XV A Little Debit in Your Tonneau
Motorists, as a class, are not averse to public discussion of their troubles. In fact, one often wonders how some of them ever get time to operate their cars, so tied up do they seem to be with these little experience-meetings, at which one man tells, with appropriate gestures, how he ran out of gas between Springfield and Worcester, while another gives a perfect bit of character acting to show just how the policeman on the outskirts of Trenton behaved.
But there seems to be one phase of the motorist’s trials which he never bares to the public. He will confide to you just how bad the gasoline was that he bought at the country garage; he will make it an open secret that he had four blow-outs on the way home from the country-club; but of one of his most poignant sorrows he never speaks. I refer to the guests who snuggle in his tonneau.
Probably more irritations have arisen from the tonneau than from the tires, day in and day out, and yet you never hear a man say, “Well, I certainly had an unholy crew of camp-followers out with me to-day—friends of my wife.” Say what you will, there is an innate delicacy in the average motorist, or such repression could not be.
Consider the types of tonneau guests. They are as generic and fundamental as the spectrum and you will find them in Maine and New Mexico at the same time.
There is the first, or major, classification, which may be designated as the Financially Paralyzed. Persons in this class, on stepping into your machine, automatically transfer all their money troubles to you. You become, for the duration of the ride, whether it be to the next corner or to Palm Beach, their financial guardian, and any little purchases which are incidental to the trip (such as three meals a day) belong to your list of running expenses. There seems to be something about the motion of the automobile that inhibits their ability to reach for their purses, and they become, if you want to be poetical about it, like clay in the hands of the potter. Whither thou goest they will go; thy check-book is their check-book. It is just like the one great, big, jolly family—of which you are the father and backer.
Such people always make a great to-do about starting off on a trip. You call for them and they appear at the window and wave, to signify that they see you, and go through motions to show that just as soon as Clara has put on her leggings they will be down. Soon they appear, swathed in a tremendous quantity of motor wraps and veils (you can usually tell the guests in a car by the number of head-veils they wear) and get halfway down the walk, when Clara remembers her rain-coat and has to swish back upstairs, veils and all. Out again, and just as they get wedged into the tonneau, the elderly guest wonders if there is time for some one to run in again and tell Helma that if the Salvation Army man comes for the old magazines she is to tell him to come again to-morrow. By the time this message is relayed to Helma Garcia one solid half-hour has been dissipated from the cream of the morning. This does not prevent the guests from remarking, as the motor starts, that it certainly is a heavenly day and that it couldn’t have been better if it had been ordered. Knowing the type, you can say to yourself that if the day had been ordered you know who would have had to give the order and pay the check.
From that time on, you are the moneyed interest behind the venture. Meals at road-houses, toll charges, evening papers, hot chocolates at the country drug store, hair net for Clara, and, of course, a liberal injection of gasoline on the way home, all of these items and about fourteen others come in your bailiwick. The guests have been asked out for a ride, and “findings is keepings.” If you have money enough to run a car, you probably have money enough to support them for a day or so. That’s only fair, isn’t it?
Under a sub-head (a), in this same category, come the guests who are stricken with rigor mortis when there are any repairs to be made about the machine. Male offenders in this line are, of course, the only ones that can be dealt with here; putting on a tire is no job for women and children. But the man who is the life of the party in the tonneau throughout the trip, who thinks nothing of climbing all over the back of the car in imitation of a Roman charioteer, will suddenly become an advocate of the basic eight-hour working day which began just eight hours before, whenever there is a man’s work to be done on one of the tires. He will watch you while you work, and always has a good word to say or a quip to snap at you to keep you cheered up, but when it comes to taking off his coat and lending a hand at the jack he is an Oriental incense-holder on the guest-room mantel. He admits in no uncertain tones, that he is a perfect dub when it comes to handling machinery and that he is more apt to be in the way at a time like this than not. And maybe he is right, after all.
We next come to the class of tonneau-freight who are great believers in what Professor Muensterberg called “Auto-Suggestion.” These people, although not seated in the driver’s seat, have their own ideas on driving and spare no pains to put their theories in the form of suggestions. In justice to the Great Army of the Unemployed known as “guests” it must be admitted that a large percentage of these suggestions emanate from some member of the owner’s family and not from outsiders. It is very often Mrs. Wife who is off-side in this play, but as she is usually in the tonneau, she comes under the same classification.
There are various ways of framing suggestions to the driver from the back seat. They are all equally annoying. Among the best are:
“For heaven’s sake, George, turn in a little. There is a car behind that wants to pass us.”
“Look out where you’re going, Stan.”
“Henry, if you don’t slow down I’m going to get out and take the train back home.”
If this is accompanied by a clutching gesture at the driver’s arm it is sure to throw him into a good humor for the rest of the trip, so that a good time will be had by all present.
Although guests are not so prone to make suggestions on the running of the car as are those who, through the safety of family connection, may do so without fear of bodily assault from the driver, nevertheless, a guest may, according to the code, lean over the back of the seat and slip little hints as to the route. Especially if one of them be entrusted with a Blue Book does this form of auto-suggestion become chronic.
“It says here that we should have taken that road to the right back there by the Soldiers’ Monument,” informs the reader over your shoulder. Or—
“Somehow this doesn’t seem like the right road. Personally, I think that we ought to turn around and go back to the cross-roads.”
If it is Mrs. Wife in the tonneau who has her own ideas on the route, you might as well give in at her first suggestion, for the risk that she is right is too great to run. If she says that she would advise taking the lane that runs around behind that school-house, take it. Then, if it turns out to be a blind alley, you have the satisfaction of saying nothing, very eloquently and effectively. But if you refuse to take her suggestion, and your road turns out to be even halfway wrong, you might as well turn the wheel over to your little son and go South for the winter, for you will never hear the ultimate cry of triumph. Your season will practically be ruined. I can quote verbatim from the last affair of this kind:
(Voice from the tonneau): “Albert, I think we ought to have taken the road at the left.”
“No, we hadn’t.”
“I’m sure of it. I saw a sign which said: ‘Paxton’ on it.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Well, you wait and see.”
“I’m waiting.”
There is a silence for ten minutes, while the car jounces along a road which gets narrower and rockier.
(Voice from the tonneau): “I suppose you think this is the way to Paxton?”
“I certainly do.”
“Oh, you make me sick!”
Silence and jounces.
Sudden stop as the road ends at a silo.
“I beg your pardon [addressed to a rustic], which is the road to Paxton?”
“Paxton?”
“Yes.”
“The road to Paxton?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you go back over the rud you just come over, about three mile, till you come to a rud turnin’ off to the right with a sign which says ‘Paxton.’”
(Voice from the tonneau, beginning at this point and continuing all of the way back, all the rest of the day and night, and until snow falls): “There! what did I tell you? But, oh no, you know it all. Didn’t I tell you”—etc., etc.
On the whole, it would seem that the artists who draw the automobile advertisements make a mistake in drawing the tonneau so roomy and so full of people. There should be no tonneau.