The Family Album/One Cylinder Reminiscences, in Which the Rut Bound Past Merges Into the Smileless Present

by Arthur Baer

Layout 2

ONE CYLINDER REMINISCENCES, IN
WHICH THE RUT BOUND PAST
MERGES INTO THE SMILELESS
PRESENT

THIS picture was taken over twenty-five years ago. It shows pop driving the first motor car ever wrecked in our village.

We were very proud when pop came driving home the cows that day and discovered the car right in the middle of them. We don't know yet how it got there, but pop thinks it might have been frightened by a scrap of paper in a policeman's hands.

It's a Brush roadster. Do you remember those cars? They buttoned up the back and cranked up behind the left ear.

Pop said now that it's here we might as well get some cheap annoyance out of it before its frightful owner claims it.

So mom and us climbed into it and pop started to crank up, but it was like trying to pump water out of a bread box.

Aunt Ella said the dust will ruin my complexion, but pop told her that dust would smooth her complexion off. Which was about right, because Ella was wrinkled like Geronimo who used to take permanent waves out of people's scalps.

Uncle Al wouldn't climb into the car because he said he had a dream the other night. He was invited to a temporary banquet to get some permanent indigestion and he dreamed he was trying to get his shoes on. They were tight and he dreamed he was using a double-edged razor for a shoe horn. This dream frightened him so much he refused to pay his back taxes on some property he owned which was confiscated by the Government.

It was a fine piece of malaria estate right between two large lakes. One of the lakes was a swamp and the other was its little brother, and Uncle Al had been trying to sell it by mail. He had some pictures taken with a weak camera and printed them on souvenir postcards for distribution through the swamp buying districts.

Pop had bought one of Uncle Al's irrigated bogs on credit and told Uncle Al that he intended running for Congress on the frog ticket and should be elected sure.

Al told him he was of age and he didn't buy the property with his eyes closed. Pop said that was all right, his eyes were open but he was holding his nose.

So he told Uncle Al to come along on a joy ride, except they didn't call 'em joy riders in those days. They called 'em scorchers.

Al said no scorching for him. Pop told him to come along and that he was as welcome as a kick in the pants to a guy on the edge of a wharf.

Al reciprocated by indulging in some close-fitting personal remarks and it looked like we were going to have the first family quarrel ever held in an automobile when suddenly the engine started after two hours' cranking. It was a one-cylinder engine and when it missed it wasn't an engine.

Uncle wouldn't come along and so we bounced down the road from rut to rut when pop started in to indulge in some finely assorted profanity.

Mom cautioned him not to teach the children to swear and Pop choked back so many cuss words that he gained eleven pounds in weight.

It's a funny thing about people driving cars. They never have any fun. They are always sore at the driver ahead of them. They cuss the driver in back of them. They blast all the traffic constables. They swear at the tires, condemn the roads, argue with the signposts, get black in the face with congested Billingsgate, roast all the speed regulations, hurl threats at the pedestrians and renounce civilization.

I never have yet ridden in any cars where the man at the wheel laughed except at some suffering on the part of humanity. The minute he starts to steer he becomes a plague to education and hopes that some orphan asylum will turn up or that somebody will twist a canary bird's neck.

I never ride in automobiles any more. The only chauffeur I ever saw smile turned out to be feeble-minded.

He was driving with one hand and had the other around my waist and he asked me to marry him and I said yes and then his relatives threw a net over him.

Well, good-by, and don't forget to slam the door in your face.

The first motor car ever wrecked in our village