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The Car: A “sporting-Man’s” Dream, A Treatise on Pay Toilets and a Warning to Ladies

The younger Anderson brothers wanted a car – real bad.  They found one for sale – a rakish Model “A”. The price was only $40 – and it had a rumble seat!  They pooled their ‘possum hide money and bought it.

Now about that rumble seat – this was every “sporting-man’s” dream -- a coupe with a sliding back window, and just behind that, where the trunk would normally be, a flip-up seat and behind that, a greatly reduced trunk.  The rumble seat would hold two – if that sat together REAL close.  Just right for some intimate smooching.  Now, slide that rear window closed, and each couple was in their own private heaven.  It was a double-dating machine, and all the rage.  It was the ’57 Chevy of its day.  The ’57 Chevy had a ROOMY back seat.  Know what I mean? (With a wink and a nod.)

Daddy said he bought a ’32 Pontiac with a rumble seat, and it was great – until it started raining, then everyone had to pile into the front.

The old car needed a few improvements:  There was a problem with all that rust.  And the wheels wobbled and were so out of alignment that it was inclined to follow every rut or groove in the road and dart this way and that. And someone really needed to replace the missing nut that held the steering wheel on, and those brakes really needed some work. The trick was not to push down on the brakes so hard that you had to pull back on the steering wheel, otherwise you were apt to have a real problem.

Oh well, those things could wait:  First the really important thing – covering all that rust!

The trouble was, the brothers had spent most of their ‘possum hide money on the car and only had a little left for gas, much less for paint. They searched for left-over cans of paint.  They collected several, each of which had just a dab left in it, of all different colors.  To mix them together would just make a non-descript muddy color, and who wants a non-descript car – especially when it has a rumble seat. 

Glen hit on the perfect solution – paint it different colors!  The left fender would be red; the right blue, the hood, green, etc.  Why did they not think of that before?  The resulting paint job was beautiful, but it still needed something – signage!

Douglas was the artsy one of the bunch, so he got his brush and went to work:  On the back of the rumble seat he lettered:  “LADIES, IF YOU SMOKE, THROW YOUR BUTTS BACK HERE.” Over the gas tank, he wrote, “ DANGER! HIGH EXPLOSIVE.  ONE GALLON OF GAS”; and on each door, “NEW YORK TO PARIS TAXI. 25 CENTS”.

Now let me pause and discuss an important topic:  pay toilets.

Some enterprising individual figured he could make big bucks from mankind’s need to answer the call of nature, so he invented the pay toilet, which was a coin-operated lock attached to the door of a toilet stall. The public became incised: The very idea of having to having to pay a nickel to use the toilet!

The solution was simple:  make the deposit on the floor instead of in the coin slot.  So they did.  Pay toilets fell from grace, and are seldom seen now-adays.  At that time this joke was going around:  A fellow has to go REAL bad. He rushes into a service station bathroom and spends his last nickel to get into the pay toilet.  He sits back for a time of relaxation, prepared to get his money’s worth, but the trip is, shall we say, only windy.  He sits there, all dejected, and says, “Here I sit, all broken hearted; paid to (now, I am trying to keep this clean --oh, here’s the word) – ‘defecate,’ but only farted”

 Imagine this scenario:  You are out for a Sunday drive and stop for a snack.  The service station deli has day-old sushi – for half price.  What a deal!  You spend your last nickel on it. You drive on, munching happily. Before you get too far down the road, you begin to realize that that sushi might have been more than a day old, and the refrigerator probably wasn’t working real well.  You arrive at another service station, skid to a halt, rush in – but it’s a pay toilet, and you just spent your last nickel on week-old, unrefrigerated sushi – and you are still a mile from home.  You rush back to the car, jump in, crank her up, put the pedal to the metal, burn rubber – and have a blow-out!

Building on this literary genre, Douglas painted on the hood, “Here I sit, all broken hearted: paid to ride but haven’t started.”

It was perfect! They were ready to ride – hang the mechanical problems! So they went wobbling down the country roads, darting from side to side, at fifty miles an hour – Glen driving with Douglas at his side and Tommy and Freddie in the rumble seat!  What a life!

My daddy, being the oldest brother and ever the cautious one, was concerned for his brothers’ safety and decided to take action.  He was a pretty good mechanic and he had an idea.  He cut a piece of tin from a Prince Albert can, punched just a little hole in it to restrict the flow of gasoline, and installed it INSIDE the carburetor.

The brothers, after a day’s labor in the fields, took turns standing under the shower nozzle that was affixed to the bottom of the cypress water tank that stood on a scaffold by the windmill, changed into clean clothes and prepared for an exciting evening of terrorizing the neighborhood – but the car would only go 30 miles per hour. No matter how far down Glen pushed the accelerator, 30 miles per hour was the limit.  Only 30 miles per hour! What to do?  They tried everything:  They checked the fuel pump, cleaned out the fuel filter, blew out the fuel lines, and even the carburetor, with compressed air; but they were condemned to live out the rest of their young adulthood at 30 miles per hour!

Oh, well, at least it was a good-looking car.

But they never could get enough money together to fix those pesky mechanical problems.  Oh well, they were just minor, anyhow. Not to worry.  Just remember this: hold tight to the steering wheel to keep her between the ditches, and never, never, pull back on the steering wheel when you push down real hard on the brake pedal.

 Except that time he forgot.

Well, it’s a mighty rough road

From Rainey to Sanford,

Lying on a three-mile grade.

It was on that grade that he lost his brakes;

Oh what a jump he made!

He was coming around the curve,

Making 30 miles an hour,

When his horn broke into a “toot!”

With his eyes full of fear,

and the wheel in his hand,

He said something like “Aw, shoot!”

And landed in a barrow-pit full of water.  Fortunately, no one was hurt, and they all swam ashore.

Well, now all of you ladies

Had better take a warning, from this moment on and learn:

Never go a-riding with the Anderson brothers,

For you might wreck and never return!