Long
ago, my husband and I used to visit his parents every Sunday. Sometimes
after imbibing his post-prandial highball, my
father-in-law would reminisce about his youth.
There
were 11 Treanor brothers and no sisters. Gene senior was half
a
set of twins. His sibling died in infancy. Another brother
died at age 3, and another one died of lung disease caused by mustard
gas in WWI. That still left a big cohort of men in the family
who got up to all sorts of things. The brothers were born between
1889 and 1907, which meant the older ones were more like uncles to
the later born like my father-in-law. They were looked up to and
deferred to and sometimes led the youngsters into slightly grey
areas.
My
husband recently reminded me of the story about his father and uncles
and the Model T Ford. The older brothers had acquired a car that
ran well enough—but due to an unspecified disaster had a
burnt-out floor in the back. Considerable damage had been
done
by the fire, which had weakened the supports for the driver’s
seat. “The faster you drove, the more the seat rocked,”
my father-in-law explained.
The
brothers polished the car and cleaned its engine and adjusted its air
intake and carburettor, but there wasn’t a lot they could do about the
missing floor structure without investing in major repairs.
Since the idea of acquiring the car had been to make a quick profit,
the brothers came up with a quick fix. They laid a double layer of
carpet over the hole .and recruited a little brother. Any time they
took the car out with a prospective customer, Gene was to sit in the
back seat and prop up the front seat with his knees while the
prospective buyer took the car for a test drive. “I
developed strong leg and lower spine muscles that summer,” my
father-in-law said.
Eventually
one of the first women drivers in Boston came to test drive the car.
She was no easy mark and knew something about cars. She inspected
under the hood and asked some cogent questions. “I’ll
take it for a drive,” she said. “And who’s this?”
nodding towards the boy in the back seat, who was doing his best to
look young an innocent.
“It’s
our kid brother, he’s learning about the automotive business—we
hope you won’t mind if he comes along.” If the buyer
thought this odd she didn’t comment, and drove briskly out of
the yard with Dave in the passenger seat and Gene sitting behind her.
She drove down Bennington Street, turned right onto Moore, right
again and back to where she’d started.
“The
hardest part was keeping my position when we went around the
corners,” my father-in-law said. “I had one foot jammed
under the frame of the driver’s seat and the other foot wedged
against the back seat with my knee stabilising the back of the
driver’s seat. It was uncomfortable, bordering on painful. At
one point I groaned, but managed to turn it into a cough. Dave told
the driver that I was just getting over whooping cough, which
probably wasn’t as reassuring as he meant it to be in those
pre-antibiotic times.”
The
woman liked how the car handled and after a bit of dickering with the
brothers, agreed to buy it for almost the asking price and made a $10
down payment. The brothers tipped Gene a whole dollar for his help.
“It was more money than I’d ever had at one time,”
he said. “There was no such thing as kids getting an allowance
from the parents in those days—you wanted cash, you had to earn
it. For a ten year old, a dollar was a fortune!”
Before
the buyer returned to pay the balance and collect her car, the
brothers found a better sucker. A friend of a friend turned up
asking to see the Model T. Dave said they’d had an offer on it
already but were open to reason. “Can I take it for a drive
anyway?” the man asked.
“Sure,
but I can’t do it right now—come back at 3:30.”
Dave said. He had a good reason for putting the buyer off—school
didn’t get out until 3 p.m. and the boy with the useful knees
wouldn’t be home until after that.
“It’s
just lucky for my brothers that I wasn’t kept back at school
that day,” my father-in-law said. “It had been known for
me to be given eraser clapping and blackboard wiping duty by my
teacher for my occasional lapses in discipline. As it was, I got
home and before I could get my usual after school bread and jam
snack, I was pushed into the car and told to assume the position.” Once
more Gene propped up the driver’s seat while Dave sat
beside the buyer and extolled the car’s many virtues.
Once
back to where he started, the new prospect offered five dollars over
the asking price. This was too good to pass up, so Dave hummed and
hawed a bit and made a big deal of consulting George and eventually
accepted the new offer.
Now
how were they to get out of the already done deal? Easy—they
sent the younger brother around to the lady’s house to say his
conscience wouldn’t let him rest—the car was a lemon.
He had talked his brothers into giving him back her down payment. “I
handed her the ten dollar bill and tried my best to look honest and
apologetic”, my father-in-law said.
“ You
deserve a reward for such honesty, especially when it’s your
own family,” she said, and tipped him another dollar. Gene
stashed the dollar deep in a pocket and never mentioned it to his
brothers, who made the other sale, and gave him yet another dollar
for his part in the slightly shady dealings.
“And
now you know why I trade in my cars for new every three years,”
my father-in-law chortled as he finished his highball and his story.
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