Butler Ellis Parker
The Adventures of a Suburbanite

XI. MY DOMESTICATED AUTOMOBILE

I HAVE said that I left Millington happily working over his automobile when I went to the Country Club that afternoon. When I returned he was still working away, and so well had I wrecked his car that all his repairing seemed to have made not the slightest impression on it.

“John,” he said brightly, “you certainly did a good job. It will be months before I have this car in any shape at all, I am sure. It is going to take all my spare time, too. I mean to set my alarm clock for three, and get up at that time every morning.”

It is always a pleasure for me to see another man happy, and at half-past two the next morning I was waiting for Millington at his garage door. He came out of his house promptly at three, and joked merrily as he unlocked the garage door, but the moment he threw open the door his face fell. And well it might! The dished wheel had been trued, the crushed hood had been straightened and painted, a new cylinder had replaced the cracked one, and when Millington tried the engine it ran without a sound except that of a perfectly working piece of well-adjusted machinery. Millington got out of the car and stood staring at the motor, and suddenly, with a low cry of anguish, he fell over backward as stiff as a log. Mrs. Millington and I managed to carry him to bed, and then I returned to the garage. I was not going to desert Millington in his adversity.

After the doctor had visited the house, Mrs. Millington came out and told me that her husband was still in a comatose state, due to brain-shock, but that he kept repeating “Sell it! Sell it!” over and over, and she was sure he must mean the car. She said that while she would hate to part with the car, and give up all the pleasure of starting for Port Lafayette, she feared for her husband’s reason if he continued to receive such shocks, and she was willing to sacrifice the car at a very low price, if I insisted. She said I had not, like Millington, become habituated to hearing a knocking in the engine, so’ the lack of it would not bother me, and that owning a car that repaired itself over night was what most automobile owners would call a golden opportunity.

I suppose if I had come home and said to Isobel: “My dear, I have bought an Asiatic hyena,” she would have been less shocked and surprised than she was when I entered the house and said: “Well, my dear, I have bought an automobile.”

Isobel is of a rather nervous disposition, and driving behind Bob, our horse, had tended to eliminate any latent speed mania she may have ever had, for Bob is not a rapid horse. Of course, Isobel drove the horse at a trot occasionally, but that was when she wanted to go slower than a walk, for Bob was what may be called an upright trotter – one of those horses that trot like a grasshopper: the harder they trot the higher they rise in the air, and the less ground they cover. When Bob was in fine fettle, as we horsemen say, he could trot for hours with a perpendicular motion, like a sewing machine needle, and remain in one identical spot the whole time. He could trot tied to a post. Sometimes when he was feeling his oats he could trot backward.

I suppose that when I mentioned automobile Isobel had a vision of a bright-red car about twenty-five feet long, with a tonnage like an ocean steamer, and a speed of one hundred and ten miles an hour – one of the machines that flash by with a wail of agony and kill a couple of men just around the next corner. But Millington’s automobile was not that kind. It was a tried and tested affair. It had been in a Christian family for five years, and was well broken. Nor was it a long automobile; it was one of the shortest automobiles I have ever seen; indeed, I do not think I ever saw such a short automobile. “Short and high” seemed to have been the maker’s motto, and he had lived up to it. He couldn’t have made the automobile any shorter without having cogs on the tires, so they could overlap. If the automobile had been much shorter the rear wheels would have been in front of the fore wheels. But what it lacked in length it made up in altitude. It averaged pretty well, multiplying the height by the length. It was the type known in the profession as the “camel type.” When in action it had a motion somewhat like a camel, too, but more like a small boat on a wintry, wind-tossed sea. But, ah! the engine! There was a noble heart in that weak body! When the engine was in average knocking condition, one knew when it started. In two minutes after the engine started the driver was on the ground; if he did not become dizzy, sitting at such a height, and fall off, the engine shook him off.

But, if Isobel did not take kindly to the idea of owning Millington’s automobile, Rolfs seemed glad I was going to buy it.

“You won’t be everlastingly asking me to take a little run up to Port Lafayette,” he said. “For years before you moved out here Millington bothered the life out of me, and I cannot bear riding in automobiles. I hate them worse than that hired man of yours does. How does he like the idea?”

I told him, rather haughtily, that I did not usually consult Mr. Prawley when I bought automobiles. Then Rolfs said he thought, usually, it was just as well for an ignorant man to consult some one, but that he knew Millington’s automobile was a good one. He said he knew the man that had owned the machine ten or twelve years before Millington bought it. He said that every one knew that machines of that make that were made in 1895 were extremely durable. He said he remembered about this one particularly, because it was the period when milk shakes were the popular drink, and his friend used to make his own. He said his friend would put the ingredients in a bottle, and tie the bottle to the automobile seat, and then start the engine for a minute or two, and the milk would be completely shaken. So would his friend.

Rolfs asked me to let him know when I brought the automobile over from Millington’s. I had no difficulty in doing so. When I ran that automobile the only difficulty was in concealing the fact that it was arriving anywhere and in getting it to arrive. Often it preferred not to arrive at all, but when it did arrive, it gave every one notice. Isobel never had to wonder whether I was arriving in my machine, or whether it was some visitor in another machine. Under my regime my machine had a sweet, purring sound like a road-roller loaded with scrap iron crossing a cobblestone bridge. When the engine was going and the car was not, it sounded like giant fire-crackers exploding under a dish pan.

The very day I purchased the car and brought it into my yard Mr. Prawley came to me and told me he had a very important communication to make. He said his poor old mother was sick, and he would like a month’s vacation. He added that he imagined the automobile would last about twenty-nine days. As he said this his lean, villainous face wore a look of fear, and when I told him he could have the vacation, he departed, walking backward, keeping one eye on the automobile all the while.

But the automobile did not behave in the bewitched manner for me that it had for Millington. It did not repair itself over night at all. If anything it deteriorated.

Oddly enough, now that the automobile was quite tame, Isobel, who usually has perfect confidence in me, declined to ride in it. But frequently we took rides together, driving side by side, she in her buggy behind Bob, and I in my automobile, and, occasionally, when the road was rough and the engine working well, I would drop in on her unexpectedly. But not always. Sometimes I fell off on the other side.

I found these little trips very pleasant and exceedingly good for a torpid liver – if I had had one – and I enjoyed having Isobel with me, especially when we came to bits of sandy road where the rear wheels of my automobile would revolve uselessly, as if for the mere pleasure of revolving.

Then I would unhitch Bob from the buggy and hitch him to the automobile, and he would tow me over the sandy stretch, aided by the engine. It was a pretty picture to see this helpfulness, one to the other, especially when my engine was palpitating in its wild, vibratory manner, and Bob was trotting at full speed, while I fell out of the automobile, first on one side and then on the other.

Isobel enjoyed these little moments exceedingly and often I had to go back to her, after I had passed the sandy spot, and pat her on the back until she could get her breath again. She had to admit that she had never imagined she could get so much pleasure out of an automobile. But it was that kind of an automobile – any one could get more pleasure out of it than in it.

I myself found that after the first novelty wore off automobiling became a bore. As a method of securing pleasure the cost per gallon to each unit of joy was too high, in that machine. Riding in my machine was not what is called “joy riding.” It was more like a malady.

Of course we never attempted a long tour, like that to Port Lafayette, which is eleven miles from Westcote, and it was about the time my tire troubles began that I thought of domesticating my automobile. I remember with what pride I discovered my first puncture. Every automobile owner of my acquaintance had tire troubles, and I had never had any, and I felt slighted. Sometimes I felt tempted to take an awl and puncture a tire myself, so I, too, could talk about my tire troubles, but I had a feeling that that would be unprofessional. I had never heard of any real sporty automobilist punching holes in his tires with awls; in fact they seemed to consider there was no particular pleasure in punctured tires. That was the way they talked – as if a puncture was a misfortune – but I knew better. I could hear the undercurrent of pride in their voices as they announced: “Well, I had three punctures and two blow-outs yesterday. I was running along slowly, about fifty-five miles an hour, between Oyster Bay and Huntington, when – ” And then the next man would pipe up and say: “Yes? Well, I beat that. I was speeding a little – not much, but about sixty miles an hour – on the Jericho Turnpike last night, and all four tires – ” And through it all I had to sit silent. I longed to be able to say: “I was speeding along yesterday at about half a mile an hour, the machine going better than usual, when suddenly I jumped out and stuck my penknife into the forward, left-hand tire – ” I had never had a puncture. I was not in their class.

But my turn came. I was speeding a little – about one city block every five minutes – on Thirteenth Street, when my sparker stopped sparking. When your engine misses fire there are six hundred and forty-two things that may be the matter, and after you have tested the six hundred and forty-two, it may be an entirely new six hundred and forty-third trouble. I have known a man to try the full six hundred and forty-two remedies unavailingly, and then sigh and wipe his goggles, and the engine began working beautifully. And it was only by chance – pure chance – that he happened to wipe his goggles. Probably he had not wiped them for years. But after that the first thing he did when his engine did not fire was to wipe them. And never, never again did it have the least effect on the engine. That is one of the peculiar things about an automobile. And there are nine hundred and ninety-nine other peculiar things, each of which is more peculiar than all the rest.

I had just taken my automobile apart to discover why the engine did not work, and the various pieces of its anatomy were scattered up and down the street for a block or more, and I was hunting up another piece to take out, when I noticed that one of my tires was flat. I had a puncture! I suppose I would have thrilled with joy at any other time, but just after a man has dissected his automobile is no time for him to thrill. He has other things to amuse him. I have even known a man who had just discovered that his last battery had gone dead to swear a little when he discovered that two tires had also gone flat.

It was when I was pumping up that new inner tube that I decided to domesticate my automobile. It seemed to be a shame to take such a delicate piece of machinery out on the rough, unfeeling road, and I remembered that Rolfs had told me of a Philadelphia friend of his who had half domesticated his automobile. Rolfs said that once, when he was foolish, he had ridden half an hour, out to his friend’s farm, and there the automobile was jacked up and a belt attached to one of the rear wheels, and in less than five minutes the car was doing duty as a piece of farm machinery, running a feed cutter. Rolfs said it was great. He said it was the only time he ever felt satisfied that an automobile was getting what it deserved. He said that all the men had to do was to keep the fodder-cutter fed with fodder, and that it kept two farm hands busy. He said I ought to get some fodder and cut it that way and stop being an obstruction in the public highways. He suggested that I get some wood and saw wood with the automobile, or get some apples and make cider. He suggested a thousand things I could do with the automobile, and not one of them was riding in it.

I had tried riding in it myself, and after owning it a week or two I decided it was just the kind of automobile that was meant to do general household work. So I domesticated it.

XII. MR. PRAWLEY RETURNS

MARY was one of the most faithful servants a family ever had. Her faithfulness deserves this monument. She was a Pole and she could not pronounce her own name. She tried to pronounce it the first day she came to us, but along toward the sixth or seventh syllable she became confused and had to give it up. She said it was Schneider in English. Perhaps the reason she remained with us so long was because she had brought her Polish name with her, and it was too much trouble to move it from place to place. When she once got in a place, she liked to stay there. But “Schneider” was about the only English word she knew, and this made it a little difficult to explain to her that I had domesticated the automobile and would allow her to use it on wash day. I had to make a picture of it, and even then she seemed rather doubtful about it.

As a matter of fact it was all very simple, but Mary Schneider was stupid. We already had the washing machine, and we had the automobile, and it was only necessary to connect the rear wheel of the automobile with the drive wheel of the washing machine by means of a belt, jack up the rear axle of the automobile, and start the engine. I hoped in time to go further than this and hitch up the coffee mill, the carpet-sweeper, the ice-cream freezer, and all our other household machinery, and then Mary Schneider would have a very easy time of it. She could have sat in the automobile with her hands on the speed levers and the work would have done itself. But Mary would not sit in the automobile. She tried to explain that she had seen me sit in it and that the Schneiders, as a family, had very brittle bones and could not afford to fall out of automobiles of such height, but I could not understand what she was saying. I only understood that she said she would give notice immediately if she had to sit in that automobile while the palpitator was jiggering.

I had a feeling that all this was mere diffidence on her part, and that when she once saw how easy it all was she would be delighted with it. So I jacked up the rear axle of the car in my backyard, and attached the clothesline as a belt to the rear wheel and to the drive wheel of the washing machine. I remained at home one Monday morning especially to do this, and Isobel thought it was very kind of me. She said she was sure Mary could do it, and would be glad to, after she had once seen how it was done.

Mary put the soap in the washing machine, and the hot water, and the clothes, and I started the automobile engine. It was all I had hoped. Never, never had I seen clothes washed so rapidly. Luckily I had thought to nail the legs of the washing machine to the floor of the back porch. This steadied the washing machine and kept it from jumping more than it did. Of course, some vibration was conveyed along the rope belt from the automobile, and Mary had to hasten to and fro bringing more hot water to refill the washing machine. It was like a storm at sea, or a geyser, or a large hot fountain. When we had the automobile going at full speed the water hardly entered the washing machine before it dashed madly out again.

Isobel had to help by putting more clothes in the washing machine. It used up clothes as rapidly as Rolf’s friend’s fodder-cutter used up fodder, but I think it cut the clothes into smaller pieces. We discovered this when we hunted up the clothes later. We did not notice it at the time. All was excitement.

It was a proud moment for me. The engine was running as well as it ever did, the dasher of the washing machine was dashing to and fro with hot water, and Mrs. Rolfs and Mrs. Millington were cheering us on. I began to believe we would break all records for clothes washing if Mary and Isobel could only keep water and clothes in the washing machine. Just then I fell out of the automobile.

Possibly the sudden removal of my weight had an effect. It may have been that my head in striking one of the rear wheels moved the axle. Of this I can never be sure. The rear axle unjacked itself, and as the rear wheels touched the ground the automobile darted away. I was just able to touch the washing machine as it hurried by, but it did not wait for me to secure a firm hold, and it went on its way. But Mary was faithful to the last. She – ignorant though she was – knew that the weekly wash should not dash off in this manner. She – although but a Pole, knew her duty and did it. Mary hung onto the washing machine. Whither the wash went she was going. And so she did. Rapidly, too.

The rear porch was not badly damaged. Only those boards to which the washing machine had been nailed went with it, but where the automobile went through the back fence we had to make extensive repairs. But it was all for the best. If the automobile had not made a hole in the fence Mary could not have gone through. Of course, she could have gone around by the gate, but she would have lost time, and she was not losing any time. Neither was the washing machine. The automobile did not gain an inch on it, and sometimes when the washing machine made a good jump it overtook the automobile. So did Mary.

I saw then that I had not thoroughly domesticated the automobile. As we stood and watched the automobile and the washing machine and Mary dashing rapidly away in the distance, we felt that the automobile was still a little too wild for household use, but I fully believed the automobile would be tame enough before it reached home again. A young, strong automobile may be able to take cross country runs without ill effects, but an elderly automobile, like the one I bought of Millington, cannot dash across country towing a washing machine and a Polish servant, whose name is Schneider in English, without danger to its constitution. I do not blame the washing machine – it could not let go, it was belted on – but if Mary had had presence of mind she would have released her grasp when she found the strain was too much for the automobile. But it is strange how differently the minds of male and female run. As I watched the automobile disappear over the edge of the hill I said:

“Isobel, I guess that ends that automobile,” But Isobel said:

“John, I am afraid we have lost Mary.” And yet that automobile and that Pole were the last two in the world I should ever have suspected of running away with each other. She came back later in the day, but she did not say much. She packed her trunk and took her wages, and remarked a remark that sounded like the English word Schneider translated into Polish. The washing machine did not return.

When Millington came out to the fence that evening I told him that I was done with automobiling, and that the automobile was probably mashed to flinders. He had been looking bad, but he brightened at the words.

“John,” he said, “if that automobile is wrecked as badly as it should be after running wild with a tail of washing machines and Schneiders-in-English, I’ll buy it back. I’ll give – I’ll give you five dollars for it.”

He must have seen the eagerness in my eyes, for he remarked quickly:

“I’ll give you two dollars and forty-five cents for it!”

“I’ll take it!” I said instantly.

“It is mine!” said Millington, and he handed over the money.

As soon as it was in my pocket I heard a rustling in the currant bushes at my left, and Mr. Prawley raised his head above them.

“Mother’s well again,” he said. “I’ve come back!”