Chapter 27
chapter twenty seven of bizarre by lawton mccall this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by nick black jitney the autobiography of a ford a twentieth century revision of black beauty the first thing i can remember was being shovelled out of a great incubator called a factory along with several hundred brothers and sisters all the men in that factory wore diamond shirt-studs while i was wondering at this an old motor truck named mercury said to me with feeling ah if all the workmen in the world could be as well off as the ones here there'd be no more poverty and no people so poor as to have to ride in fords i was loaded on a freight car and carried many many miles the car jolted so terribly that i should have gone all to pieces had i not been built for jarring
none of the train crew showed me any sympathy they were wicked men and used language that frequently sent a tinkle of shame to my mud guards i did not then know as i do now that the purest minding automobile has to endure all its life words and tones of the most shocking sort my first master was a careful and conscientious man he had a large garage full of forts and he always kept a sharp eye on the door to make sure that nobody who walked out carried off one of us one day a man came in with a twenty-dollar bill that he wanted changed sorry said my master but all i have in the cash-drawer is two dollars and sixty-nine cents i'll have to give you the rest in forards whereupon he handed him me and one of my brothers and three extra tires which just made up the amount this new master whose name was mr pious was very good and humane he drove me with a gentle foot and would say to his children
be kind to the black jitney never scratch him or bend him the chubby little fellows grew so fond of me that before long they would trot sturdily beside me their mother however was a cold imperious woman she cared nothing for the feelings of a ford she would drive me at a heartless pace till my radiator was parched with thirst and my gears fairly cried out for oil speed was her one desire and naturally i could not satisfy her even when i ran so fast that the effort made me shake from top to tires and i was in danger of losing my lamps she would call me ice wagon and rattletrap and other cruel names and refer unkindly to the fact that she could count the palings of the fences that we passed finally this hard-hearted woman prevailed upon her husband to sell me and buy a big sixteen cylinder pope gregory this car as i afterward learned was so vicious that the very first time she took it out for an airing it assaulted three helpless chickens and a pig
my next master was a young man whose private life was such as no well-brought-up automobile could have approved of every evening after he had kept me in the garage all day long fuming with impatience and spilled gasoline he would make me carry him for hours and hours with some young woman who ought to have known better what sights and sounds i had to endure i who had always kept a strictest decorum worst of all his deplorable conduct began to affect me i found myself thinking thoughts which i had never permitted to enter my mind before and looking with more interest than i should at seductive satin-trimmed limousines my morality was in danger of skidding one evening while my master was dining with a young woman at a roadside inn i was left to wait in the adjoining garage but i was not alone for close beside me stood a little french londelet the most immorally alluring car i had ever seen her lines were exquisitely shaped she was a goddess on wheels good evening she sparked enticingly aren't you the car that stood next to me at the country club last thursday night there was a dare-devil gleam in her lamps which set my carburetor a splutter yes i answered infatuated
i knew you even though you tried to hide your name wasn't it lovely just us two in the moonlight touching tires a quiver ran through me i knew that unless i could back out in a hurry i was lost i tried hastily to reverse she had me completely short-circuited heaven knows what might have happened had not my master entered at that moment and saved me the instant he laid hold of my crank i gave vent to my pent-up emotions in a way that nearly burst my muffler and when he pressed down the pedal i fairly leaped through the door in flight as it was i was seething with nervousness my motor throbbed so violently that i could hardly hold still while the young woman climbed into her seat off we sped down a dark and narrow road i had no control over myself and neither did the people i was carrying seem to have control over me or over themselves
all at once my left four tire exploded violently veering me aside into a mile-post my master and the young woman landed in a clump of bushes but i was maimed for life bad example and bad association had ruined me many an innocent unsophisticated car is thus driven to destruction all because its owner fails to live up to his moral responsibility i lay there all the rest of the night while my gasoline ebbed away drop by drop in the morning some men came out of the city and dragged me in they performed a most painful operation on me amputating various shattered members and grafting on several feet of tin then before i was really convalescent i was sold to a new master this person was a harsh speaking unfeeling man who cared for nothing but money he drove up and down the streets all dead inviting people to get in and ride and when they did get in he forced each one of them to surrender a nickel he was very cruel to me instead of showing any consideration for my broken health he would say openly well i'll get what use i can out of this one and then buy another
not once did he ever throw a blanket over my hood in cold weather or steady my slipping wheels with chains he was so penurious that whenever he drove me through a crowded street he would shut off my gasoline and make me run on what i could breathe in from the exhaust of other cars wretched indeed is the old age of an automobile bereft of the beauty it had when it was a new model it declines into squalid neglect no amount of painting and enamelling can restore its youthful bloom one day this master was driving me through an amusement park when i broke down completely he got out and prodded me brutally in the magneto i had not the strength to budge he grew very angry and the people in the tonneau demanded their money back a crowd of idlers gathered to witness my humiliation becoming purple in the face my master nearly twisted my crank off he heaped upon me the most insulting and unjust imprecations as though it were my fault that my health was gone even making distressing insinuations as to my ancestry words failing him he fell to belaboring me with a hammer and monkey wrench the spectators looked on with indifference some of them even urged him maliciously to the attack
i'd sell the thing for fifty cents he exclaimed with a shocking oath suddenly an elderly kindly-faced man pushed his way forward through the crowd i'll give you that for it he said only stop battering it my master left off hitting me he looked surlily at the speaker and then at the crowd you can have it he said between his teeth hot tears of gratitude dropped from my cylinders as my deliverer pushed me to his nearby home from that moment to this i have never known anything but happiness for my dear old master is a retired gas-fitter whose hobby is landscape gardening relieving me of my tired wheels he has pastured me in the centre of his front yard and planted me full of geraniums i am lovingly taken care of my kind master waters me regularly and curries me with a trowel my working days are over but what makes me happiest is the knowledge that i can never be sold chapter twenty seven
