Mama's Model T

“Not that way.”

But Mama took me away and explained that Mr. Floy and Fran were beginning life and wanted to be alone because, well, they wanted to be with each other. It was the most wonderful thing in the world.

I said, “You mean they're going to act like Gramp did with the actress?”

And Mama looked around as if hunting for soap to wash out my mouth, an said I mustn't listen to gossip… which it wasn't, as Gramp never waste time about beginning life and just wanting to be alone with a lady…

But Mama said never mind the ol goat, and we went back, and Papa was still sleeping and Mr. Floy and Fran were not talking… Fran didn't like Mr. Floy. And on the way home we needed water…

Mama's Model T had a brass radiator which was often in high polish. It leaked like a dike in a story about Dutch heroes, and the Professor brewed dreadful witches' soups to keep it from spitting.

Mama did not believe in oil. She could understand gasoline… after all, the car needed that… but to dump oil into a dirty mouth under the motor hood seemed silly. Mama would skate along and something would smell, an she would stop and the garage man would sniff.

“Smells like the Number One bearing.”

“Nonsense…”

“You need oil.”

“Put it in… but bearings are for roller skates… it's just a way of building up sales.”

Mama never believed in the Number One bearing… even when she burned out three in one summer. There woul start a knocking, a tapping under us,like Poe's Raven. Mama would say, “I don't hear anything.”

“It's the bearing, Sara,” Papa would say. “Number One.”

“Rubbish,” Mama would say, and we would stop to let whatever it was cool off. Of course, there was always a lack of enough water in the radiator to take our minds off the Number One Bearing…

Mama's Model T was a thirsty girl (we always called the car “her”)… I broke my young spine, almost, carrying gallons, floods of water for her cooling system. Yet we could not drive downtown without a boiling sound, like sick bees talking over cures, under the hood. Mama would say, “There she blows…”

And she always did. The radiator cap would dance and shake, great heat waves would dance before our eyes, and then red, rusting water would creep between the cap and the brass front, and a thin spray of red-hot mud would attack the windshield…

I would get down and with tender fingers wrasseled off the cap, and then a small but very strong stream of water, mud, old egg, and iron filings woul go up and up and fall back to stain the polish the Professor had rubbed into the car's finish.

But poor Mama was more worried over Fran and Mr. Floy than over the inner ailments of the Model T. It was no go, and she hated to admit it. Fran was speaking too much of a young freight clerk at the depot who had arms like oak trees and brown, curly hair falling into his eyes… and Mr. Floy was seen one Sunday driving a flashing young dark-haired gal in his buggy, and she was smoking a cigarette.

Mama didn't give up. That summer the telephone girls, known as the Hello Sweethearts of the Bell Company, were meeting in Atlantic City, and Fran was chairlady of northern New Jersey an those sections of Pennsylvania that ha phones… and Mama said why didn't Mr. Floy drive Fran down and we woul meet them by train.

Mr. Floy said well, he didn't want to take any chances getting bogged down. A Simplex two-door job had gone into a bog outside of Tom's River and never been seen again… Mama would have to be sure the car could make the trip. Mama said it would work all right.

Mama loved her car and couldn't understand Mr. Floy's doubts.

The Model T was a good car for Mama because Mama was romantic… She hated hard facts and figures. It was a car Mama, and everyone else, used by guesswork. You put the stained stick down in the gas tank and guessed you had enough to get home (you didn't). You guessed the tires would hold, but they didn't, and you guessed the patch was dry and you pumped air, and you guessed you had enough air in the tire. The way to test that was to kick the tire. If your foot bounced back, you ha enough air… sometimes you kicked and the air bubbled out with a laughing slither.