Hot Sketch No. 13 — The Yob Who Let Business Slide
Slobbings knew that motor cars had four wheels and were owned by people who could not afford them.
Slobbings’ wife was equally well up on the subject. She was once acquainted with some folks who had one of those graceful maroon tonneaus with the little back door like a Hicksville hotel bus, and she used to watch them take up the floor and dive down into the basement to fix the machinery every few miles when something went wrong.
Slobbings knew only too well that the day was coming when his wife would be asking him why it was that they were always hoofing it while their neighbors were jerking past in neat little Fords.
He himself was razor-keen to sit back of a steering wheel of his own and toot a big hebrew horn at jumping pedestrians, but he decided to lay low and let her spring the inevitable question first so that when they bought a car he could forever after blame her for everything that happened this side of Mars.
The issue came up as expected when the Spring flowers began to hatch, and the smell of new mown gasolene was in the air.
Thus it came to pass that Slobbings and his wife sallied forth one sunny afternoon to feed the motor microbe.
They passed right by the Ford agency but couldn’t see it because they hadn’t a telescope. Nothing less than a Twin Eight for them! They spent about three hours of lumpy stalling around the Automobile Shopping District pretending they knew what The Man was talking about, and concentrating on the relative merits of wind shields and ignoring little unimportant details like magnetos, carburetors, engines, etc. But after getting familiar with prices, they began to filter down into the Flivver class along about evening-fall and were ready to stop feeling upholstery and get down to cases.
Their decision finally perched upon a snappy, unimpeachable, luxurious top-quality performer which was priced at three figures, the tallest one of the three being under nine, although not more than two or three flights under.
They owned the car all of one day when the matrimonial bliss in which they had been soaring was brought down, and both occupants barely escaped with their lives.
It happened this way: Slobbings had been under the droll hallucination that he could drive the thing, and so he waved off the young man from the Agency who had volunteered to show him how to stay on a fairly wide road, and started to cut loose with the levers himself, with his Helpmeet at his right.
When the excitement subsided he took his wife into the house and stood her in a corner and made her solemnly swear that in future whenever one was driving, the other was never to cut in with criticism, contumely or contemptuous comment at critical junctures, but was to either sit tight or get out and pedal.
The next morning while Slobbings was at his office trying to get his mind on work, his wife sneaked over and got the demonstrator to throw away his chew and put on his coat and give her a lesson in driving the little pelican.
That night when she and Slobbings started out, it was she who insisted upon taking the wheel, and this gave Slobbings the pleasure of sitting on the thin edge of Uncertainty and grabbing the Emergency Brake every time another car could be discerned with the naked eye coming toward them.
Whenever she tooted the horn to signal their nervous approach, he would hand her the not-so-loud-dearie caution, hissing said caution between such teeth as he had not already ground off during previous hair-breadth escapes.
If he happened to be the one driving, and stuck out his wing to let the Traffic know he was going to turn a corner in due season provided he did not stall his engine, his wife would tell him that it was not customary nor necessary to injure one’s spine hanging so far over the side of the car. In devious other ways she vented her unstrung condition and frequently referred warmly to his all-round hopelessness as a level-headed driver.
There was a demoniacal something that came and sat between them every time they got into that car. The Dove of Peace never flew within five thousand miles of the tail light at any stage of the tragedy.
Each got the idea that the other felt there was nothing left around the car to be learned, and this naturally led to fierce engagements in which hand grenades were used freely on both sides.
Every time he told her that she shifted her gears like a steam riveter, she would spring back and tell him between her teeth that he couldn’t drive a nail, and then she’d follow through with a mighty beanbammer about his family not being very bright anyway, and no wonder he couldn’t get anything past the porphery.
She accused him of throwing out his chest when he ought to be throwing out his clutch, and he retaliated by charging her with imagining she was Barney Oldfield because she could cut around a moving van without losing more than one mud guard.
In their refreshing evening drives together, the one who would first discover that the Emergency Brake was still on, would get right out on the hood and crow and flap like a Hoosier cock in a congested corn-crib, making the other naturally as pleased as a pup with its tail in the door.
History does not recall that Slobbings and his merry mate ever came to a corner that he didn’t want to turn one way and she another, nor that both ever desired the Top up or down at the same time.
One day about six months after the Home Breaker had been purchased, Slobbings met with a serious business throw-back. No one was to blame but himself. Motoring had interfered with his Business and he had cut his Office from his visiting list.
Among other things there was an over-ripe note at the bank and he was obliged to produce the necessary piastres within twelve hours. So without slipping a syllable to his wife he up and sold the car, receiving therefor an amount so far below original cost that it made him dizzy to look down at it.
A few days later he broke the news to the Gentle One, and, after the lachrymal flood-gates had been opened and closed again in the usual way, she braced up and said it was all right and they would have to Be Brave.
A hell-hot evening in the following August found Slobbings and his wife taking a nice trolley ride out into the country for a sniff of fresh ozone.
They were sitting side by side, looking over the fields of waving wollypus, and he had his arm around her.
Both were silent. They were thinking of the same thing.
“Well anyway,” she said at last, “we did have good times with the little car while it lasted, didn’t we dear?”
“Yes, love,” he replied softly, “those were the happy days.”
Lesson for Today: We don’t know what we’ve got until we haven’t got it any longer.