Life, 1926-05-20 · page 35 of 44
Life — May 20, 1926 — page 35: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a humorous cartoon about early automobile travel anxieties. Two motorists are stranded on a remote mountain road with a directional sign reading "RED CEDAR 40 M." (40 miles away). The joke plays on shifting concerns: one man worries about tire blowouts on the isolated road, but his companion reassures him they have reliable "Kelly-Springfields" tires. However, his real worry is **gasoline supply**—they might run out of fuel before reaching the next service station. The humor lies in the contrast between expected worry (tire failure) and the actual problem (fuel depletion), reflecting early-1900s motorist concerns about limited infrastructure and long distances between gas stations. Kelly-Springfield was a real tire brand of the era, making the advertisement-like product placement part of the joke.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“Forty miles before we hit even a service station! We'll be in a nice fix if we have a blowout, with no sparel” “T’'m not worrying about blowouts; we've got Kelly-Springfields on all around, It's the gas I’m thinking about.” comicbooks.com