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Show I ! GOES TO II &U : " 1 (Kazel V. Carter In Motor Life.) tc' - A motor car isn't so different from Eini' i j baby, after all. It's the nicest thing W ci-! jloown, the sweetest to Iobk at 'when 3vi . j,'e cleaned up. and hardest to rem- 'uftW : tit if Jt once Eets Peev,sh- ' 1 Here's the way it came Into my life. r,N.E f tit la Guerre. I It had really been in my life since 'K2tt ' i John and I took our summer home. 3 V ' Bat not vitally a part of me. Our car ' to Just a convenience before the war. hor that'.s all changed. ; Yoa see, when the war came, I 'ranted to do my bit. Knitting looked ytJ : dreadfully complicated. I never could , a '.make Jelly Jell nor conserve sugar. It Jnakes me deathly sick to prick my EJ finger with a needle, so I knew I enai Tould bo an utter failure as a war :dllij :;DUre- i so , I decided to run a Tied Cross , J' 'ambulance In Franco. ', Several of the women in our sot in DS Mi .js Louis went down to the Y. M. C. A. Jlllaj ' to take the course they offer there for hoaj .vomen, And guess what was the first q tti 1 thing they told us to buy? njlji n Overalls! Wil- h All ray life I'd wanted to wear over-j'.fci over-j'.fci :idls. I thought of having a thrift gar-j Hn :'iia last summer, so I could wear over- Tails. So I bought a set or a pair- i or whatever you call them. They arc f j beautiful. I hated to stretch them all lout with wrenches and screw-drivers, but it had to be. I bought a wonder- ful pair of gloves, heavy buckskin, to keep the grease off my hands. Then we went to work. Mr. Winn ( explained about cycles and valves and things, and then told us that gasoline 1 engines are driven by explosions, x- 1 plosions! I thought he was preparing us fo; the war work, but he said that right in our very own cars there was one explosion after another, very similar to the explosions of gun powder or dynamite. Of course, we were all petrified. lie must have been Joking. J can almost drive my car now, and I've never hoard an explosion explo-sion yet. Then we took off the different parts of the car. Wo learned to tell the .frame from the springs and all about differential housing. That's really very complicated, and I'd never trust myself wltnout my text-book when it comes to housing. Then we had a movie course. Wo studied about ignition and starting. It's much easier to toll tho parts on the screen -when they're all labeled, and if wo had some way to take our slides. over to France, I believe wc should havo no trouble in any emergency. emer-gency. But we'd have to have someone some-one to operate the movie machine. Finally our class went down into the mechanical department. The director direc-tor looked us over, rather puzzled. I had on my velour suit and my sealskin ' throw'. "It's a little dirty down here," he said. "Have you any, er bungalow aprons?" Fancy bungalow aprons! Mrs. Dis-tor-Brown gavex him to understand we had regular mechanic overalls and that we intended to lie flat on our backs, bubble in grease and even swear if we wanted to. - So we put on our overalls. I ruined my buckskin gloves the first time I got into the transmission. I thought of all of the beautiful Belgian babies that could have been fed for the $4 I spent for those gloves. f Our-tool kits are the cutest things you ever saw Just like a plumber's. Yesterday I took John out to show him how to run a car scientifically. John Is a good driver, but he doesn't seem to know exactly what he's doing about the "parts" and all, I mean. I used to ask him how to drive, and he'd say, "Oh, just make yourself a part of the car fell it and listen to it" Now imagine, feeling and listening to it! Suddenly the car came to a stop. Not at all the kind of a slop Mr. Winn had taught us to make. "Mercy!" I said. "Do you know that is dreadfully hard on the tires? When tho wheels stop like that the road acts as a file on the tires. One minute min-ute and I'll see what's the matter." "Indeed." said John. You could tell he didn't know what to do. So I got out with my tool kit. I looked to see if she had a bit of dust in one of her valves or a little water in her differentials. differ-entials. I thought perhaps her carbureter car-bureter was too tight, or too wet or dry or something. "Can I help you?" "No. indeed," I replied. 1 pounded the springs with my hammer until I bruised my thumb. "Suppose, dear, we look at the gaso- line?" ho said. Do you know there wasn't a mite of gas in that car? Sometimes I believe I shan't go to France unless John can go, too. |