The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 21: The Recent Days (1910-1914)
History
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 21: The Recent Days (1910-1914)
World history
With the greenhorn the automobile is long-suffering. There was a new
owner in Boston, whose name is mercifully suppressed, who took his
family out for a first ride. In going down a hill on which the clay was
slippery from recent rain it became necessary to turn out for a car
coming up. The new driver made the turn so successfully that he turned
clear over the edge of the embankment. Having nothing but air to
support it, the auto turned completely over without spilling a
passenger and landed right side up and on an even keel in a marsh
fifteen feet below. It was necessary to get a team to pull the car out
of the mud, but once on the solid road the new owner simply cranked 'er
up and went on his way rejoicing.
Another new owner could not find the key to fasten one rear wheel on
the axle when he unloaded his auto from the car in which it had been
shipped from the factory. Nevertheless, he started up the motor
according to directions and traveled twelve miles with one wheel
driving. By this time the outraged motor was red hot. Whereupon the new
owner stopped at a farm-house and dashed several buckets of cold water
on it. Then he plugged around the country a week or so before he
decided to go to the agent to lodge a complaint that his derned car
didn't "pull" well.
Still another new owner complained that his car did not give
satisfactory service. The agent was not at all surprised that it didn't
when, upon investigation, he found that the car had been driven five
hundred miles without a single drop of oil being applied to
transmission gear and rear axle.
George Robertson, the racing driver, in tuning up for the Vanderbilt
race, went over the embankment at the Massapequa turn on Long Island at
the rate of sixty miles an hour. The car turned over twice, but finally
stopped right side up. Robertson received a cut on one arm in the
fracas, but neither he nor the car was so badly injured but what they
could get back to New York, a distance of twenty-five miles, under
their own power. There the steering wheel was repaired at a cost of $5,
the radiator at a cost of $3, and Robertson's arm at $2.
But the prize-winner was the Fiat racing machine which threw a tire
while going fifty-five miles an hour on the Brighton Beach track. The
flying racer, now utterly uncontrollable, dashed through two fences,
one of them pretty substantial, cut down a tree eight inches in
diameter, and finally came to a stop right side up. E.H. Parker, the
driver, and his mechanician, were somewhat surprised, but otherwise
undamaged. They put on a new tire and in twenty minutes were back in
the race again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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