speed a bit and slammed into
the old stone wall at the end of his row. Well, there went Farmer
Jones head over heels past his shiny new atomic tractor flopped
right into the manure pile on the other side of the wall. (There
were no seat belts on the early models, either.)
Jones slid off the pile, a little embarrassed by such a sudden
stop, and also a little worried about his new tractor with the
new dent in it. He’ read the manual and it cautioned him about
hairline cracks in the nuclear pile, so as he was inspecting
the reactor for some tell-tale cracks, he hardly noticed the
crowd of friends running up to him.
“You okay, Jones? Golleee! I ain’t seen a car going as fast
as you was down that field! Whooo boy! Now that atomic tractor
is really somethin’!” All his neighbors nodded in agreement,
big smiles everywhere. “Well, Jones,” a thin woman with a big
wad of snuff in her lip piped up, “with a tractor that fast you
could just about feed the whole world, and make a lot of money
at it, too!” Again, approving nods and murmurs. Little did they
know.
“Aw, shucks!” said Jones as he flicked a dry manure chip off
the front of his bib overalls, “I never figgered on nothin’ like
that.” But truth be told, Farmer Jones really had been entertaining
the thought of feeding the whole world- for a price. He’d been
burning some midnight oil over the past few weeks, and figured
that it would take a great financial risk to purchase an atomic
tractor. But if his math was right, he could out-produce all
the farms in his county put together! In order to get the money
together, though, he would have to re-finance his farm, dip heavily
into his retirement savings, maybe even declare bankruptcy and
for sure divorce his wife. Jones didn’t mull over it too long
before deciding. The possibilities of empire were just too great
to resist.
Yessir, Farmer Jones was never a man to look down or think twice.
He was a man of action, always looking ahead to a bright future.
That was quite a day that sunny afternoon in Holloway County
when Farmer Jones tested his new atomic tractor, and everybody
there knew it, too. A new day was dawning, a new era in agriculture.
Oh, there were a few die-hards, and it took some time, but before
long you could see the tell-tale signs of the new age as all
the farmers began to re-finance their farms, liquidate their
savings, declare bankruptcy and divorce their wives- all for
the sake of keeping up with the Jones’s. The rewards were sure
to come, and already there was talk of no more smoke or noise
pollution- these atomic tractors were so quiet. And on a really
dark night with no moon you could look out over your fields and
see a faint greenish glow coming from a few patches of ground.
Kind of pretty.
But try as they could, no one could keep up with Farmer Jones.
He got the jump on the new age, and was coming up with some pretty
spectacular and unexpected bonuses. It all started one day when
Farmer Jones checked out the lower end of his broccoli patch.
He’d sprung an oil leak there once, and now several of his plants
had grown to be as big as a Christmas tree! Not only that, but
several of his cabbage plants in the next row could each fill
a bushel basket.
Never one to get alarmed too easy, Farmer Jones called in his
local agricultural agent from the government. “Oh, that’s from
the nuclear radiation in your tractor oil, Jones. Just watch
for the leaks. You’ll be okay.” Farmer Jones promised he would
be more careful in maintaining his tractor. There’d been a Model
A meltdown last year over in Klein County. Farmer Jones even
went to see what had happened, but was pretty disappointed. There
wasn’t anything left to see.
Oh, he’d be careful all right, Farmer Jones thought as he tightened
the oil pan bolts. Careful to make sure he made more of them
skyscraper broccoli plants, that is. Success was on the horizon
in Jones’ eyes, as he tightened all the bolts- well, almost all
the bolts. One drip every so often wouldn’t hurt.
As the forerunner of nuclear-age agriculture in his area, Farmer
Jones soon became sort of a hero. After a lot of trial & error
to perfect his radioactive oil-dripping technique, his gigantic
veggies began to run away with every blue ribbon they could give
him at the county fair. But he was never happier than when he
pulled up to the Farmer’s Market in his truck loaded with Brussels
sprouts. They were his biggest seller. He couldn’t grow them
fast enough, even though by now he could take them from seedlings
to the size of basketballs in 3 ½ days easy. Yep, life was good
to Farmer Jones. And success was knocking hard.
Before long, our hero bought some choice bottom land and named
it “Beanstalk Acres,” after the fairy story of Jack and his amazing
plant. Only this was no fairy tale- the cash was rolling in.
So time went on and it got to the point that customers at the
Farmer’s Market only wanted his special varieties of vegetables.
Most of the other farmer’s have gone out of business by this
time, due in part to Jones’ shrewd marketing strategies. After
all, his varieties were sweeter and some cases even crisper (Jones
had discovered that a few extra oil drippings over by the eggplants
made them taste pre-fried. Now there wasn’t an Italian restaurant
in the whole state that would buy anything else for eggplant
parmigiana.)
But better yet, people really enjoyed a candlelight dinner that
needed no candles at all. Several plates of Beanstalk Acres special
“Candle Light” brand vegetables on the table were all you needed
to softly illuminate an entire dining room, providing a lovely
atmosphere. Most people had never known how imaginative Farmer
Jones could be, but at the scent of success in his nostrils his
creative juices flowed. Need a night-light? One carrot was totally
sufficient, shockproof, and would never burn out. Hey, it wouldn’t
even rot! The customers were even coming up with other added
advantages, too. A light bulb in your refrigerator was becoming
as quaint a notion as whale-oil lamps, as the citizens of Holloway
County grew to love that faint greenish glow of their favorite
veggies in the fridge. Saved electricity, too. Yes, technology
was on the move, and a man named Jones was determined to stay
on the cutting edge of The Good Life.
Oh sure, there were problems. Like the other day at the Farmerdoes
Market when Jake Whitwell showed up, obviously wanting to talk.
“Jones,” he stammered, “I don’t know how to tell you this, but
there’s rumors going around. Some folks is thinking maybe it
just ain’t right to eat a ‘tater big as a football. Now I ain’t
saying it, but there’s even talk that maybe people are getting
sick from eating your vegetables. I just thought you’d want to
know, that’s all.”
Farmer Jones, trying hard to hide a little nervousness, replied
that he’d never seen or heard such, and that his vegetables never
hurt him any. Of course, he failed to mention that ever since
he’d divorced his wife he didn’t have anybody to cook for him,
so he only ate canned food. And too, Jones was so busy managing
his radioactive kingdom that he hardly had time to pay attention
to anything else. It was very time-consuming to get the drip
just right on his tractor. So no, he hadn’t noticed.
But had he bothered to, he might have seen a fairly disturbing
sight. Holloway County, for all of its greenish glow, was looking
downright pale these days. He had noticed that most folks were
bigger, which he credited to cheap food; ever since the advent
of the atomic age, everyone just ate more, that’s all. After
all, times were good, weren’t they? Why, even the population
of Holloway County had swollen.
Maybe if Jones had bothered to take a good look, he might have
noticed that not only had the county swollen, but so had just
about every individual, too. Not a man given to trifles, he took
little notice. But had he done so, Jones might have noticed that
some of the young children in town had developed such things
as three arms; a good deal of baldness was going around, too.
One child was even rumored to have x-ray vision.
“But hey,” Jones reasoned, “There has to be some price to progress!
What do people think we should do, go back to plowing with a
mule?” And it was true. As strange as things had become in Holloway
County, nobody wanted to go back to buying Brussels sprouts the
size of golf balls at the same price as Beanstalk Acres Slam-dunk
variety. Why shoot, people could starve or go broke trying to
feed themselves on that stuff. No, there was no turning back
for the good citizens of the county, and nobody really wanted
to, except maybe for a few troublemakers.
There’d been a small group of’em on a little farm over by the
county line, and they actually did plow with a mule, don’t ask
me how. You could always tell who they were at the Farmer’s Market,
looking all skinny and a little too dark by modern county standards;
and the vegetables they sold at the market, why a bird couldn’t
live off of’em. And unlike the folks in town, they didn’t even
have so much as a wart, let alone an extra arm or two. It got
to the point where some folks didn’t take too kindly to them,
though, and ran’em off. Where they went is hard to say. Next
county, maybe.
Speaking of the next county, somebody over there was wondering
what that sound was they’d heard one day. It was a mighty pretty
day, just great for plowing, and Farmer Jones had been up since
the crack of dawn. He’d carefully checked his atomic tractor
for just the right oil drippage for the corn field, and headed
out for another productive day. Yep, Farmer Jones was a man of
vision, and never looked back. He also didn’t look down, either,
but always forward to another day of progress. So it escaped
his attention that his temperature gauge was slowly creeping
up as he hit another row at 75 miles per hour. Like we’d said
before, Farmer Jones was never one for trifles.
So when the folks in the next county over heard a dull thud
from across the mountain, one of them remarked that he hadn’t
heard a sound quite like that since that day in Klein County
when…when…well, he couldn’t remember exactly what it had been.
Memories weren’t doing too good these days, I guess. So a friend
of his had took off to see what had happened, but came back a
little disappointed. Said there wasn’t much to see. At least
not anymore.
And Jones? Well, the last anybody had seen of him he was sailing
up pretty high. Some local wit had said just about as high as
his imagination. Which was pretty high, I guess, at least high
enough so that no one’s ever seen him come down. At least not
yet. Everybody’s waitin’, though, just about starved to death
on them golf ball Brussels sprouts they have to make do with
now that Beanstalk Acres has been fenced off by the government.
But I guess, as Farmer Jones used to say, “That’s progress!”
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