FORDS
"So you bought one of those automobiles they tell so many funny stories about?"
"Yes," replied Mr. Chuggins. "And it is saving me a lot of trouble and wear and tear. When your friends tell you jokes about your car they don't expect you to ask them to ride in it."
If—With Apologies to Kipling
If you can keep your Ford when those about you are selling theirs and buying Cadillacs; if you can just be tickled all to pieces when notified to pay your license-tax; if you can feel a quiet sense of pleasure when driving on a rough and hilly road, and never move a muscle of your visage when underneath you hear a tire explode; if you can plan a pleasant week-end journey and tinker at your car a day or so, then thrill with joy on that eventful morning to find no skill of yours can make it go; if you can gather up your wife and children, put on your glad rags, and start off for church, then have to wade around in greasy gearings and spoil the best of all your stock of shirts, yet through it all maintain that sweet composure, that gentle calm befitting such events; if you can sound a bugle-note of triumph when steering straight against a picket-fence; if you can keep your temper, tongue, and balance when on your back beneath your car you pose, and, struggling there to fix a balky cog-wheel, you drop a monkey-wrench across your nose; if you can smile as gasoline goes higher, and sing a song because your motor faints—your place is not with common erring mortals; your home is over there among the saints!—J. Edward Tufft.
It is admittedly difficult to recover a lost flivver. But the best suggestion comes from our own Mrs. Eckstrom, who advises an ad.: "Lizzie, come home; all is forgiven."
"Why are school-teachers like Ford cars?"
"Because they give the most service for the least money."—Life.
"Yes, indeed," argues the Ford salesman, "this little car is a great investment. You put a few dollars into a Ford and right away it runs into thousands."
A flivver in Newton, Kan., broke the arms of four persons who attempted to crank it in less than a week. That's what comes of crossing a bicycle with a mule.
Lew McCall says that motorists who come through Columbus en route for Kansas City have about the following conversations when they stop at the filling station here:
If it's a Cadillac, the driver says: "How far is it to Kansas City?" "One hundred forty miles," is the reply. "Gimme twenty gallons of gas and a gallon of oil," says the driver. Then comes a Buick and the chauffeur says: "How far is it to Kansas City?" "One hundred forty miles." "Gimme ten gallons of gas and a half-gallon of oil." and he drives on. Along comes a flivver and the driver uncranks himself, gets out and stretches, and asks: "How far is it to Kansas City?" "Oh, about one hundred forty miles." "Is that all? Gimme two quarts of water and a bottle of 3 in 1, and hold this son-of-a-gun until I get in."
Possibly the apex of sarcasm or something was reached the other day when Jones took his flivver to a repair shop and asked the man there what was the best thing to do with it.
The repair-man looked the car over in silence for several minutes, after which he grasped the horn and tooted it. "You've a good horn there," he remarked, quietly. "Suppose you jack it up and run a new car under it?"
A Gentleman who was visiting his lawyer for the purpose of making his will, insisted that a final request be attached to the document. The request was, that his Ford car be buried with him after he died. His lawyer tried to make him see how absurd this was, but failed, so he asked the gentleman's wife to use her influence with him. She did the best she could, but she also failed.
"Well, John," she said finally, "tell me why you want your Ford car buried with you?"
"Because I have never gotten into a hole yet but what my Ford could pull me out," was the reply.
Young lady on a country road in a Ford car which has bucked and refuses to move, asks a farmer who is plowing in an adjoining field—"Do you know anything about a Ford?"
"Nope—nuthin' except a lot of stories, ma'am—giddap."