Now, procrastination was definitely one of his problems. He never said so,
but I think his motto was, “Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow”—or even later.
“Preventive maintenance” was not in his vocabulary. He might
not have ever heard the expression. I don’t think he ever made any effort to fix his car—whatever was going wrong
with them—until they would no longer budge. He very well may have originated the saying, “If it ain’t broke,
don’t fix it.”
And brakes? He never had a car that had any. Well, he did have one. A brand new Model T Ford. It burned up in a fire at the farm before he had a chance to wear the brakes out.
He spent more time with his foot on the brake pedal than he did with his foot on the floor. I say on the floor, because there
wasn’t any foot gas pedal. There were two levers that stuck out of the steering column just below the steering wheel.
The one on the left was the spark and the one on the right side was the gas, or accelerator. You gauged your speed by adjusting
the hand-operated accelerator.
Dad made real sure that he never drove over 25 miles an hour. He could just
tell how fast he was going, and if he felt that he was going faster he would ride his foot on the brake pedal. There were
two other pedals on a Model T, the clutch and the reverse. He spent enough time with his foot on the clutch that the clutch
apparatus never worked right either. But don’t fix it until it’s completely worn out.
And gas…he was forever running out of gas. He almost never bought more
than two gallons at a time. I can still see him…even though the gas pumps weren’t self-service, he usually wanted
to pump his own gas. There was a handle on the side of the pump. You had to work this handle from side to side to pump the
gas out of the tank in the ground into a big globe at the top of the pump. After it was filled, you stopped and waited for
it to kind of settle down. It was fun to watch the gas coming into the globe. It came through the bottom and made lots of
bubbles while it was coming in. Anyway, Dad would then put the gas nozzle in the automobile’s gas tank. Most of his
cars had the gas tank in front of the windshield and the gas cap was on top of it. Some of them had the tank under the seat.
I don’t think he ever had a car with the gas tank in the back. Well, before he turned the pump on so it would let the
gas run into the car, he’d always raise the hose up in the air, starting to drain the hose of gas. Then after he turned
it on he’d watch until the gas came down to the two-gallon mark in the globe. As soon as it made a bubble he shut it
off. He would then again, almost ceremoniously, drain the hose. He always got his full two gallons. But he would still run
out— which brings me to my story.
The family was headed toward town on a winter Saturday when we ran out of
gas. We were a couple of miles west of town on the road that ran along the old Valley Line Railroad tracks—out beyond
the County
Farm.
I know it was just before Christmas because Dr. Shultz glided up in his big
Buick, and he had a big evergreen tree tied onto his back bumper. He stopped alongside our car and hollered to Dad. “Can
I help you?” Dad told him he sure could. He said we’d run out of gas and would he give us a push into town. Doc
says, “Let me get behind you so we can check to see if the bumpers meet,” which he did and they did. Most car
bumpers met in those days. Dad got back into our car and motioned Doc to come on—and he did. Oh! How he did.
It wasn’t any time at all until the telephone poles were going by so
fast, they looked like a picket fence. Dad had never driven—let alone just steered—a car that fast before. We
boys were having the thrill of our lives. We were laughing and shouting with joy and must have been standing up because Pa
kept yelling for us to shut up and sit down. He was scared and real mad.
When we got to the Old Road 9, on the edge of LaGrange, Doc Shultz wanted
to turn right, so he let up on the gas expecting us to slow up so we could turn right, too. The closest filling station was
a place called the Old Log Cabin back to the right on US 20. But Dad didn’t
have any brakes and was going so fast he couldn’t turn. We just shot over Road 9—I know the wheels left the ground—and
onto another block where we went flying down Lightning Hill through the Hollow, past the city dump, and back up the other
side. I think the word “careening” might fit, too. We were still going fast enough to carry us all the way to
Road 9. By then we had slowed down enough to be able to turn left and coast into Henry Burr’s Texaco station. That had
to be the fastest, funniest ride we boys ever had, before and since—bar none.
Dad said some terrible things about Doc Shultz, including questioning his
ancestry as well as his legitimacy. The next week, Dad and Ray Combs fixed the brakes.
Pa would like to have, but none of us ever did forget the time we went “Flying
through lightning Hollow.”
