Page:Motoring Magazine and Motor Life July 1915.djvu/6

4 . This is a fine road, practically over the tops of two mountain ranges.

This part of the journey was made most interesting by the wild flowers to be seen on every hand. Ever and anon, patches of the slender stemmed scarlet thistle came into view. The blue bell, the orange colored wall flower, and the honeysuckle were prolific, and the coloring of each was deeper and stronger than that of the flowers of the valley below. Field after field was passed bespangled with the Canterbury Bell.

As the summit of the last ridge was reached, there lay before us a scene that was awe-inspiring. Out, below us hundreds of feet, was the broad expanse of the Sonoma Valley in all its richness of vegetation.

The towns through which we had passed the day previous, with their varicolored roofs, looked like clusters of flowers in the lawn of some mighty giant’s home. Winding in and out through this valley be-ribboned the Russian river.

We, on the mountain top, realized the greatness of things and felt ourselves Lilliputians.

For half an hour we were spell-bound and were only brought to the realization of things by the extreme heat of the day, which caused us to drive on.

Shortly after leaving the summit, the road led over a course of nine miles down to the valley. This stretch of the trip is most acceptable to the driver, as the precipitous mountain side disappears and there is plenty of room on the road. As the descent is made, glimpses of the valley, now and again, are enjoyed. The houses grow larger and the river broadens until finally one feels that they have assumed their natural proportions.

A short run from the foot of the new road brought us to the main county road near Healdsburg, over which we journeyed homeward over the highway we had traveled the previous day.

Is it very stupid in 1915 to talk of a first car? You who have gone down the line of motor cars, from your first which was as tall as it was long, will find no thrill in the words. Your first car and all the wonder of it belong to that distant time somewhere around your school days when you offered to take the captain of your football team to the championship game of your league. You had your father’s automobile–it was not “car” in those days, nor “machine” nor even “auto”–people were respectful to the strangers. In the middle of that long journey, fully ten miles, something went wrong with something, somewhere. You spread the tools out on the robe and you crept under the car–not that you knew why you did it, surely it came to naught. The football captain walked the remaining five miles and got there in time for condolences (later he black-balled you at his frat election) and you stayed around the automobile all afternoon because the only machine which could have towed you in had seven patients ahead of you, and your only joy was in watching the horses which had to pass your mechanical wonder. That was your first car.

As proud owner of succeeding machines you have followed the march of progress through the coming of sixes and fore-doors, of engine pumps and streamline bodies, of self-starters and electric lights. You can think out the most perplexing business problem while driving down Broadway at five o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. If you were suddenly to be deprived of your torpedo-bodied servant you would feel as though you had lost your legs. You are now trying out a new eight; no automobile agent can tell you anything new about a car, inside or out, and these paragraphs are not for you.

But you who watched an automobile drive past your gate some fifteen years ago, and have been watching automobiles drive past that same gate ever since, you who once bought a buggy second-hand because of course you’d get a car before ever you could wear out a new one–and how many second-hand buggies have you had since that time–you will know full well just what is hidden in the three words–the first car.

You nearly bought a car once, and John had to go to college. Then Paul wanted to go into the chicken business, and then Albert had the fall which hurt his spine. And in the meantime the old house was slowly going to pieces–no shingle-patching could keep it from leaking, and what was to have been a six-cylinder became a six-room bungalow. You cheered yourself along with the thought that you had made a wise choice, nor did the boys complain. But you always wanted to look away when they turned to the automobile sections of the magazines. You wished they did not know quite so much about cars. It hurt you to hear them talking carburetors and ignition systems, radius rods and transmissions. A simple quarrel over whether it hurt the tires more to take a corner at thirty miles or use the brakes in slowing down worried you endlessly. To your ears it was an accusation. If you had done differently, you thought with bitterness, they could now be finding out for themselves which did hurt more.

You began to envy Grayson. Grayson lived across the road, and while he owned no car, he also owned no sons, and there seemed plenty of strange cars on hand to take care of his two daughters.

Then one day–Albert had been greasing the buggy–the ultimatum was laid before you.

“We shall have to get a new buggy,” said Albert.

And something within you stiffened.

“We will not!” you answered, and shut your lips.

It was then that the great idea came. You had a five-acre piece which was not doing anybody any good. And Grayson wanted it.

And Grayson got it. You told them at noontime, when you were all at dinner. Your wife did not say a word, but she left the table, and an hour later you found her, red-eyed, in the bedroom. She was beginning on a knitted sweater; you would need it, she said, in the car.

But the boys, at your announcement, were a disappointment.

“The crankshaft of the one Paul wants will have to be replaced after three thousand miles,” said John. “You see if it doesn’t.”

“Which is better than boiling water every time it goes into low, the way yours does,” Paul shot back, excitedly.

It ended in a deadlock. And then, before you knew it, you had pointed an accusing finger at the self-starter in