Woody sighed. Here was a real dream car. No other car could ever take
its place for him. But he would never have anything to do with it, let
alone drive it. The thought left him vaguely unhappy.
4
There are certain cars that those who love automobiles fall in love
with at first sight. The Black Tiger was just such a car for Woody. For
the next few days he could do little but think of it. He longed to be
associated with it, even in the humblest way. He would have cheerfully
washed and polished the Black Tiger for nothing more than the privilege
of being able to look it over in detail, from the small compact
wicked-looking power plant in the rear to the sable tiger emblem, set
on a field of silver on the front of the hood.
It would have been heaven to be behind the wheel of the Black Tiger, a
racing helmet and goggles on his head, taking her down the straightaway
of a race track at full throttle.
He besieged Worm with questions about the Black Tiger, and Worm told
him a great deal about European sports cars of all kinds. Worm seemed
to be familiar with every kind of car that had ever been manufactured,
and Woody was abashed to discover that in Worm's opinion the kind of
mechanical work they were doing in the garage was closer, as he put it,
to butchery than surgery.
"These buckets o' bolts don't call for a real mechanic," Worm said.
This so annoyed Woody that he protested American cars were acknowledged
the finest in the world.
"Aye," said Worm, "for what they're built for--plenty of horsepower so
ye don't have to change gear, fast getaway, and enough springing for
a feather bed. Ye can no beat them there. But they'll no take a sharp
corner fast. They carry aboot a ton of chrome fittings just tae make
them look pretty. They'll nae gie ye more than twelve or fourteen miles
tae a gallon of gas. Hoot mon. Do ye call it engineering when somebody
builds a two-ton car to take a two-hundred-pound man tae work?"
That quieted Woody for a while, and he went back to his dream of the
Black Tiger.
In the meantime, Mary Jane was beginning to find that the philosophy
of salesmanship and the company of Bob Peters left something to be
desired as a steady diet. It was fun, to be sure, to drive around town
in a yellow Buick convertible with the wind whipping through her dark,
curly hair. Bob had taken her out three times since their first date
and each time for the kind of adult evening that she wished Woody would
get interested in. The first time he'd taken her to a nice quiet place
where there wasn't a juke box (always a mark of sophistication for
Mary Jane) and then to a lecture at the civic auditorium. The lecture
was given by the sales manager of a big rubber company, and he had
discussed selling techniques for an hour and a half.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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