By Lee Pitts

Once in a great millennium a major change will occur in society that alters life on this planet as we know it. The use of baler twine is one of those not-so-great revolutionary mutations. To understand the significance of this repulsive pla-gue upon the earth we must first review the history of baling wire in North Ameri-can agriculture and the important role it has played.

The invention of mechanized equipment such as the tractor allowed a few to feed many. In this period of mechanization no invention was as important as the baler, not necessarily because it was a better way to put up hay, but because it produced baling wire. These wadded up clumps of metal tossed into heaps all over the countryside made it possible for all the machinery in the "Age of Tools" to keep running.

It was during this Age of Tools that man made the despicable discovery that if you messed with machinery long enough it would break. Without baling wire it could not be fixed. The rusty wire was used to tie up mufflers, adjust linkage, keep tailgates up and tarps down. And when Neanderthal man locked himself out of the cab of the truck it was used to gain access. Without baling wire to fix the machinery we would all still be using primitive tools such as hoes, shovels and teenagers to get our work done.

Ownership of private property for the masses ushered in the most productive phase in the history of agriculture. It was actually baling wire’s distant cousin, barbed wire, that made the delineation of such private property possible. But barbed wire had a tendency to break and it had to be spliced. Replacing it with more barbed wire produced bloody hands, scarred bodies, and colorful vocabularies. So, baling wire was used to repair fences. If it wasn't for baling wire, and the threat of lawsuits between neighbors over inferior bulls, the broken fences never would have been mended. Gates would have collapsed and bovines, hunters and other trespassers would have ravaged all personal property from Tierra Del Fuego to the Northern Territory.

In this Golden Age ingenious ranchers and farmers found many household uses for baling wire. Instead of buying their wives a clothes dryer they just hooked a few pieces of baling wire together and made clotheslines. They used it to clean their guns and unplug their sinks. Without baling wire television would have been a dismal failure for it was the baling wire antennas that brought in the signal loud and clear to rural homes. Because there were so many practical uses ranchers began hoarding the wire in rusting stacks. Nothing ever broke that a trip to the wire pile wouldn't fix.

Disaster struck when some economist or university researcher figured out that using fibrous twine to wrap hay would be much more economical. Without considering the far-reaching implications, farmers began using this worthless orange twine in place of baling wire. As any thinking person could have predicted, wire stockpiles rapidly diminished around the world until one day, when a gate fell down, a rancher sent his wife to the wire pile where she made a shocking discovery. Their valuable wire hoard had been depleted. Fences fell down, trucks wouldn't work and squeeze chutes fell apart. For the first time in history ranchers had to buy new wire. This ruined the entire agricultural economy which has never fully recovered.