A New England farmer and MIT professor's stories of his transition from horse-and-buggy to automobile in 1918. Adventures with "Lizzie," a 1918 Model T Ford, and "Caddie Maria," a 1912 Cadillac -- delightfully told with matter-of-fact Yankee humor.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"(This book) is the next best alternative to having an old geezer stroll up to your car and begin to tell you about his (Model T Ford)." -- The Vintage Ford, Nov-Dec, 1995
"(This book) though written in 1918, captures the essence of everyone's relationship to the automobile. Indeed, this slender monograph proves a jaunty delight from page one." -- Maine Sunday Telegram, 11/29/92
"Anyone who had ever driven a car should read 'Joys and Sorrows of an Automobilist' in order to learn about the beginnings of automotive travel in this country. It is full of chuckles for those who remember those days or heard about thm first-hand from their parents. It should provide eye-opening and hair-raising accounts for modern drivers who never had to crank a car by hand, or get out and push one through gooey mud or deep sand." -- The Tribune, Bethany, Oklahoma, 8/12/93
"(This book) though written in 1918, captures the essence of everyone's relationship to the automobile. Indeed, this slender monograph proves a jaunty delight from page one." -- Maine Sunday Telegram, 11/29/92
"Anyone who had ever driven a car should read 'Joys and Sorrows of an Automobilist' in order to learn about the beginnings of automotive travel in this country. It is full of chuckles for those who remember those days or heard about thm first-hand from their parents. It should provide eye-opening and hair-raising accounts for modern drivers who never had to crank a car by hand, or get out and push one through gooey mud or deep sand." -- The Tribune, Bethany, Oklahoma, 8/12/93
About the Author
In 1918, the time of this story, our grandparents, Walter H. James and Ida Rachel James, lived in an old farmhouse on the shore of Sagamore Creek, a salt-water estuary near Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Like his father before him, Gramp was a woodworker and cabinet-maker. He was the first in his family to go to college and had become a mechanical engineering professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (also called MIT or Tech) in Cambridge, MA, near Boston. After their marriage in 1899 they had lived for a while in Waltham, Massachusetts, which is near MIT. But the death of his father necessitated a move back to the farm where our mother (the little girl, Ruth, in the story) was born in 1906.
Before owning a car, Walter commuted the sixty miles to MIT by train once a week, coming home each Saturday morning and leaving each Sunday evening. Rachel had grown up on a farm in Dunstable, Massachusetts, so she knew how to manage a farm day to day with the help of a hired man. In 1919 they sold the Portsmouth farm and moved back to Waltham.
A lot has changed in the years since Gramp bought his first car in the spring of 1918. One evening recently after Jane had read this manuscript aloud, Ben exclaimed, "Makes you not take for granted how we just hop into a car, turn the key, and drive off!"
Being forty-five years old when he bought his first car, Gramp had grown into adulthood with horse and buggy or wagon being how one got around. In his writings we get a glimpse into what it was like to change from horse to automobile.
This look into the past is timely in our world that is becoming aware of the millions of acres we have paved over for roads and parking lots, and of the worsening auto-caused air pollution we have world-wide. Perhaps Gramp's musings on the joys and sorrows of an automobilist can help us see the roots of some of our current problems.
An automobile certainly was a welcome addition to the life of a professor/farmer who found himself without hired help to drive his buggy to and from the railroad station on his commute to MIT,but technology was also the cause of that lack of help. World War I had vastly increased business at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, and all able-bodied young men found the wages offered there far superior to those on a farm, to say nothing of it being more patriotic to work at the shipyard.
How paradoxical that one of the first ways Gramp used his car was trips to the mountains! Already people whose lives took them into big cities longed for more intimate contact with nature. In this modern world we need to find a balance between supporting our lives with technology and nourishing ourselves as parts of a living earth.
As children we knew Gramp only after he had retired from MIT. Reminiscing about him recently, we each spoke of our experiences with him.
Jane says, "I knew him as an old man who had a fascinating woodworking shop where he made furniture for us and for his friends. Mother had only to say things like, 'We need a four-drawer dresser twenty inches wide and deep to fit in the corner in Jane's room,' and pretty soon one would emerge from his shop. He not only tolerated, but encouraged us to watch him work. I have fond memories of sitting in the sawdust with a hammer, nails and blocks of wood happily making my own toy boats. Such activities were unusual for a young girl; they gave me confidence in my ability to use tools. Gramp influenced both my decision to study physics and eventually earn a Ph.D. in experimental sub-atomic particle physics, and my interest in black-and-white photography, leading to my illustrating several books and calendars."
Ben says, "I remember when I was twelve and Gramp would go up to his woodlot. I'd ride along with him in the 1935 Ford 'woodie' station wagon. Then when I got my license, I drove and he rode. He'd fill that thing right up to the roof with wood. He drove in places where today you'd think you need a four-wheel-drive. The edge of the running boards were all curled up because he drove over stumps. I didn't know much about his mountain trips until I was on the Appalachian Mountain Club trail crew. He would ask where I'd been, I would tell him, and he would say he had also hiked there, many years earlier. But I didn't know he'd written stories about his trips to the mountains."
Such a find this manuscript was! Gramp's photographs and writings were in one of the boxes our mother, Ruth, had saved when she cleaned out her parents' house in the mid-1960's. We found it when we cleaned out her house in 1990 after she had moved to a nursing home. Like good wine, this book has become more interesting with age! Gramp's stories are delightful, as is his matter-of-fact Yankee sense of humor. -- Jane English & Ben English, Jr.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Gem of a book!,
By Mark Johnson (United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Joys and Sorrows of an Automobilist (Paperback)
This is a fascinating account of drives through New England in the 1910s with a 1912 Cadillac. It definitely conjures up the magical days of yesteryear during the glory days of the open road!
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