Tag: Cars Page 1 of 3

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, November 23, 1946.

“Waste not,” proverbed Jimmie Frise, “want not.

“But, Jim,” I protested, “you say that anti-freeze is two years old?”

“It’s older than that,” admitted Jim. “It was two years ago I drained it out of my rad.”

“Well, then,” I figured, “why didn’t you use it last winter instead of now? Why have you left it all this time in your cellar?”

“Well, you remember last fall,” explained Jim. “Last fall, we figured the war was over. Everything was about to become plentiful again. Everything would soon be back to normal. New cars. New clothes. New furniture. New houses, New anti-freeze…”

“Anti-freeze was as hard to get last fall,” I pointed out, “as it is now¹.”

“Yeah,” said Jim, “but I got busy early. I got a friend of mine in a garage to snaggle me three gallons of anti-freeze. Which he did. And I used it all last winter. And when spring came, last spring, why, I said to myself – we don’t have to save old anti-freeze now. The war’s over. Everything will soon be back to normal. New cars. New clothes. New furniture. New houses…”

“And new anti-freeze,” I rounded off bitterly. “So you just drained last year’s anti-freeze down the sewer.²“

“Yes, sir,” said Jim. “Right down that drain, right there.”

And he pointed to the small drain-hole in his side drive. We were standing beside Jim’s car while it drained out the rusty water of the past summer’s driving. And in three large jars, one-gallon jars, stood the two-year- old anti-freeze which Jim had just brought up from his cellar.

The jars were brown glass. And the liquid within seemed clear and bright.

“It’s a very curious thing to me, Jim,” I said, crouching down to study the jars,” that there appears to be no sediment at all in this stuff. Wasn’t it rusty when you put it in here two years ago?”

“It was red,” agreed Jim, “and it thick with rust. But chemistry is a funny thing. Chemicals. undergo strange changes. That stuff has stood two whole years in the cellar. All the rust and sediment has settled to the bottom. It has, hardened there. It has congealed. It has, you might say, consumed itself by some mysterious chemical process.

I lifted one of the jars and examined the bottom.

“Careful there,” cried Jim. “Don’t shake it all up. I’ll decant it into the rad. And I don’t want it all stirred up.”

“There is,” I admitted grudgingly,” a small sort of sediment on the bottom…”

“That’ll be it,” said Jim. “That’ll be the rust. All that’s left of it. After two years of absolute stillness down in the dark cellar. Anyway, what is rust in anti-freeze? Just coloring. Nothing more. What seems to be an actual ingredient of the anti-freeze turns out to be nothing more than a fine coloring matter – rust – which, if left alone, settles to the bottom. And all you’ve got is just a little trace of sediment.”

I carefully lifted another jug and studied the traces of sediment on the bottom.

“It’s astonishing,” I confessed. “But Jim, won’t this anti-freeze be diluted?”

“How?” demanded Jim. “What would dilute it?”

“Well, water for one thing,” I suggested. “Didn’t you add a little water from time to time to this anti-freeze, since that winter two years ago?”

Jim reflected, as he listened to the gurgle of the little tap under his rad while the rusty water dribbled away.

“Yes,” he said, “I believe I do, as a matter of fact, add a little water from time to time, during the winter…”

“Very well then,” I cried, “isn’t this old stuff diluted? Maybe it’s all water?”

“Not at all,” replied Jim easily. “Anti-freeze doesn’t evaporate. So when I add a little water, it’s the water that evaporates, not the anti-freeze. See?”

Chemical Sense

“Then why did you have to add a little water in the first place,” I triumphed, “if the anti-freeze didn’t evaporate?”

“Well, I suppose,” said Jim, “some of it leaked away. After all, this is a pretty old customer of a car. There are bound to be little cracks and leaks in the radiator core.”

“May I smell this stuff, just to see?” I suggested, removing the top from the gallon jar nearest.

It smelled curious and pungent. It had a sharp, breath-taking odor. It certainly wasn’t diluted.

As I drew back smartly, Jim chuckled. “Not much dilution there,” he smiled. “No, Greg. I admit I’m very foolish in many respects. I leave this job of putting in the anti-freeze until the last minute…”

“The last minute!” I protested. My dear man, your rad has frozen three times this week!”

“I admit,” went on Jimmie, “that I’m a procrastinator. But I’ll say this for myself. I know chemicals. I know a few simple, common-sense facts about the things I’ve got to work with, such as cars. And I know anti-freeze will keep from year to year. And I think it was rather cute of me to put those three gallons away, two years ago.”

“I hope it works,” I muttered.

“You mean,” chuckled Jim, “you hope it doesn’t work. You’re stiff with jealousy because you can’t get any anti-freeze. Your car is laid up. And it burns you up to see me produce three gallons from my cellar that I have thriftily preserved all these years.”

“It isn’t like you, Jim,” I replied earnestly. “You’re NOT thrifty. You’ve never been thrifty all the years I’ve known you. It makes me sort of nervous and anxious to see you pop up with three gallons of anti-freeze out of your cellar. It doesn’t seem normal. It doesn’t seem right, somehow…”

“Heh, heh heh,” said Jim comfortably, as he bent down under and turned off the little radiator tap which had ceased dribbling.

“Might I suggest one thing, Jim.” I ventured, as he straightened up. “You said there: might have been little cracks and leaks in the rad. How about putting in some of those patent leak fixers they sell at the service stations? Before you risk putting all this good anti-freeze in?”

“I’ve already done that,” said Jim, setting a funnel in the radiator cap opening. “All last winter and all the past summer, I’ve dumped can after can of that radiator cement in. Five or six different kinds. Half a dozen different guaranteed brands. I bet there isn’t a leak in that whole core. And besides, any leaks that might try to break out are rusted up so tight, not even the patent leak fixers could get at it. Look under there.”

“That Stuff Eats”

And under the car I could see a pool of thick red rust where Jim had drained out the water. It was sludge. It was a regular pile of liquid rust.

“Okay,” cried Jim, “you hold the funnel. I’ll decant.”

By decanting, Jim meant tilting the gallon jug so gently that none of the little sediment in the bottom of the jar was stirred up.

As the first gurgle of anti-freeze hit the radiator pipe, there was a sharp hiss and a cloud of vapor billowed out that almost choked us.

“I should have waited,” coughed Jim “until it cooled off…”

The engine had been boiling when Jim decided to drain it.

“But,” he continued, decanting, “I’ll soon cool her out.”

Quite a lot of hissing went on and more choking fumes billowed out, which I dodged by crouching down so as to let the breeze waft them away.

As Jim poured, some of the anti-freeze gurgled and splashed a little on to my coat sleeve. And I noticed the cloth turned white immediately.

“Hey,” I said, “pour carefully! That stuff eats.”

When Jim had successfully decanted the first gallon jug. I examined my coat sleeve. Two or three small drops had fallen on the cloth and the cloth was marked almost pure white. I rubbed. The white became whiter. It was as if it were bleached.

“Now, be careful,” I said, as I held the funnel for the second gallon jug.

This jug poured much smoother than the first. We had lost our sense of smell by this time, of course, and it seemed to me the second jug did not exude such overpowering fumes as the first. Besides, it was a slightly less clear color. It was a sort of pale yellow.

“Jim,” I pointed out, “this jug is different. It seems thicker. And it’s not so gin clear.”

“Maybe it was the last one out,” explained Jim; sniffing. “It would be thicker…”

 So he poured and poured and the slick and slimy anti-freeze gurgled and guggled down into the radiator pipe. It seemed to soothe the weary gullet of the rad. All the hissing and sizzling stopped. It was like balm.

Jim poured the last of the jug and I let the funnel slowly empty. When I shifted it, I got a little of the liquid on my hand.

“It’s quite sticky,” I remarked.

“It would be,” agreed Jim authoritatively.

And he carefully hoisted the third and last jug.

It was another stinger. It poured like water. It emitted choking fumes. And I was glad when Jim carefully tipped, the last drop of it into the funnel.

“There,” sighed Jim. dusting his hands. “Now we’re set for another winter.”

And he carried the empty jugs back down cellar and stowed them in the special place he had left them two long-years before where, in the event that the world still refuses to get back on the rails, he intends to re-store his anti-freeze for another winter yet to come.

We washed our hands in the kitchen and came out and boarded the car. Jim started the engine, and it purred.

“Listen to that,” applauded Jim. “Now, why doesn’t everybody use a little common sense, a little forethought? Think of all the people, all over this country, who are fussing and fuming over a little anti-freeze for their cars…?”

“I never smelled anti-freeze, like that,” I submitted as we backed out to the street.

“Oho, yes, you have!” laughed Jim. “Every year. But you forget. Each year you have to get customed to the smell of your anti-freeze.”

But at the end of the first block, even Jim was a little anxious. The car seemed filled with those queer pungent choking fumes we had noticed while pouring the anti-freeze. I opened my window wide. Jim opened his.

As we came to a halt at the first stop light five blocks from home, at the shopping section, I could hear a curious familiar humming and hissing sound.

“Jim,” I cried, “she’s boiling again!”

“Nonsense,” laughed Jim.

He shifted gears and crossed with the green light. Whereupon something went fffzzzzz! and a squirt of what appeared to be barn red paint looped into the air in front of the car, curved back and splashed all over the windshield.

Jim jammed on the brakes and leaped out. He lifted the hood and as he did so, the whole engine seemed to explode, the radiator cap blew off and out from numerous points in the radiator core, streams and jets of barn red were spurting, with violent force.

The Home Touch!

I reached and turned off the ignition. And we stood there, while a crowd gathered the engine hissed, rumbled, spouted trembled as with an intense internal convulsion it reminded me of Mount Vesuvius in eruption.

By the time it had quieted down, Jim got a motorist to give us a push down to the next corner service station.

and

and

When we drew up and the lad at the pump lifted the hood again we were covered with barn red half-way back to the tonneau³.

“Boy,” breathed the garage lad admiringly, “you certainly got a beauty, eh?”

“I can’t understand it,” Jim declared. “I just finished putting my anti-freeze in. Not 10 minutes ago I drained it. I put in three gallons of anti-freeze, and look at her!”

The garage lad leaned in and smelled. He sniffed down the radiator pipe. He sniffed all around the front of the radiator core.

“What kind of anti-freeze do you use?” he asked, very puzzled.

“Why, the regular stuff,” said Jim, naming a well-known brand.

“And what else?” inquired, the lad, rubbing his finger around some of the larger holes in the rad.

He examined his finger curiously.

“Why,” he said, “it’s all granulated, sort of.” He cautiously tasted it.

“Why,” he said, “what are you doing with maple sugar in your rad?”

“Maple…” gasped Jimmie, “maple sugar!”

He strode into the service station. I strode after.

He dialled his home telephone number.

“Can you tell me,” he inquired coolly and distantly, “what was in those three jugs, gallon jugs of mine down under the cellar stairs?”

He got an answer.

He croaked good-by and hung up.

“What was it?” I asked.

“Two gallons of javel water⁴,” coughed Jim huskily, “and one gallon of maple syrup.”

Editor’s Notes:

1. According to a October 26, 1946 news story in the Toronto Star, there was a shortage of anti-freeze in 1945 due to the availability of tins. The shortage in 1946 was due to anti-freeze produced in the United States. Some produced in the U.S. was from ethelyne glycol which had price controls from the war lifted which resulted in a higher price that could be received there. However the article indicated that anti-freeze made from alcohol should be expected to make up the difference. ↩︎
2. This would be before there were laws against that. ↩︎
3. I think this is just another old-timey saying by Greg, meaning the back of the car. A tonneau referred to the rounded back seat in an old open top car. ↩︎
4. Javel water is liquid bleach. The first commercial bleach, was named Eau de Javel (“Javel water”) after the borough of Javel, near Paris, where it was produced. ↩︎

While driving home, Greg and Jimmie work out a new world order, only to have a little horn blast their pet theories

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, August 23, 1941.

“Machinery,” explained Jimmie Frise, is the curse of humanity.”

“Oh, oh, Jim,” I protested, “if it weren’t for machinery, like radio and electric machinery and steam engines, we wouldn’t know there was a war on yet.”

“We’d have had a couple of extra happy years,” stated Jimmie. “Do you know what really put the curse on mankind? It wasn’t Adam eating an apple. It was Adam stepping on a round stone and finding he skidded. That was what planted the seeds of evil in him. The next time he had a heavy load to lift, he remembered his foot sliding on the round pebble, so he went and got a big, round stone. On this he placed his heavy load and rolled it. It was no trick at all to get two round stones and rig up an axle. And so machinery was born.”

“You figure the wheel was the first machine?” I asked.

“Perhaps not,” agreed Jim. “Probably a stick was the first machine. A stick with which our ancient ancestors hit their first rabbit, or the stick with which they first dug a root out of the ground to eat. Or the stick with which the first weak man felled a strong man and so created the vision of human justice.”

“So weapons were our first machines?” I demanded.

“Yes, and today, our deadliest weapons are machines,” declared Jimmie, triumphantly. We invented machines and now they have got out of our control. Machines will be the end of us.”

“Why, Jim” I protested, “our lives would be miserable without machines. Everything we live by today is a machine. The bricks of our houses are made by machines; the clothes we wear, most of the food we eat, all our employment is provided by machines.”

“By serving machines, you mean,” said Jim darkly. “I draw a cartoon. You and I and two or three other guys can see it. We can put it in the window of The Star Office and some hundreds of passers-by can see it. But we give that cartoon into a machine that traces it on to zinc. And we put that zinc tracing into another machine called a press. About half a million people can see it.”

“Is that serving a machine?” I scoffed.

“It certainly is,” Jim informed me, “because it cost $2,000,000 to create those machines for multiplying my cartoon by half a million. Naturally, those machines have got to pay for themselves, so they demand a cartoon from me every week. Now, a cartoonist hasn’t always got a cartoon a week in him. Cartoonists are a sort of by-product of creation. With some bits left over, the Creator said, ‘I’ll make a cartoonist. I’ll make a dopey, whimsical, slightly daft individual who will have a yearning to draw pictures to make his fellow men smile.’ But those terrible machines, costing millions of dollars, and required to be paid for, dollar for dollar, demand a cartoon every week. I am a slave of that machine.”

A Sorry Spectacle

“Would you rather draw a cartoon to put in a window, for the passers-by to look at?” I snorted.

“The best cartoons I ever drew,” sighed Jimmie, “were drawn in the dust on the window panes of the post-office in Birdseye Center.”

“When you were a kid?” I smiled.

“Ah,” sighed Jimmie.

“Well, sir,” I said, “I would like to share your sentimental skunner¹ against machines. All over the world today, it is machines that are destroying us, it’s true. But I can’t agree with you. There once was a rather superior monkey who discovered he could pick up sticks and stones with his fingers. That was the dawn of man. It is our use of implements and later of machines that makes us men, not monkeys.”

“If you want my opinion,” declared Jimmie, “the monkeys all over the world are laughing at us today.”

“We are a sorry spectacle,” I confessed. “How all the microbes and germs must be laughing at us. How typhus and cholera and smallpox and tuberculosis and all those bugs we have conquered must be chuckling amongst themselves. For we are doing what they failed to do. Having mastered all our enemies save man, we are now devoted to destroying each other.”

“With machines,” insisted Jim.

“Okay,” I declared, “let’s suppose this war continues to its logical conclusion. All cities are wiped out. All factories are bombed to ashes. All the universities are razed and the libraries burned. All the plans and specifications lost and all the men who might remember the sciences and arts, either killed in action or butchered in concentration camps. And, in the end, just a few people survive who go and hide in the hills and the caves. Thus will we be back in the caveman age once more? How would you like it?”

“We could start fresh,” submitted Jim. “And we could hang anybody that tried to invent anything.”

“No wheels,” I warned him, “no wagons.”

“We could use stone boats,” proposed Jim.

“Harness is machinery,” I countered. “You couldn’t use harness. All you could use domestic animals for would be meat and milk. No plows, no reapers, no seed drills. No pumps. No shovels.”

“Aw,” said Jim, “you want to carry the thing too far.”

“Now you’ve hit it,” I explained. “The question is – how far should we carry this thing called machinery?”

“Who’s going to say?” asked Jim.

“The government,” I informed him. “The government will own all machines. Every machine in the country will belong not to individuals, but to all the people. And anybody that wants to use a machine will come before a commission of the government – or the people – and state what he wants the machine for. If the use he wishes to make of it is for the general good, not just for his own good – if nobody is to be killed, nobody enslaved, nobody cheated or in any way injured, the commission will grant the use of the machinery.”

When a Horn Goes Wrong

“That’ll put an end to the invention of machinery,” smiled Jim. “Because the only reason machines have been invented is because somebody thought they could beat somebody else by creating a better machine.”

“Part of the commission’s job,” I explained, “would be to listen to people with new ideas for new machines. If a man wants a machine that doesn’t exist, he can ask the commission for it. And if it is good, he’ll get it a darn sight quicker than he could get it now. I bet there are thousands of wonderful inventions that have never seen the light of day because the inventor had nobody to help him finance it. But with the people themselves back of him, an inventor could go places. I bet we would step a thousand years forward in a hundred years, if we would only trust all the people, instead of just a few of them, the way we do now.”

“Isn’t that socialistic stuff you’re talking?” demanded Jimmie sternly.

“Anybody who ever talked about humanity has been called a Socialist or a Communist,” I explained, “or whatever the nasty epithet of the time happened to be. I’m just a believer in humanity, that’s all.”

“Well, it’s a dangerous thing to be, these days,” warned Jimmie. “How about going home?”

It was my turn to drive. Jim and I take turn about, week by week, to run our cars. We pick up whoever we can at the foot of Bay street to complete our load and make the gas do the maximum job per quart. So we got our hats and wended our way to the parking lot back of the office.

The parking lot man hailed us as we drove out.

“Something the matter with your wiring,” he said. “I heard a buzzing sound under your hood and I wiggled the wires around and it stopped. But you’d better have it looked at, eh?”

I thanked him in that snooty way you thank people for telling you you’ve got a flat tire or something, and we drove out. As we dropped down over the kerbstone of the parking lot, my horn emitted a brief toot.

“H’m,” I said. “Sooner or later, an old car gets something wrong with its horn.”

As we drove along Adelaide street, in the thick 5 o’clock traffic, every little joggle we did on the car tracks caused the horn to toot briefly.

“Sorry,” I called out to the tired and indignant looking gentleman ahead of me, who leaned out his car window to glare at me. “Something wrong with my horn.”

He drew his head back in doubtfully, and as the traffic snailed along, my horn gave sundry small toots which caused other cars to act impatiently and pedestrians to glare at me.

“I’ll have to get that fixed,” I said.

We turned down Bay for the waterfront, and all the way down that busy, home-going street, my horn continued to issue its senseless little hoots and toots at every joggle or bump, however tiny, in the pavement. One small toot can disturb traffic more than a traffic policeman, even. Cars swerved and leaped away and pedestrians halted and started and halted again while Jim and I sat there helpless to stop the silly thing.

“Those Boys Looked Sore”

“Okay, okay,” I called to the motorists, who turned and stared back, and to the pedestrians, who halted and looked questioningly at me to see what I meant by the signal. Jimmie was very amiable. He gestured and signalled to explain that it was a little trouble we were having with the horn rather than any signal we were giving.

“Ah, thank goodness,” I said, as we reached the Lake Shore road and the smooth, free ride homeward along the lake, without a crossing or a red light for miles.

But the horn continued its tooting at every joggle all the way along. And most of the cars that got in front thought I was gently suggesting to them that they put on a little more speed. Each one, after its driver had taken an indignant glance in his mirror, would speed up. Then a stranger would pass me and take his place. Then the ridiculous business would begin all over again as soon as we hit the slightest unevenness in the pavement.

“Pull into a service station,” suggested Jim, “and let the boys unscramble the wiring.”

“No, thanks,” I declared. “I don’t want any gas-jerkers fiddling with my ignition. I take her up to my own repair man after supper.”

So we tooted and joggled along in a steady series of misunderstandings, until, along about half-way home, a car came alongside which was driven by a pretty girl with another girl beside her in the front seat, and in the back, two soldiers slumped down very cosy and comfortable.

“Toot, toot,” went my horn very pertly.

The girls looked smilingly at us, expecting to see somebody they knew. But it was only us – two old barnacles.

“Toot, toot-toot,” went my horn again.

Jim was gesticulating amiably to explain that it was a little horn trouble. But the young ladies, were giving us a decidedly frosty eye and the elevated chin. And, in the back seat, the two young soldiers sat up slowly and purposefully. And though I merely glanced under my eyebrows, I could see trouble brewing.

Toot, toot-toot, toot,” said the horn, with the nastiest leer.

The car with the young ladies fell back. I speeded up.

“Good heavens,” I said, “you don’t suppose they thought we were trying to be fresh?

“Toot,” said the horn.

“Those boys looked sore,” said Jim.

“Why, surely, they could tell a couple of old guys like us…” I protested.

But even as I spoke, I knew that the car drawing up on the outside of me was an enemy raider. It snaked alongside. I heard a voice, low and menacing, say:

“Pull over to the curb, Barrymore!²“

I glanced to the left. The girls had changed places with the soldiers. One of the soldiers was now driving, and the other sat beside him and did the talking. He was a very bronzed, sinewy looking youth. I drew out of the traffic to the right.

“To Heck With Machines”

The other car ran ahead and then slowed down, forcing me to stop beside the curb. The two soldiers got out and walked slowly and thoughtfully back to us. One on each side. The one on my right rested his elbows quite close to me and said:

“So you’re the old sports who pester a soldier’s girl while he’s away at the wars, huh?”

“I have horn trouble,” I declared.

“So we notice,” he said, through his teeth. “But you didn’t happen to see us sitting in the back seat, did you?”

“I didn’t see anything,” I stated indignantly and with elderly calm. “I tell you, my boy, my car horn is out of order and has been tooting all the way along.”

“Is that so?” said the soldier. I don’t hear it.”

“It only toots when we strike a little bump in the pavement,” I explained. “If you care to drive a short distance with us and see…?”

“I don’t think I would,” said the soldier, drawing back a little.

“Step on the gas,” said Jim. “Maybe it’ll do it.”

“Look,” I said, “listen.”

I stepped on the gas. The engine raced. The car started to tremble. I stepped farther. It began to shake. And suddenly, “toot, toot, toot,” said the horn faintly.

“See?” I cried triumphantly.

And as I stepped full down on the accelerator to let the engine really roar in the hope of bringing the toots out clear I held my hands up off the steering wheel to show there was no deception.

And suddenly, whatever was slightly wrong with the horn went really wrong and the horn burst into a full-throated and violent roar. Even the soldiers were startled. And both young ladies turned and stared out the back window of their car.

“Turn off the engine,” yelled Jim.

“Switch off the key,” shouted the soldier on my side.

“Twiddle the horn button,” advised the soldier on Jim’s side.

But the horn kept up its endless bellow with a sharpness and quality of tone I had never been able to get out of it by legitimate means. I jumped out and lifted the hood.

“Wires shorted,” I told the soldiers, who came and stared under the hood with me.

“This is the horn wire, isn’t it?” yelled the first soldier, jerking a wire loose. But it didn’t stop the horn.

“No, I think it’s this one, Bill,” cried the other soldier, yanking another wire loose. So they jerked all the wires we could see until finally the horn stopped abruptly. Then they waved very friendly and went and got back in the rear seat of the car. But our car wouldn’t even start. And we had to walk about half a mile and finally get a gas-jerker to come and re-wire the car.

“To heck with machines,” I said, as we at last got started again about 6.35 p.m.

Editor’s Notes:

1. Skunner is slang for “a strong dislike”. ↩︎
2. I’m not sure but perhaps Barrymore is slang for an older ma, since the famous actor brothers John and Lionel were in their early 60s at this time. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, July 3, 1943.

“We’ve made a great mistake,” declared Jimmie Frise, “coming on this week-end.”

“It’s been one of the happiest I’ve ever had,” I countered.

“What I mean is,” said Jim, “we should have saved it until the end of July or the middle of July or the middle of August. We took it too early.”

“We couldn’t have had a lovelier time,” I insisted. “The weather has been sublime. The lake fairly glowed. The woods seemed literally to speak to us. It was as if the whole place welcomed us and beamed upon us.”

“That, explained Jimmie, “is because we know in our hearts that we aren’t going to see many week-ends this year or maybe for a long time to come. We Canadians are just about to realize we have been a privileged people.”

“We sure have,” I sighed. “There is hardly a city in the whole Dominion that hasn’t got lakes, rocks and forests within a couple of hours’ drive. There certainly isn’t another big country in the world that has even a fraction of the holiday land Canada has, at every back door.”

“And we use it,” pursued Jim. “Mighty few city families in Canada with an ordinary living that haven’t got either a summer cottage or a favorite little summer hotel or a farm where they spend at least a couple of weeks of summer. Thousands of families with very modest incomes spend the whole summer at their cottages. We are a country-house nation, and it isn’t only the earls and dukes and gentry who own the country houses. All the professional and management classes, most of the business and most of the mechanic groups have some sort of a country house, even if it is only a little beloved shack.”

“One of the things to be credited to the war,” I agreed, “is that it is going to show us how privileged we Canadians have been. Now that we can only have two or three week-ends, now that we can’t run up to our cottage every Friday night, we are going to appreciate how blest we have been.”

“And took it for granted,” said Jim.

“Most people take their blessings for granted,” I submitted.

“I still think,” stated Jimmie, “that we pulled a boner coming up this week-end. Later in the summer, we are going to wish we had saved those four gasoline coupons¹.”

Kind of Wheezy

“Maybe something will turn up,” I suggested, “that would have prevented us coming later. Maybe I’ll have to go overseas again as a war correspondent.”

“Aw, you’re too old and feeble for that any more,” laughed Jim. “This is a young man’s war. You’d make a fine war correspondent, coming limping along about two days behind the battle.”

“It takes us old fellows to tell about war,” I protested. “It is we who appreciate it. The young fellows take war so for granted that they won’t even talk about it. One of my nephews is in the Navy and came home after what I knew to be some pretty furious action. I asked him all about it, very eager. And all he said was that they had quite a bit of fun, popped off quite a number of cans, and had a lively time altogether.”

“The silent service,” reminded Jimmie.

“The army and air force,” I insisted, “are the same. I talked to two young officers who had completed, between them, over five years of operational flying as fighter pilots. They both had shot down several Huns and both had bailed out of their own ruined Spitfires and Hurricanes. I spent a whole evening with them. They said it was very dull, something like a speed-skating contest. Now and again, you saw another speed skater through your sights, and if he was the right shape, you squeezed the trigger. And now and again you hit him. But mostly you went right on skating.”

“What a line!” snorted Jim.

“Well, they didn’t want to be bothered talking about it,” I explained. “It is to them like a master musician talking about Bach to a bevy of old ladies.”

“Well, whatever happens,” mumbled Jim, as we drove southward over almost deserted highways towards the city, “I still think we’ll bewail the waste of these gas coupons before the summer’s over.”

“On the other hand, Jim,” I opined, “I rather think we are wise guys to come this week-end. I don’t know how much longer the tires are going to last. And by the sound of the engine, maybe the old schooner won’t even be running by August.”

“She is kind of wheezy,” admitted Jim, listening.

“Wheezy?” I scoffed. “She fairly clanks. Hear that clank?”

“Sounds like a bust connecting rod to me,” said Jim. “It will tear the bejeepers out of your crank shaft.”

Remembering Happy Days

“Listen to that whistle,” I said, slackening speed. “Just like a canary.”

“That’s your fan belt,” said Jim, “probably the bearing, burning itself out.”

“I think it’s a generator whistle,” I suggested, “that has got past the whistle stage to the warbling stage.”

“She smells hot, too,” said Jim. “Isn’t it a caution how we are neglecting our cars these days? Even when we know we should be taking care of them, nursing them, petting them, for the first time in 20 years of driving experience, we are letting our cars go to blazes.”

“Well, for one thing,” I pointed out, “we aren’t driving them much, and we lose the sense of time that we used to have in the days when we changed oil every thousand miles and had things looked over every couple of months.”

“Besides,” said Jim, “we aren’t driving enough to notice the deterioration. We are so busy watching the fuel gauge, we can’t notice anything else. Something amiss, that would have been sensed by us instantly in the old days, now goes by unnoticed. Say, doesn’t she smell awfully hot to you?”

“It’s the day, Jim,” I said. “It’s a warm day.”

“Hmmmm,” muttered Jim. “The way she is wheezing and clanking and whistling. I’d say that smell was worth investigating.”

“Even if we investigated,” I reminded him, “we wouldn’t know what to do if we found anything. And with all the gas stations closed on Sunday, there is nobody around to tinker with it.”

We wheezed along a little way in silence, and as we passed an abandoned service station, all weed-grown, along the highway, Jimmy heaved a big sigh and said:

“Ah, the good old days.”

So, for about 20 miles, we remembered the good old days. The carefree driving, with supplies, attention, service at every bend of the road. The freedom to come and go, and all of us living like gentry. The food, the fun, the happy days before and behind, with no dream, no hint, of the dark storm that was coming to engulf us.

As we approached a main crossroad, we saw, hiking down ahead of us, three khaki figures, each laden with full equipment, bulging haversacks, and one or two small dunnage bags hoisted on their shoulders.

“Tankers,” I said, noting their black berets².

“In battledress, for Pete’s sake,” remark- ed Jim, “on a day like this!”

“That means they are probably going overseas,” I informed him, “for they can’t wear summer drill in Britain. I bet they’re kids going on their last leave. We’ll pick them up.”

I ran slowly past them and we gave them the grins that mean a lift. They ran when we stopped and heaved their bags and haversacks in on the floor behind.

“Take off your junk,” I commanded, “and, be comfortable. Are you on your last leave?”

They favored me with cool, pleasant stares.

“Changing camps, sir,” they said.

“Battledress,” I remarked. “I thought -“

“Changing camps,” they said quietly, with steady look.

You can find fault with some of the young ones. But when a boy is ready, for overseas, he is a pretty good soldier.

We got them comfortably stowed and cigarettes lighted, and started off. Jim leaned over the back and chatted with them and I threw sundry contributions into the conversation.

After a couple of miles, I felt one of the young fellows’ heads beside mine and he was leaning forward to listen.

“Timing pretty bad, eh?” he smiled.

“I can’t figure what that clank is,” I admitted. “Maybe a connecting rod?”

“Timing, I think,” said the boy. “Hey, Jerry, what do you make of that ping?”

The three sat forward.

“Timing,” said they all. “Pull off to the side, mister, and we’ll take a gander at it.”

“Now, now, boys,” cried Jim. “You’re heading on leave.”

“We’re 2,000 miles from home, sir,” smiled the one who had leaned forward first. “There’s a lot of rocks and prairie and a few mountains between us and any leave that matters. We’re in no hurry to get any place. Pull over to the side, sir.”

I drew up to the shoulder and the boys bailed out. Up came the lid and the three of them leaned down.

Off came the coats, and one of the three swung back into the car.

“Tools in the back, sir?”

“Not many tools, I’m afraid,” I mumbled.

They got out my shabby old oil cloth tool kit and examined it. One of them undid his own haversack and brought out an exquisite little tool kit of his own, all brightly glittering wrenches and spanners.

“Turn her off, sir.”

And while Jimmie and I watched, they worked with smooth, rapid movements, undoing nuts, removing things, tightening, adjusting. It was like a three-piano team, all at one piano.

Five minutes they worked, and then stood back.

“Start her up, sir.”

Almost Like Home

I stepped on it. And the old schooner purred with a new, sweet voice. I looked at Jim. Jim winked at me.

“Okay, sir, on our horse!”

And they piled in, drawing on their blouses.

So we went another 10 miles, with the three of them enjoying the breeze and leaning back and waving at the girls in the villages.

Then the same boy as before leaned his head near mine again and said:

“How about letting me at the wheel a little way, sir, she’s not quite right yet.”

I changed places with him, glad of the extra breeze of the back pew of the old stone hooker, and after a mile of smooth and skilful driving, the lad turned and sang back to the boys:

“Clutch, do you think?”

“Clutch it is,” they chorussed, already unbuttoning their blouses.

And off to the side, under a spreading maple, we pulled again, while the boys opened up the lid. Two of them got underneath to a place I never knew existed, where you can get at the clutch. I have always paid $20 just for people to look at the clutch, which seemed to be a matter of lifting the whole top off the car.

They went into committee on the clutch, on the transmission, and on a general tightening up job. They banged and hammered and grunted.

“Boys, boys,” I pleaded, “you’ll never get home at this rate. You are very kind, but…”

“Sir,” said one, “we haven’t had our hands on a little old baby like this for two years. We’ve been working on brand new, big tough army stuff. This is the nearest we’ve been to home since we left British Columbia…”

So old Jim and I got out and sat and crouched and watched and tried to get in on it and share with these youngsters the queer, strange joy they were feeling, as they tinkered with our battered old grand banker.

A Swell Country

Forty minutes, like gremlins, they climbed over and under and all around, with my old rusty tools and their bright glittering ones. They started the engine and listened. They turned it off and clinked and gritted. They drove it 50 feet and backed it 50 feet furiously back. They put my wobbly jack under the rear end and hoisted her up to get at the transmission and rear end.

Like a centre and two forwards passing the puck from one to the other, they made power plays all over the old mousetrap Jimmie and I could scarcely hear the engine when they started it, and when at last the boys stood back and started pulling on their battle-dress blouses, I took my place at the wheel and stepped on the starter. I let in the gears as they cried all aboard, and, like a rabbit, she leaped under my toe.

“Holy smoke,” said Jim.

Even the gears shifted in a strange and beautifully clicking style. She hummed softly. I gave her the business. She climbed like a cat into high.

“Boys,” said Jim, turning to face them, “you’ve given us a new car.”

“If we hear anything else…” they warned, leaning back, with their big feet resting on the floor load of their baggage.

But we did not hear anything else. And like a young bird, she floated us southward along the beautiful highway, with all the trees leaning tenderly over us, and all the wide country, the hills and fields and woods, shining at us in the afternoon.

And when we came to the city and let the boys out at the place they insisted, declining our urgent invitation to eat with us at least, we got out and shook hands ceremonially with them, and the best thanks I could think to give them was to say:

“Canada is a swell country.”

I think they understood what I meant.

Editor’s Notes: Buckshee is slang for “free of charge”.

1. Gasoline was the first thing rationed in Canada during the war. Initially, the government relied on voluntary restraint by motorists and the closure of service stations on Sundays. Coupon rationing for gasoline began on April 1, 1942. ↩︎
2. In the Canadian Army in World War 2, black berets were worn by the Canadian Army and Reserve Army Tank units. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, June 12, 1937.

“Look at that,” cried Jimmie Frise, “for a swell car.”

We were slowed up in Orillia, looking for a parking spot near our favorite eating place.

“Boy,” I said.

“Imagine having that to float around in,” said Jim. “How the miles would waft by.”

“Let’s have a look at it,” I suggested, “when we get out.”

We parked, and in our fishing togs, which attract no attention in a civilized town like Orillia, even if we are a little trampy, we strolled back to have a look at this masterpiece of modernity.

It was a kind of pigeon blood ruby color. Its nose was chromium. Inside, it was upholstered in yellow buff whipcord. Its wheel and other driving appurtenances were casually and widely dispersed, giving the impression of great space within. It was a convertible touring sedan which could be transformed, with the twiddling of a couple of fat, casual looking knobs, into an open car under the divine sun of June.

“Ah, Jimmie,” I sighed, “it is wicked to leave a car like this around for common people to see.”

“Do you realize,” said Jim quietly, “that this is one of the cars you can get for about $40 a month?”

“For how many years?” I scoffed.

“And your old car,” said Jim.

We walked slowly around the magnificence. There was a drop-down arm in the middle of the back seat, a fat, comfortable thing on which you could rest your elbow as you sped through space, dreaming at the lovely Canadian landscape.

“Jim,” I declared, “rich men ought to know better than leave cars like this around where people can look at them. It breeds discontent. This car is a Communist agitator of the worst type.”

“Who do you suppose owns it?” asked Jim. “It looks like an Orillia license plate.”

“Some millionaire,” I said. “Maybe one of those rich ‘county families’ we’re developing in Canada, the way they have them in England.”

“I would be willing to bet,” stated Jim, “that the owner of this car is some plain guy like us. Some fellow making a moderate salary who has enough sense to live while he can.”

“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may¹,” I sighed, taking another stroll around the gorgeous creation.

“Exactly,” said Jim. “After all, what rule is there that forbids a man to have a princely car, even though he lives in a cheap boarding house?”

“Let’s eat,” I suggested sadly.

We went in and ordered ham and egg sandwiches and coffee and apple pie.

“As I was saying,” said Jim, leaning back, “why should a poor man not have a rich car? What rule requires that he should have a house and good clothes and a bank balance before he can own a three thousand dollar car?”

“I suppose,” I said, “there really is no reason.”

Folly of the Old Order

“When we were boys,” expanded Jim, “the rule was that each man should have a home more or less in keeping with his class. The bankers and big business men lived in one neighborhood. In another, the professional and manager class lived. Next, came the well-to-do store keepers, clerks, superintendents and so forth. Next, the mechanics, and so on. You had to live, outwardly, in your home and your clothes and your general appearances, according to your classification. All that is gone.”

“Not altogether,” I disagreed.

“Well, you can’t tell from anybody’s clothes nowadays who or what they are,” stated Jim. “And from the outside of a house, you can’t guess, with any degree of accuracy, who lives within. Plenty of shopkeepers and superintendents are living up among the bankers and presidents and any number of presidents and chairmen of the board are living in old houses down amongst the stenographers and jazz band violinists.”

“True,” said I.

“In other words,” said Jim, “appearances don’t count any more. A man is free to choose, as he never was in days gone by. If a rich man wants to live modestly and unpretentiously, there is no rule of society to penalize him for not living up to his class. If a poor man wants to buy fine clothes and swank around, after working hours, as a gentleman, nobody cares any more. If he is a gentleman, in his character, I mean, there is nothing to prevent him dressing like one. See?”

“How do you work this argument around to cars?” I asked, eyeing the ruby snout of the royal equipage through the restaurant door.

“A few years ago, when cars became fairly common,” said Jim, “it was a sort of rule of the game, a hang-over from the older order of things, that people should stick to the grade in keeping with their house and neighborhood. If a man in a low-price-class street blossomed out with a $2,000 car, it caused some snootings.”

“I remember my slow rise,” I confessed, “from high-behind black flivvers, up through sixes to eights. I remember perfectly, the dreadful sense of dissipation I had when I got my first blue car.”

“Exactly,” said Jim. “But we have just showed up the folly of that old order of society. We saw thousands and thousands of people who devoted their whole lives to saving and scraping to buy a decent little home, only to lose it in the smash. We saw people who denied themselves every luxury only to be kicked around just the same as the wasters and careless spenders.”

“It won’t be a lesson to them,” I declared. “People will go right on being thrifty. Mark my words.”

“I see no reason,” said Jim, “why a man should not own a swell three-thousand-dollar car and take what enjoyment he can out of life, instead of slaving all his life to buy a home, only to lose it.”

“I agree,” I said nervously. For that winey creation outside seemed fairly to bloom at me through the window.

The ham and egg sandwiches arrived and Jim and I fell to. It was still a hundred miles to the fishing ground we had in mind, and we wanted to arrive in time to have a fling at the evening rise.

A Friendly Stranger

As we ate sandwiches, a man walked in the restaurant and, after glancing around, came straight to us.

“Are you the gentlemen who were admiring my car?” he asked.

“Your car?” I exclaimed. “Is that your car?”

He was a middle-aged man; he was dressed in khaki trousers and a shabby old tweed coat, and there was a little stubble on his chin.

“Yes,” he chuckled. “How do you like it?”

“It’s gorgeous,” I cried. “But how extraordinary, we were just talking….”

“Pardon me, gentlemen,” he said, sitting down on the edge of the cubicle seat confidentially, “but here are the facts. I am subject to arthritis. This arm is suddenly gone crippled on me. I’ve just been into a doctor’s here, but he can’t do much, I’m sorry to say. Now, I noticed you looking at the car and the thought just occurred to me, maybe one of you would be kind enough, if you’re going north, to drive it for me. How far are you going?”

“Sundridge,” said Jim eagerly.

“Why,” cried the stranger, “how odd. That’s exactly where I’m going. And when are you coming back?”

“To-morrow night,” I said.

“Splendid,” said the stranger, rising hurriedly. “What do you say? You come in my car and leave yours here. It will be quite all right, just where it is. And I’ll drop you here to-morrow evening.”

Jim and I were both hurrying with the last of the sandwiches.

“I’m sorry to rush you,” said the stranger. “But as I have lost more than an hour with this arm…”

“It’s quite all right, sir,” we assured him excitedly.

As we paid our check, I muttered to Jim:

“What a chance. We’ll take turn about.”

“All my life,” chuckled Jim, “I’ve wanted to sit behind the wheel of a boat like that.”

When we came outside, the stranger, who introduced himself as Mr. Anderson, halted us:

“I have a better idea,” he suggested. “A mile north of here is a tourist camp. One of you drive your car out there and the other drive me. We can shift your baggage there and then there can be no complaints about parking here all night.”

“O.K. Jim,” I cried, “I’ll drive ours. I know the place he means.”

I trotted up to our car and tooled it out into traffic and away. In my rear view, I presently beheld the long, low pigeon blood coming behind. It slid past me like a greyhound past a scottie, and I put on all speed I had to keep in sight. Jim and Mr. Ander- son smiled lazily at me as they passed.

By the time we reached the tourist camp, they were waiting, and the three of us threw our stuff into the back of the big car.

“Good-by, Lizzie²,” we cried and with a smooth leap like a modern elevator starting. we swung out into the highway and with scarcely a sound, bore into the northerly and sunlit breeze.

“Watch for speed cops,” laughed Mr. Anderson. “I’ll pay the fines, but….”

“Don’t fear,” sang Jimmie, slouching under the big wheel, “I’ve got an eye for them.”

And for a little while, we just sat, rejoicing in the feel of it, the ecstasy, the joy of immense, effortless power. Mr. Anderson shifted his position so as to turn a friendly face on me and, as he explained, just to keep a weather eye behind for speed cops.

“I Solved That Question”

“Mr. Anderson,” I said, “excuse me for being so bold, but my friend and I were just talking about this car and the probable owner. May I ask what line of business you’re in?”

“Ha, ha, ha,” laughed Mr. Anderson gaily. “My appearance puzzles you, eh? Well, sir, I’m a decorator and paper-hanger.”

“Contractor?” I suggested respectfully.

“No, sir,” said he, laughing. “Not even a contractor. Just a plain journeyman painter and paper-hanger. But I am unmarried. I have saved my money. And I allow myself only one luxury. And that is the finest car money can buy.”

“Jim,” I cried, “did you hear that?”

“I sure did,” called Jim, winding the great car through the twists of Washago already.

“Mr. Anderson,” I said, “it’s the most curious coincidence, but my friend and I were actually talking about that sort of thing when you came into the restaurant. We were saying, why should not a man of modest means devote his life to a lovely car, a thing of joy and beauty, just as much as to a house and lot, or the usual properties a man slaves for?”

“Well, I solved that question years ago,” said Mr. Anderson, emphatically. “This is the third high-price car I’ve owned. I work all fall, winter and spring. I hardly spend anything on living. Why should I? But in summer, I set forth. I put my little baggage in the trunk behind. I travel wherever I like, in utter comfort and style. Last year I was all over the west, Yellowstone Park, the Rockies.”

“Easy, Jim,” I warned, as we plunged through the aisles of the first Muskoka woods.

“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Anderson, “I’m the Hobo de Luxe. And you can tie all the millstones of property around your neck you like. I want nothing but this. And you can’t get it in cheaper cars.”

“I should say not, I agreed, lolling back in the deep luxurious seat, stroking the whipcord, dropping my ashes into the silver ash container at my hand. “The turn-in value of these big cars,” said Mr. Anderson. “Ah!”

He looked sharply out the rear window.

“Jim,” I cried, looking back. “Two speed cops. Racing neck and neck.”

“Will I run away from them?” asked Jim. “Or slow down?”

“Give them a run for their money,” laughed Mr. Anderson. The fine will be the same at the speed we’re doing now anyway.”

“O.K.,” laughed Jim, crouching, and I felt the great car fairly lift.

“We’ll soon be in Gravenhurst,” I shouted.

“They’ll get us there anyway. Let’s slow this side of it.”

Jim took his foot off and we began to slacken our glorious, bird-like flight through space. I could see the cops riding neck and neck, gaining. They went by us in a terrific spurt and wavered ahead of us and we all slowed and pulled to the shoulder of the road. They came back, shifting at their belts and lifting their goggles.

“Three of you, eh?” said the larger cop.

“This gentleman,” I explained, “will accept all charges.”

I smiled at Mr. Anderson, but he, as a matter of fact, disappeared. Instead of the easy-mannered, smiling Mr. Anderson, there was cringing in the front seat beside Jimmie a pale frightened little man, eyes wide and startled, his stubbled chin grotesquely fallen. His shoulders were hunched so that his shabby coat collar stuck up around his neck, giving him an air of decrepitude and age.

“Mr. Anderson,” I said sharply.

“What is this?” whined Mr. Anderson.

“Yeah, what is this?” demanded both cops.

“Why,” I shouted, “this gentleman owns this car and he said…”

“Me?” whined Mr. Anderson. “Me own it? Hah, hah, hah. Why, officer, these gentlemen picked me up not ten miles back. I was thumbin’ my way, and they stopped for me. Is there anythin’ wrong?”

“Anything wrong?” scoffed the cops. “Did these birds steal the most conspicuous car in the whole of Ontario! Come on, get out.”

Mr. Anderson wriggled out of the car abjectly.

“Come on, you,” said the cop that got in beside Jim. “Turn her around. Whose junk is this in the back? Yours, eh? Well, I’ll be jiggered.”

“But this man?” I yelled. “Mr. Anderson!”

“Go on, quit your kidding,” said the cop. “I’ve seen him on these roads for the past month. Beat it, bo³, and keep on going.”

“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Anderson. One cop rode with us, having parked his cycle, and the other followed. We drove back to Orillia. We explained it several times to the cop. We stopped in the tourist camp and showed him our car, where we had left it. We got out our identification cards and licenses. We declared ourselves to be respectable citizens who had no reason on earth to steal anybody’s car, least of all a million-dollar-job like this.

We went back to town and met the owner, a stout, furious man who eyed us with horror and dusted off the seats of his car with his handkerchief.

“This is what happened!” he yelled at us all. “I came out of the bank and got in the car. I put the key in the lock and then suddenly recalled that I had not spoken to the manager on a matter of importance, and I slipped back into the bank for a moment. When I came out, the car was gone.”

“It was then,” I insisted, “that this Anderson slipped into the restaurant and made us the offer of a drive in his car.”

“A heck of a tale,” laughed the cops, “he was a bum. Just a bum. Do you mean to say you accepted that story from him?”

“Chase after him and catch him,” I cried.

“We have his story,” said the cop. “You picked him up thumbing on the road.”

“Well, it was this way,” we explained. “We were talking about poor men owning rich cars, see, and….”

Well, it was nearly four p.m. by the time the explanation seemed to sound good enough, even to us; and that being too late for Sundridge, we just went east of Orillia to some trout creeks we know. But we didn’t get anything.

Editor’s Notes:

1. “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may” is a famous line from the poem “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” by Robert Herrick. It’s a call to seize the day. ↩︎
2. “Tin Lizzie” was slang for an old, often dilapidated, car. It was was often used to describe a Ford Model T which was a cheap, old car in the 1930s. ↩︎
3. “Bo” was slang, short for Hobo. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, May 19, 1934.

“How’s the new car coming?” asked Jimmie Frise.

“Not so good,” I replied. “I can’t make up my mind.”

“I suppose you’ve got the new car jitters?” said Jimmie.

“The what?”

“The new car jitters,” said Jim. “You get it from listening to car salesmen.”

“I guess that’s what I’ve got,” I admitted. “I thought buying a new car was as simple as falling off a log. But, dear me!”

“You must just shut your mind,” said Jim, “and trust your eyes and the feel of the car under you. That’s the only way. If you listen to the salesmen, especially these 1934 model salesmen, you will never buy a car.”

“I suppose,” I said, “I could stuff cotton in my ears and start all over again.”

“That’s a fair substitute for strength of character,” admitted Jim. “Which car were you leaning toward?”

“Well,” I said, “it narrowed down pretty well to three. An Eight, a Six, and one of these Slither-s¹lips or whatever you call them.”

“What were the points for and against these final three?” asked Jim.

“The Eight,” I said, “we liked best because it was a color we have always been wanting, it had a nice wide door for my mother-in-law and it had no do-funny business about changing gears. It was just the same old safe and sound gear shift we have always had since our last foot-shifter.”

“Why didn’t you take it?” asked Jimmie.

“Well, for example,” I explained, “the salesman of the Six pointed out that this Eight hadn’t the right streamlining, that it didn’t have safety glass all around, like his. And if you are to believe these boys, the speed on the highways this coming season is going to be so great you are going to be lucky to escape several head-on collisions and safety glass all around is imperative.”

“M’mm,” said Jim. “Anything else the matter with the Eight?”

“It has knuckle-knees,” I said, “and the Six salesman said this makes it an experimental car.”

“Why didn’t you buy the Six?” asked Jim.

“Ah,” I said, “it was not only $400 less than the Eight, but it was semi-streamline and it had hydraulic brakes. You might just as well go and drive over a cliff as venture out on the highway this season without hydraulic brakes.”

Why Not a Referee?

“What color was the Six?” asked Jim.

“Oh, various colors, but not like the Eight,” I said. “But as the Eight pointed out to me, this Six has not got an all-steel body. And did you know that if you got caught between two street cars in anything but an all-steel body you were as good as dead?”

“I don’t often get caught between two street cars,” said Jimmie.

“But you see the point of his argument?” I said, “Then, too, this Six didn’t have torque, or syncro-starting, nor did it have air-resisto windows.”

“Dear me,” breathed Jim. “What was the other car you were thinking of?”

“The Slither-slip,” I said, “or whatever it is. Now, Jimmie, until you have been in one of those Slither-slips you have never really been motoring. You just ought to bathe your body in those seats! Boy, how they glide!”

“And why didn’t you choose it?” asked Jimmie.

“It had no knee-knuckles,” I said. “And it was really so advanced. Think of the resale value!”

“I thought you were buying a car, not selling one,” Jim remarked

“You don’t understand, Jimmie,” I cried. “When you are buying a car you are doing a whole lot more than merely buying a car to ride in. You are engaging in an investment. You must consider the financial aspect. Now, while all the cars are headed a little bit in the direction of stream-lining they all agree that about the time I would want to turn in my Slither-slip it would be hopelessly old-fashioned. In three years everything will be ultra-streamline.”

“That’s a funny argument,” said Jim.

“All their arguments are funny,” I agreed. “They have got me weak in the knees, frightened and confused.”

“You’ve got the new car jitters,” said Jim.

“What there ought to be,” I stated, “is a government referee who could attend all car sales to censor any remarks that might enjitter the customer.”

“Or,” said Jim, “car sales ought to be forbidden in private, but should be conducted in a place downtown, like the stock market, where all the salesmen could get at you at once. It would be a riot, but they would all have an even chance at the public. And the only jitters you would get would be that mild sort of stock market jitters.”

“I went through the stock market crash far easier than I am going through this job of buying a new car,” I admitted.

“I tell you what we could do,” said Jimmie. “Why not invite the three salesmen up to your house tonight, all at the same time, and discuss their cars in a sort of committee?”

I was amazed at the idea.

“How perfectly simple!” I cried. “Of course. Why didn’t anybody ever think of that before?”

“There you are,” said Jim, rather proudly. Just tell each one to be at your house at 8 p.m. Tell him to bring a demonstrator car with him. And then you can sit there and let them sell their cars. They wouldn’t dare knock each other’s cars to their faces.”

“Of course!” I said, “You be there, too, in case I need support.”

“Sure,” said Jim.

I telephoned the three dealers, the Eight, the Six and the Slither-slip, and they all agreed with alacrity to come up to the house and bring the papers with them.

Jim strolled along about a quarter to eight. My family was out to the pictures and I arranged the living-room nicely to accommodate the boys when they arrived.

The Eight arrived first. He started right to work, but I said I was expecting some others in and would he wait a few minutes.

The Slither-slip arrived next.

It was like roosters in the barnyard. They just stopped and stared at each other for a minute. I introduced them, but they didn’t shake hands. They just thinned their lips and looked at each other.

The Six arrived last. He was a boundy sort of young man; he bounded up the walk and bounded in the door and bounded into the room. He took one glare at the other two chaps and then bounded back to the door.

“Some other time,” he said thickly when I detained him.

“But I wanted to hear all three of you at the same time,” I cried. “I have narrowed it down to you three cars, and now I want it threshed out.”

The Six bounded back into the room. The other two got to their feet smartly.

“This was YOUR bright idea!” hissed the Six with a look like death takes a holiday on his face. He was baring his teeth at the Eight.

“Is zat so!” said the Eight, just like Mae West.

“I think,” said the Slither-slip softly, “that if you two birds will just beat each other up. Mr. Clark and I can get down to business with these papers.”

It all happened very suddenly. All three, at the sight of the papers, dashed together. There was a wild mix-up. Jim and I stepped in to touch them on the arm, and remind them of the business aspect of our meeting.

“Maybe,” said the Eight man, seizing me by the collar, “it was his own idea!”

There was a moment of great confusion and whirling about the bumping and thudding. And when it was over Jimmie was sitting on the chesterfield and I was out on the small chair beside the telephone. Mussed up.

And the three salesmen were racing their engines out in the dark, angrily, super-chargedly.

“High pressure,” said Jimmie, rising and straightening his garments. “Those boys are suffering from high pressure.”

Anyway They’re All Good

“Aren’t you supposed to introduce car salesmen to one another?” I demanded indignantly, flattening my hair and retying my tie.

“Not in the presence of a customer,” said Jimmie. “Like feeding lions, you are supposed to feed them in different parts of the cage.”

“They have the jitters,” I snorted angrily. “Flying off like that.”

“Which car do you fancy?” inquired Jim.

“If those birds had waited a minute instead of turning on us,” I said, “I was going to suggest that they stage a three-way fight and the best man get my order.”

“I know a chap,” said Jimmie, “he is by profession an architect, but he has lately tried selling cars.”

“What about him?”

“Well, he has been in business now three months and hasn’t sold a car. He’s sort of shy,” said Jimmie. “Why don’t you let me send for him, and he’ll sell you a car in five minutes, without a single word being spoken.”

“What car is he selling?” I asked.

“I forget,” said Jimmie. “But what difference does it make? They are all good cars. You can’t have several billion dollar manufacturing concerns making cars without them turning out a hundred per cent product. About the only real difference in them is the name.”

“But synchro-suspension and high-compression ventilation!” I cried.

“Different names for the same thing,” said Jim. “Let me telephone my friend. He just lives a few blocks from here.”

“Go ahead,” I said.

Jim phoned. In about ten minutes a shy, gentlemanly chap arrived. He had nothing to say. He didn’t have a demonstrator with him, but he had a few dog-eared sales agreements in his pocket.

He went out with Jim and me into the lane and looked at my car and guessed how much it was worth on the trade-in. Then we figured out the price.

“What color, Mr. Clark?” he asked.

“Dark, lustrous green,” I said.

“If we haven’t a green we’ll make it a nice dark blue,” said he gently.

I signed.

We chatted about the return of good times, the Centennial program² and listened to Fred Waring³ on the radio.

Then Jimmie and the salesman left. I happened to watch them down the front walk. And when they got out to the street they did a funny thing.

Jim and his friend the salesman joined hands and danced gleefully all over my sidewalk.

Editor’s Notes: This story was repeated on June 15, 1940 as No Knee Knuckles. I posted it on the site back before I realized there were repeats. Now I prefer to print the originals. There were some minor changes in the story to remove outdated references in 1940.

1. Six and Eight refer to a six cylinder car and an eight cylinder car. All of the other types of technologies are made up. ↩︎
2. There were various events in 1934 celebrating the centennial of Toronto. ↩︎
3. Fred Waring was a popular band leader. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, November 14, 1942.

“Come on,” said Jimmie Frise, sticking his head in the door, “I’ll drive you home.”

“Thanks, Jim,” I responded, “but I think I’ll just take the street car. I have a few things to do.”

“I’ll wait,” said Jim, coming in and sitting down.

“No, no: you go on, Jim,” I urged. “I don’t know how soon I’ll be ready.”

“Heck, it’s nearly supper time,” said Jim. “I’ll wait.”

“Jim, to be perfectly frank,” I submitted. “I prefer to go home by street car. I’ve sort of got into the way of it now. I actually look forward to my nice, comfortable ride home before supper…”

“Nice,” scoffed Jimmie indignantly. “Comfortable. With people trampling all over you? Besides, it’s raining cats and dogs.”

“Please, Jim,” I interrupted him.

“At my age, a man likes to follow a routine. I have got into the way….”

Jimmie rose from the chair and looked at me a little hotly.

“For the first time in weeks,” he said, “I have brought my car down to work. Just to loosen up the grease. Just to turn the battery over. And it’s raining. And I offer you a lift…”

“It should be a treat, Jim,” I confessed, “but somehow it isn’t. I haven’t the slightest desire to ride home in a motor car any more. The very idea of it bores me. I can’t understand how, for years and years, I went to all the trouble and nuisance of motoring to work. The trouble of getting the car out of the garage, unlocking and locking the doors: the business of wheeling it out into the street and entering traffic. The dreary business of sizzling along the Lake Shore Road in a stampede of cars. The slow nerve-pulling business of struggling up through the downtown nine o’clock traffic and fighting my way into the parking station. I look back on those days with a kind of horror. There wasn’t a day of it that I did not get myself into a temper, with my blood pressure all steamed up, over some other driver. Either somebody drove too fast or somebody cut in on me. Or downtown, somebody sneaked up on the wrong side of me, at a stop-light, and tried to get the jump past me. I didn’t realize, until I started using the street car, how much of an endless quarrel driving oneself to work was.”

“Look at the rain,” said Jim, going over and staring out the window.

“Once you get used to the street car,” I pursued firmly, “nothing compares with it. It is effortless. Tired after the day’s work, you climb on board and sag down into your seat…”

“If you can get a seat,” put in Jim.

“…and you can practically snooze all the way home. You can read the newspaper. I haven’t read the newspaper for years as thoroughly as I have the past few months of street car riding. In the old days, when I drove to and from work, all I did was take a quick gander at the headlines. Now I even read the editorials.”

“Clear up your desk,” said Jim. “And let’s get going.”

The Comfortable Feeling

“Jim,” I pleaded, “you go on. I’ll be quite a few minutes yet. I have a couple of things I want to read on the way home in the street car tonight. I won’t get another opportunity. I have set these things aside all day to read on the way home.”

“Read them in my car,” said Jim. “I’ll turn on that little dome light in the car.”

“One of the things about street cars is,” I said resolutely, “that you don’t have to talk to anybody. Very rarely do you know anybody in a street car. And if you do, they usually have got a seat already, and don’t come bothering you. In a street car, you just nod at your friends and hurry past to find a seat all by your lovely lonesome. A street car ride, you might say, offers you about the only real solitude you will find all day. It is the only escape from your family or from your office. You are completely and happily alone. You can read. Or you can just sit and look out the window.”

Jim was standing looking at me very hurt.

“What you are saying is,” he accused, “that you don’t want my company home? Is that it?”

“I have your company all day at the office,” I pointed out kindly.

“So you’re tired of my company,” said Jim, walking towards the door.

“If you don’t want to understand me, Jim,” I said. “All I am trying to do is preserve to myself a little new-found liberty and freedom that I have discovered in the morning and the evening. A little solitude…”

“Good-night,” said Jim hollowly, passing out the door.

After thirty years of partnership, you can’t allow even these little misunderstandings to distress an old friend. So I leaped up and grabbed my coat and hat and caught Jim at the elevator.

“After all, it’s a filthy night,” I grinned at him. “And besides, we’re having pot roast at my house tonight. I’d forgotten that.”

Jim said nothing.

“When we have pot roast,” I added, as we went down in the elevator, “it is good to get home a little ahead of time, so you can go into the kitchen and smell it cooking. Half the virtue of a pot roast is the way it excites your appetite.”

The way the people in the elevator turned and looked down at me, especially the business girls who were probably going home to get something out of the ice box, spurred me on:

“Pot roast,” I gloated. “With carrots, white onions, several stalks of celery and especially the leaves of the celery. I think it is the leaves of the celery, in a pot roast, that give it that…”

One girl groaned. So I quit.

Outside, the rain pelted cold and hissing. We ducked along in shelter of the buildings and reached Jim’s parking lot and picked our way across the muddy expanse.

“A fine night,” cried Jim, “to stand on a street corner waiting for a car!”

“It’s astonishing,” I said, sliding into the car seat, “how skilful you become at finding shelter, when you are a street car traveller.”

Jim drove out the parking lot, peering anxiously through the flooding windshield. The downtown was jammed with cars, street cars and trucks and dark huddled swarms of home-goers blindly bending along.

“The worse the night,” observed Jimmie, “the worse the traffic. I bet you would have to wait ten or fifteen minutes for a street car on a night like this.”

“All exaggeration,” I assured him, “arising from the impatience born of the motor car age. I have timed myself, even on nights like this; and the longest wait isn’t five minutes.”

“And then you get into a steaming car,” snorted Jim, “and some girl’s umbrella trickles water down your pant leg!”

We made a turn, with motor cars honking at us savagely and street car bells clanging and muttered curses coming through the windows from the pedestrians. Jim was sitting up stiff at the wheel, tense and strained, peering through the windshield like the pilot of a bomber over Saarbrucken.

“It’s restful, once you’re aboard a street car,” I submitted.

“Do you want to get out?” demanded Jim sharply.

“Go ahead, go ahead,” I said hastily.

Tense While Driving

And down the jammed street we toiled, in slow lurches and jolts, three blocks to the Lake Shore highway, where the stampede flattened itself out into the long race home.

The traffic balked and speeded; even in this wide highway, with no cross streets to harry it, traffic still pulled at all the nerves, the car ahead suddenly slacking, the car behind screeching up on you, and cars beside racing past, with arrogant horns braying….

“I’d almost forgotten what it was like,” I mused.

“I hope I’m not boring you,” remarked Jim.

“Take it easy, don’t hurry for me, Jim,” I assured him.

And he relapsed into another silence, sitting tense and stiff at the wheel, staring through the floody windshield.

We got a little way past the ball park when I noticed the car swaying.

“You’ve got a soft tire, Jim,” I warned.

“Feels like it,” admitted Jimmie grudgingly.

The car gave another swerve on the streaming pavement. Jim steered cautiously for the curb, not without a few angry snorts from cars behind.

“Well, well, well,” was all I said.

“Sit still,” said Jim, starting to get out. In a moment he came back and said through the window that the left rear tire was flat as a pancake.

In the gathering dusk, we looked ahead and then looked behind. The nearest service station was a good half-mile. The stampede of cars raced ruthlessly past us.

“I could drive it,” speculated Jim through the car window, “but it would finish the tire. And tires, these days….”

“Don’t think of it, Jim,” I declared. “Put the spare on. I’ll give you a hand….”

“Sit still, sit still,” pleaded Jim. “It won’t take five minutes.”

But you can’t sit still in a car, on a wild and stormy night, and think of your friend out there alone. So I turned up my collar and got out and joined him. He had the jack out and was figuring how he could get it under the car without getting his knees wet, when I gave the spare a thump with my fist. “Your spare has no air in it,” I informed him.

He stood up and felt the spare.

“It’s got enough,” he muttered. But on shoving at it with the handle of the jack, it proved to be as I had said. Soft.

“I’ll thumb a lift ahead to a service station,” said Jim, “and take the spare with me. And I’ll be back in the tow truck in five minutes.”

I thought of the pot roast and was on the point of suggesting that I too might thumb a lift and get home somehow. Once I could get near a street car line, I would be all right. But down here on the Lake Shore Drive, it is a long hike to a street car line. Then I thought of how Jimmie would feel.

He soon had the spare tire unhitched. And with it for a sign and symbol of distress, he had no trouble getting a lift. A dirty old car with five smudgy and big-hearted war workers pulled up; and tire and all, Jimmie was invited in. He waved me good-by.

After at least 17 minutes, in which time I got so expert at remembering how a pot roast smells that I was practically watering at the mouth, I saw the tow truck slow down across the street and after nearly a minute and a half of trying to make the turn against traffic, it drew in behind.

“Sorry,” cried Jimmie, “but I had to try three service stations.”

And in about four minutes, the service station man had the spare on and the old tire back in his truck.

“I’ll pick it up tomorrow,” said Jim, as we drove off.

The tow truck whizzed past us, in the manner of tow trucks that belong to service stations that shut up bang at seven sharp.

We got along near the Exhibition Grounds when the engine gave a couple of funny coughs and jerked.

“What the…” said Jim grimly.

But there was no mistaking that sound. After another 50 yards, the engine barked and coughed several times and then quit.

“Out of gas,” I submitted.

“Don’t be crazy,” growled Jimmie. “I put three gallons in only last Tuesday.”

But the gauge showed empty and the dry jack handle Jimmie explored with down in the tank showed empty. And it was empty.

“Well, thank goodness,” said Jim, appearing at the car door all wet, “there’s a hill ahead only a little way and we can coast down it and turn up beside the Park, where there’s a gas station.”

Back to Street Cars

So I got out and we shoved the car about 100 yards, not without numerous helpful comments from car horns from behind, to the start of the slope down to Sunnyside. And when the car took the slope, Jim jumped in and seized the wheel and I ran and boarded her. And down the slope we coasted, not too fast, so as to let a clear place in traffic grow ahead of us so that we could get fullest advantage of the coast. This caused quite a lot of horn comment from behind us.

But we coasted almost to the Merry-Go- Round before our momentum died. And from the Merry-Go-Round to the Park is about 300 yards.

And at last we shoved her into the nearest service station.

“I certainly feel terribly,” said Jim, as we ran her stern level with the attendant waiting with the hose. “Keeping you all this time. I had only the kindest intentions…”

“Forget it, Jim,” I assured him. “This only makes a more confirmed street car passenger of me.”

“But that pot roast?” said Jim, feeling in his pockets.

“A pot roast is all the better of a little longer cooking,” I informed him.

The attendant laid the end of the nozzle in Jim’s gas tank.

Jimmie was still feeling in his pockets.

“Holy!” he suddenly exclaimed, snatching his hand out of his pocket as if he had been stung.

“What is it?” I demanded.

“I lent the ration book to the kids last week…” he said.

“Hmmm,” said the attendant, lifting the nozzle out of Jim’s tank.

We explained the situation to the man

“The law,” he said, “is the law. Besides, there is the darndest lot of chisellers.”

So we shoved the car off to one side on the service station lot.

“I’ll pick it up in the morning,” said Jimmie brokenly to the attendant, who was already looking at his watch.

And in the rain, we walked three blocks back east from the Park to Roncesvalles where we caught a street car.

And the family was just finishing the deep apple pie when I walked in.

“Oh, those street cars,” said my wife.

But the pot roast couldn’t have been better.

Editor’s Notes: Because of gasoline rationing during World War 2, Greg has been taking the streetcar to work, and Jim decides to take his car out for a day to make sure it does not seize up from being parked too long.

The illustration advertises the “Send Over Smokes” campaign that Greg wrote about earlier.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, July 17, 1937.

“Policemen,” said Jimmie Frise, “always ought to be in motor cars; not on motor cycles.”

“The law,” I disagreed, “is a game. If you can see a cop on a motorcycle, it’s fair. It is conceded in all civilized countries that cops should not be allowed to hide.”

“Modern traffic,” said Jim, who was watching me steer my car amidst the hot and anxious outward bound traffic of Saturday noon, “modern traffic has got past the amusement stage. It’s a game no longer. Now that the Ontario speed limit has been increased from 35 miles an hour on highways to 50 miles, and in cities and towns from 20 up to 30 miles an hour, a strange and grim psychological factor has emerged.”

“What’s that?” I inquired.

“When the law was 35 miles an hour,” said Jim, “hardly anybody obeyed it. But the knowledge that we were exceeding the limit gave us all a margin of caution. We were alert. Being already guilty of one breach of the law, to wit, going faster than 35, we were a little cautious about breaking it any other way. We were wide awake in the first place for speed cops. We had a guilty conscience, even if only a subconscious or semi-conscious guilty conscience. It made us careful, alert.”

“I follow you,” I confessed.

“Now that the law is 50,¹” went on Jim, “that guilty conscience has evaporated. The only sense of guilt we have is when we are driving less than 50, and we wonder if other drivers are put out with us for not keeping up with the Joneses”.

“I believe you’re right,” I admitted, stepping slightly on the gas to increase my speed from 34 to 37.

“Now, a sense of guilt,” explained Jim, “is one of the greatest and most humane of civilized forces. It is our general sense of guilt that makes us kindly, tolerant and good natured towards our fellow men.”

A large blue car swerved angrily past us and the lady in the near seat turned and said something bitter to me. I couldn’t hear her words but if I put the right meaning to the shape of her mouth, that lady certainly is no lady.

“See?” cried Jim. “Before the law was changed, her sense of guilt would have prevented her from cursing you. Now she is free to call you names if you aren’t doing at least 50.”

“Psychology is a funny thing,” I mused.

“No, it’s human nature is funny,” agonized Jim. “With no need for caution under 50 miles an hour as far as cops are concerned, old rattletrap cars that should not ever exceed 30 miles an hour are going to be going as near 50 as they can. And every instant they are on the road they are a menace to human life.”

“There goes one now,” I said, as a shabby old top-heavy sedan with narrow tires of the vintage of 1925, slithered past us and did a sort of Charlie Chaplin skid to get straight on the pavement again.

To Miss the Old Fear

“Then,” said Jim, “plenty of drivers of perfect cars, as far as mechanism is concerned, but who intellectually are incapable of driving more than 40 miles an hour – you know, the kind of people who are clumsy and always spilling things and bumping into things are going to miss that old restraining fear of cops sorely. Such people really need that fear. Without it, they are helpless.”

“Listen to that,” I murmured, as a car behind me continued to snort its horn savagely until I got away over to the side of the pavement. And when it passed, four furious faces leaned and glared out the windows at me.

“You take the young fellow driving one of those rattletrap old cars,” said Jim. “He has, for instance, three other young people in the car with him. He is going 35, which is all the machine is capable of without swerving right off the road. When his companions egg him on to greater speed, he had, heretofore, the excuse that there is a speed cop usually on the top of the hill ahead. But now, what excuse can he offer? Will he say his car is too poor and rickety to risk any more speed? No young man could admit any such thing. So what does he do? He tries for 50 and the admiration of his companions. And just as he lurches and slithers over the top of that next hill, who does he collide with or send head over heels into the ditch but a perfectly nice lady with a carload of children, going 40 miles an hour?”

“It’s bad,” I admitted, as a car driven by a white-haired old lady zipped past me, going about 60.

“Motorcycle cops, therefore,” said Jim, “should be abolished and police should be equipped with ordinary cars of various makes and colors. So that the motorists never know but what the car behind them or the car coming towards them is police.”

“Ah,” I agreed. “A new hazard. A new fear.”

“Correct,” said Jim. “And the police should be most active on the highways, touring day and night at a brisk pace, watching for cutter-ins, hill passers, curve passers; they should pursue and give an official warning to all drivers of old ashcans that were driving at any speed that made them wobble and lurch. Fines for recklessness should never be less than $25², so that for all fools there would be a real terror of coming too fast around curves or attempting to pass without reasonable distance being given.”

“We must put some sort of fear into them,” I declared, for now we were outside the city and on to a wider strip of pavement so that the traffic behind, which had been fairly patient, now began to get excited like lions at feeding time at the zoo and start to zip and cut and swerve and duck in their anxiety to get ahead.

“What’s the good of their doing that?” demanded Jim. “Don’t they realize that there is a line-up for miles ahead of them? What good is it going to do them to scare the wits out of you by cutting in ahead of you with two seconds to spare, when they are going to have to keep that up all the way to Muskoka?”

“It’s a nervous sort of thrill. I suppose,” I said. “It’s like gambling. Like roulette. They would go to sleep if they had to drive steadily. Only by hop-scotching around like that do they keep awake.”

“I wish there were double the cops,” said Jim, “and all incognito in plain cars. That would stop those St. Vitus dance³ drivers. We ought to adopt the system of having a big red enamel patch painted on the back of every car that is convicted of reckless driving. With three patches on your car, 30 miles an hour is your absolute limit. You’d feel like a marked man then, and behave.”

“Look Who’s Ahead of Us”

“Boy, did you see that?” I breathed as two cars, chasing each other at 50 miles an hour, both dove back into the line ahead of us to make way for a big passenger bus coming tearing along in the opposite direction at 50, too.

I had to change gears on account of the sudden stoppage the cutting in of the two cars ahead had created. Minute by minute as we got out into the country it grew worse. Those who knew the law was 50 miles an hour wanted to go 50, and were indignant at all those who didn’t. They kept cutting out and in and charging ahead until in a little while the congestion ahead of us was so bad we were not only slowed to 30 miles but gradually formed a solid line, and frequent dead stops were necessary.

“Oh,” I snarled, “where are the cops?”

“The only way to travel nowadays,” said Jim, “is by aeroplane. No self-respecting citizen will stay on the roads much longer.”

It was hot. It was gassey. It was nerve-racking and on-edgey. The farther people were behind us the more anxious they were to get ahead. And every time the down traffic left space, 40 cars behind us leaped out of line and formed a double line, racing past us until down-coming trucks or cars forced them back into our line; and with fury we had to make room for them. It meant a stop almost every time.

“Get out into the swim,” said Jim, at last. “You jump, too. Everybody else is doing it.”

“Not me,” said I.

“It’ll thin out a few miles north,” coaxed Jim. “The sooner we get there, the sooner this strain will be over.”

“I’m safer where I am,” I said. “In line.”

But in a few moments, the car that had been ahead of me for several miles decided it was getting too thick and it made the jump and got into the scramble.

“Not me,” I cried triumphantly. “Look at whose ahead of us now!”

“It’s cops,” said Jim.

And sure enough, in the car now immediately ahead of us, were the round heads and flat caps of two large cops sitting the stiff way cops sit at the wheel of a car.

“They’re only doing 32,” said Jim looking at my speedometer.

“It’ll do me too,” I said, settling comfortably in back of the cops.

“Now,” chuckled Jim, “watch these cutter-inners when they see the cops.”

But it made no apparent difference. The minute down traffic left a hole, out leaped about ten times more cars than the hole would accommodate and the minute the down traffic came level, all these birds had to scrunch back into line and everybody had to grab and brake and swear and change gears.

“I guess they don’t see they’re cops,” said Jim.

“Why don’t the cops do something, instead of just jogging along?” I demanded hotly.

“Pass them,” advised Jim.

“Not me,” I said. “I respect law and order. Those cops are at least setting an example of orderly driving.”

“And nobody even looks at them,” scoffed Jim.

“What good could they do?” he went on. “In a jam like this?”

“One of them could stand on the running board,” I suggested, “and hold out his hand to warn those behind not to try to pass. In ten minutes the congestion ahead would sort itself out and we could all do 40. It’s that crowding ahead that makes us all go slow.”

“Don’t let’s talk about it,” said Jim.

“Very well,” I said.

With a Baleful Look

So we continued, in regular series of mixups, of grinding and braking and starting and slowing and horns blowing and swearing and cussing as the impatient miles went by. Every time there was a jam-up and cars head would try to cut in ahead of me I would blow my horn furiously in the hope of rousing those two cops ahead from their lethargy.

“What’s the matter with them?” I shouted. “Sitting there. Like dummies. With all this murder going on.”

“Hire a hall,” said Jim.

He sank down in his seat and closed his eyes.

We came to a town. Jim woke and sat up. In the business block, traffic stopped dead for a minute, and one of the cops in the car ahead prepared to get out.

Heavily he backed out the car door. He was in a khaki uniform and with him, hugged to his breast, he backed out a large brass horn.

“Pah-ha-ha,” roared Jim. “A bandsman. A tuba player.”

“Well, I’ll be….” I admitted a little ruefully.

“There you go,” laughed Jim, “always taken in by appearances. Abusing the cops and it was just a couple of lads from the town band.”

Traffic began to move again and we tooled through the town and the minute we got outside, the panic began again, cars leaping, swerving, ducking.

“Well,” asked Jim, “are you going to stick behind the piccolo player?”

“Heh, heh, heh,” I said, taking a quick look behind and then swerving out.

I stepped on the gas and leaped past the bandsman’s car.

“Yah,” I roared out past Jim, “yah, you big windbag, what are holding up traffic for?”

“Nix,” hissed Jim. “It is a cop!”

And it was.

“Ow,” I said, ducking back into line. “It was a cop, giving a guy a lift from the band.”

“Ow,” said Jim, craning his neck to look in the mirror. “He’s after you.”

In a minute, I saw a car creep alongside. It’s horn tooted sharply. I looked. The cop, with a baleful north of Ireland look in his green eyes, was signalling me languidly to pull off to the side.

I took to the shoulder carefully, so as to allow the line behind to pass. The cop pulled in ahead of me, got out and walked back, hitching his belt.

“What was that,” said the cop, resting his elbow on my door, “you said to me as you passed?”

“Huh?” I asked. “Said to you? I wasn’t speaking to you.”

“Oh, yes you was,” said the cop. “What was it about me blocking traffic? Big wind-bag or something?”

“Oh, that?” I laughed heartily. “Oh, that? Oh. I was speaking to my friend here, my friends, he’s deaf, see? I have to shout at him. Oh, ha, ha, did you think… Oh, ha ha, Jimmie,” I shouted in Jim’s ear, “the policeman thinks I was shouting at him.”

“Did he?” said Jim.

“Yes,” I roared in Jim’s ear. “Isn’t that funny?”

“Heh, heh, heh,” laughed Jim, fairly heartily.

“Well, anyway,” said the cop. taking a long slow look at me. “I don’t like the way you cut in and out in traffic. You’ll be the death of somebody if you keep that up.”

“Why, officer,” I cried, “everybody is cutting in and out. Just look at them.”

“Yes.” said the constable, “but not right under the nose of a policeman. I’d better see your driver’s license, mister.”

And he took down all my particulars, tested my lights, brakes, horn and wanted to see my spare light bulbs which I promised him I’d buy at the next town. And all the time the traffic fought and snarled past us.

And then he got in his car and drove ahead of us 24 miles at 28 miles an hour.

Editor’s Notes:

1. Ontario’s first province-wide speed limit on rural highways was introduced in 1903 at 15 mph (24 km/h). The speed limit was increased to 25 mph (40 km/h) by the early 1920s and increased further to 35 mph (56 km/h) by the late 1920s. The speed limit on most rural highways was increased to 50 mph (80 km/h) in May 1937. During World War II, the speed limits were temporarily lowered to 40 mph (65 km/h) to conserve Canada’s fuel supplies. The next speed limit increase took place in 1959, when the speed limit for passenger cars using the new superhighways such as Highway 400 and Highway 401 was changed to 60 mph (100 km/h). ↩︎
2. $25 in 1937 would be $528 in 2014. ↩︎
3. St. Vitus’ Dance was diagnosed, in the 17th century as Sydenham chorea. The old term hung around for a while. ↩︎

Jim, with the help of Greg and a few friends, works out a plan to beat the used car dealers at their own game. But…

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, April 24, 1948.

“I’ve decided,” announced Jimmie Frise, “to sell my car.”

“Jim, you’re crazy!” I exclaimed.

“No: I’ve just decided I’m smart,” he declared. “I’m going to cut the price of my new car by $600².”

“But you told me last night,” I protested, “that the car dealer said he couldn’t get you a new car until August or September.”

“Precisely,” agreed Jim. “The fact that summer is almost here, plus the extreme shortage of new cars, is what accounts for the fact that I can get $600 more for my old car than it’s worth.”

“You mean,” I cried, “that to make $600 you are going to do without a car all summer?”

“With a little co-operation from you,” admitted Jim, “that’s what I’m going to do.”

“Co-operation?” I queried.

“Yes,” said Jim. “You see, you are away at your summer cottage for two weeks in July, during which time your car stands idle in a tumble-down old rented garage up at the Landing. I figure you wouldn’t mind letting me have the use of your car during those two weeks…”

“Jim,” I interrupted. “There’s May, June, July and August…”

“Correct,” said Jim, “I’ve telephoned three or four others among my friends, checking their holiday schedules. There’s Bumpy and Bill Sparra and Harry Wilcox. They’re all taking their holidays at different times through the summer. And it so happens they are going to summer hotels up the lakes, where they abandon their cars, at the end of the highway, having to pay rent for garages…”

“Jim, look here,” I cut in sternly. “Use your common sense. How are you going to run all over the country, borrowing people’s cars?”

“It will be fun,” assured Jim. “It will be sort of like a holiday in itself. For example, when you go up to your cottage, I’ll go with you and drive your car back here and use it for the two weeks, bringing it up to the Landing the Sunday you are coming down. See?”

“But…” I began.

“You’d far rather,” cried Jim, “leave the car in my care than leave it in one of those baking summer resort garages, where anybody can break in!”

“I suppose that’s true,” I grudged.

“At any rate,” he announced, “if I sell my car now, at top prices, I get the new car for hundreds of dollars less, don’t you see? I bet I wouldn’t get $300 for it next September when my new car is ready. Yet I saw the same year and model as my car up at one of those used car lots for $900.”

“Surely not!” I scoffed. “Nine hundred dollars?”

“It’s a fact,” cried Jim. “I’ll drive you up and show you.”

“Still, to be without a car all summer,” I brooded, “is a pretty serious matter, Jim. In a sense, it’s really for summer – for the five months from May until October – that we own cars, most of us.”

“Exactly what has created the present market for used cars,” pointed out Jim. “The way to make easy money in this world is to take advantage of the weaknesses and needs of your fellow man. You’ll never get ahead in this world if you just work for wages or salary all your life. My new car next fall is going to cost $1,700. By taking advantage of the present market, as well as the good nature of half a dozen of my friends, I will buy that car for only $1,100. That’s what you call business.”

“You run certain risks,” I reminded him. “Suppose you crack up one of your friends’ cars?”

“I run that risk driving my own old jalopy,” countered Jim. “In fact, I will be far more careful driving your car and Bill Sparra’s and Harry Wilcox’s than I would my own. Every way you look at it, it’s a wise and shrewd move on my part.”

“Jim,” reflected, “there is a moral aspect to this business. If you did without a car all summer, that would be the price you pay for that $600 you are going to make. In other words, to earn $600, you sacrifice your car for the summer.”

“Are you hinting,” inquired Jim, “that you don’t want to lend me your car, when it’s lying idle anyway?”

“No, no!” I hastened. “I just feel there’s something immoral about this used car racket, selling old jalopies at outrageous prices, just by taking advantage of the widespread desire to drive cars in summer. If you were going to do without a car for the summer suppresses that natural desire, why, the $600 you would make would look quite so… so…”

“What I say,” declared Jim, “is, make use of every advantage in this world. Among the advantages we possess are a number of fine friends who would be glad to lend me their cars for a couple of weeks, partly for the sake of friendship, partly to see me make $600; and partly to save them the rent on those tumble-down summer resort garages where goodness knows what might happen to your car…”

“Okay, okay,” I surrendered. “And it will be $600 that won’t show in your income tax, Jim. I suppose the smartest guys in this world are the traders who make deals like this all the time. We salary and wage earners are the suckers.”

“I’ve been a sucker long enough,” said Jim, rising and pulling down his vest and lighting a cigarette with a very big-executive flourish. “It will give me a new self-respect, next fall, to be driving around in a car that cost me 600 bucks less than those of all the suckers I pass in traffic. Do you want to come up with me while I shop around and make the sale? Do you know any of these used car lot pirates?”

“The fact is,” I replied, “not only do I not know any of them, I’ve never seen any of them. I’ve looked at hundreds of used car lots in passing, but now that I come to think of it, I’ve never in my life seen anybody around them. Just a great big corner lot packed with motor cars sitting there. And no human inhabitant in sight.”

“Oh, they’ll be there, all right,” assured Jim. “They hide at the back, somewhere.”

So we went out to Jim’s garage and took a last look at Old Maud, Jim’s faithful schooner for more than 10 years. Many’s the thousands of miles it has carried us on fishing trips and hunting trips. Many’s the $10, $20 and $50 it has cost to have its engine overhauled, its brakes relined, its clutch repaired. Many’s the thousands of dollars’ worth of gas its rusty old engine has inhaled in our service.

“I’ll just get a pail of water and a rag,” said Jim, “and give her a wipe.”

While Jim was sponging off the exterior of Old Maud, he had me, with a whisk-broom, tidying up the interior, from the trunk compartment, I removed sundry personal odds and ends, such as a set of rusty chains, an old shovel and an accumulation of ancient car tools that had shaken themselves into out-of-the-way corners of the compartment.

“No wonder she’s rattled,” remarked Jim, as I passed him carrying an armful of salvage toward the garage. Jim sponged off the body, fenders and windows; and I took the hose and tidied up the wheels and spokes. Little by little, Old Maud took on a genteel if shabby expression. We hadn’t seen her so clean in years. But just the same, her scars showed more clearly.

“It’s better, perhaps,” pondered Jim, as we stood back and surveyed the old schooner, “not to tidy up an old car too much. It only accentuates its age, like cosmetics on an old woman.”.

“Anybody,” I stated, “who would pay $900 for an old crock like that is nuts.”

“Not nuts,” smiled Jim, patting the wobbly hood, “just summer madness.”

“Do you feel any twinges of sorrow on bidding goodbye to an old friend and faithful car like this?” I asked.

“Aw, no,” said Jim, lightly. “Some cars, like some people, can live too long. Come on. Let’s get it over with.”

“You won’t sell it right tonight!” I protested.

“If I get a decent offer, I’ll sell right now,” said Jim.

“But what about the family? Are they reconciled to being without a car?”

“I’ve explained the whole deal to them,” said Jimmie. “And they all are in complete agreement. I’ve promised to allow them $5 a week for taxis, in special cases of emergency. Then I figured you wouldn’t mind lending me your car once in a while, for special occasions…”

“Mmmmm,” I reflected.

“I’ve suggested the same to Bumpy and Bill Sparra and Harry Wilcox,” went on Jim. “The family figure we’ll be a lot better off, for a while, than we’ve been with Old Maud here.”

Jim waved me into the car and stepped on the starter. Old Maud’s starter whined and whimpered, and finally the engine exploded into life, and the usual fumes belched up through the worn matting on the floor boards.

“I’ll take you first,” shouted Jim, “to the place they have this same model at $900.

A few blocks away, we arrived at the large used car lot of McGrigor, Mortis & Co. A big banner over the entrance bore the company’s name and the legend: “Highest Prices Paid.”

Along the front of the lot, there was an array of the handsomest new cars you would see even at a motor show. Resplendent, shining, glittering, none of them showed the slightest sign of having been used at all. But as we drove in the lane, we saw that back of the glittering cars were close-packed ranks less glittering cars. And farther back still, were rows and rows of cars that didn’t glitter at all. These most backward ranks of cars all had prices painted on the windshield with whitewash. $375 or $500 or $625. Only the shabbiest cars had the indignity of prices painted on them.

Sure enough, as we drove down deep into the lot, a man emerged from a little shack and came toward us cautiously.

“Mr. McGrigor?” inquired Jimmie heartily, out the car window. “Or Mr. Mortis?”

“Neither,” said the gentleman. “They’re both in Florida. What can I do for you?”

“I was thinking of selling this car,” said Jim, as though in doubt.

“You might get somebody to buy it,” agreed the gent.

“What would you give me for it?” inquired Jim.

“How much do you want for it?” countered the used car man.

“Well, you’re the buyer,” smiled Jim. “What would you offer?”

“No, I’m not the buyer,” smiled the used car man, “I’m only interested in selling cars. How would $250 catch you?”

Jim was stunned.

“Two,” he croaked, “fifty!”

“That’s all it’s worth to me,” said the used car man.

“But…” sputtered Jim, “right over there is the same model as this offered at $900!”

“Aw, sure,” said the used car man, “but that car has a new engine in it and only two years ago it had a new transmission and rear end. We’ve put a lot of work on that, the same as we would with this if we bought it.”

“Two fifty!” fumed Jim. “Why, I’ll sell it privately, I’ll advertise it…”

“Sure, sure,” laughed the used car man, “and in about a month, the buyer will be back with it, saying you misrepresented it; and he’ll sue you unless you give him back $400.”

“Do they sue you?” demanded Jim bitterly.

“Aw, no,” explained the used car man. “We do a lot of work on the cars we take in. And in the contract of sale, we make mention of all the work done, see. How about $250?”

Jim did not answer. He backed Old Maud out the lane, and in silence we drove back home.

As he turned off the ignition in the side drive, Jimmie spoke for the first time.

“Imagine,” he said tenderly, “imagine selling a faithful, wonderful old car like this for $250!”

He patted the seat affectionately. He ran his hands lovingly over the steering wheel.

“Next fall, when the new car is ready,” he said. “It will break my heart to part with her.”

“At that price,” I added.

“You have no sentiment,” accused Jim.

Editor’s Notes:

1. David Harum references a movie (and book) about a businessman and a horse he purchased. The story is known more today for the racist stereotype played by the black actor Stepin Fetchit. ↩︎
2. $600 in 1948 would be $8,480 in 2024 ↩︎