Opening Track Puns

Three men go camping in the wilderness; a German, an Italian and a Czechoslovakian. While asleep, their campsite is attacked by a couple of bears and all 3 men are presumed killed. Forest Rangers get deployed to find the missing campers. After inspecting the campsite, the Rangers discover the bear tracks and follow them to the den. Inside are the 2 bears, a male and a female, which the Rangers quickly kill. First, they opened the stomach of the female and inside were the remains of the German and Italian men.

"Looks like our work here is done," the lead Ranger says to his partner.

"But we only found 2 bodies!" The partner cries back.

The Ranger removes his sunglasses and looks vacantly into the distance before finally telling his partner:

"Clearly the Czech is in the male."

Trevor loved tractors. And I mean, really loved tractors. Forget any obsessions or high-level interests you may have, chances are they pale in the face of Trevor’s love for tractors.

Every day Trevor would get up, in his tractor-themed bedroom in his tractor-themed house, with its tractor-themed wallpaper and tractor-themed carpets, and he would make his bed with its tractor-themed duvet and tractor-themed sheets. He would go downstairs in his tractor-themed pajamas into his tractor-themed kitchen, with its tractor-themed tiles and cupboards, and he would eat his breakfast while perusing the latest tractor-themed magazine or annual.

Trevors’s degree in Agricultural Engineering hung on his living room wall, along with a copy of his thesis, which centred around (you guessed it) tractors. The living room was decorated with all sorts of tractor-related trinkets, including die-cast models, paintings and drawings.

The hedges in Trevor’s front garden were trimmed in the shape of tractors. His lawn was vividly decorated with tractor-driving garden gnomes, and his garden furniture was constructed from various parts from vintage tractor designs.

Trevor just had one thing missing from his otherwise tractor-centric life; he had never actually owned, nor driven, a real tractor.

Not for his lack of trying, of course. Trevor had been to many tractor shows over the years, and visited many farms with friends of his, but none of the tractors he had seen had ever been quite right. Trevor was so knowledgeable about tractors that every single one he had come across had possessed some hidden trait that he wasn’t keen on. His first experience of driving a real tractor had to be perfect.

One day, Trevor was flicking through one of his favourite publications, Powertrain Quarterly, when there was a knock at the door. Trevor answered, and it was his friend and fellow tractor enthusiast, Jeff.

Trevor welcomed Jeff in, and over tea and crumpets served on tractor-themed crockery, they discussed the merits of aluminium drawbars and front-end loaders. Eventually Trevor pressed Jeff to explain the reason for his visit.

“Well” said Jeff, “As I’m sure you know the convention comes to town later”.

The convention. Trevor had been thinking of little else the past three weeks. The neighbouring town annually threw a convention for farmers, particularly farmyard machinery. There would be combine harvesters, lawnmowers, and of course, tractors.

“Yes of course” replied Trevor

Yesterday was Opening Day (baseball) at Target Field (Minnesota). The first 10,000 or so fans received a free blue zip-up hoodie with "Twins" emblazoned on the front. It's a damn fine hoodie.

It's also packed on the stadium concourse. 40,123 attendees that day. As my husband and I are making our way through a dense crowd along the right field concourse, an older gentleman stops me in my tracks with this big grin and says, "Wow, that's a great sweatshirt! Where'd you get it?"

He was holding one in his hand.

His other hand was holding that of his wife, who was rolling her eyes pretty hard. I imagine that was neither the first nor last time he'd made that joke yesterday.