Life — August 27, 1908 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A Letter From an Expert THE COLUMBIA GARAGE BiLt Sriice, Propriet Automobiles repaired while you wait Expert machinist always on hand. Agent for the Sliver, Cannon Ball, L. I, A. R. Fan- hard and all other makes. Terms cash. Parts renewed. Puntsvitie, ¢ Dea Lire: OU asked me to open up a correspondence with you, and If my lan- guage has a knock in it and my bearings get hot, don’t blame me, but the shop [came from. I may snort a little on eleva- tions, but on a dead level I can run away like any Orlando Beach competitor. This may be a one-horse town, but it connects up all right with the rest of the world. They crowd in on me from the Waldorf Astoria and Central Park West just as if I was the Lord of the Universe, and I guess I've poured gas down the throats of most all the thirty-cent pieces that turn on the switch from your little village on the Hudson rivulet. here I am, on the job, in spare moments. This morning a fat geezer from Harlem staggered in here in a little four-squirt. He had a tall, bony blonde framework sitting up with him that T thought at first he had drawn as a hooby prize in a freak show, but in a minute I saw she was his wife, all right. I guess he had been trying to lose her all the way. “Now, dear,”* she says, all but stopping the machinery with her face as she took off her veil, “ you let me tell him what the matter is."" And she looks at me in a Wise Guy way. “You see,’’ she says, “we began to lose power going up ¢ hill just the other side, south, and I just know the stor: attery gone back on us. Can you re-charge it? Because we have an engagement at Philadelphia at half-past four, and" Let me take a peep," I says, and I goes over the bag of bones. Oh, my! There warn’t a bolt set tight and the whole was on the blink. Some of them New York dudes they use in the garages there had been squirting her full of perfumery and giving her Turkish baths and curry- combing her down for fair. And then I riz up and says: “Madam, your vaporizer don’t vaporize any more. Your coil is down and out. Your valves needs grinding. Your car- bureter needs a new float feed. You ought to be taken down and put together again. It will take a week to get you goin Then the old man got up now to speak, and he says to her: “What did I tell you?"? he says. “It’s the same old story. They all do the same tricks. get to Phila?" says he. As if I cared a washer whether they stayed or not, with six other cars in line waiting to be fixed up! T waves my arm at ‘em. “You see,’ says 1, “I don't need your business. Go on to Jimmy Hazards,” says I. “He's ten miles beyond. He'll put hoop skirts around your engine,” says I, “and fit her up with a new pair of garters. He'll only charge you a plunk an hour. What you need,"’ says I, “is an ambulance—not a first-class machinist."" ‘Then the old Dame thin: Can't you fix her up until we irl cracked a smile and says: ‘an't you give us an estimate? "" “Now, ma’am,"’ I says, “you take my advice: Take the Inner Man ™ money it will cost you, and buy a second-hand trolley car. It will pay in the end. And then she turns to her hubby and says: ‘ How can you stand there and see this man insult me? Why don’t you do something about it?" And I goes back to the lathe, while the two of ‘em turns the crank, gets a wheeze out of the old bag of keys, and the last I see of them they was headed due west, going from two to four miles an hour with the wind in their favor. After all, a woman is a good deal like a gas engine. You set ‘em agoing, and they'll run along without any vibration for days, and then they'll take a kink. You can sit up nights trying to locate the trouble, but it’s no use. You'll hear ’em splutter and pound; they'll stop short and start up again with a goo-to-the-minute whirl. Then there's a dead silence, and just when you're ready to give the old thing a kick over on the junk heap, there she goes as lovely as a French clock.