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it with a self starter of his own design —
a revolutionary idea, as self starters were practically unknown. I
believe it worked on the spring principle
— you first wound it up and then threw a lever to
release it. Lucky Johnny's talents covered a broad field. Besides making
automobiles, he designed and raced boats, ex-perimented with all kinds
of mechanical devices and won the world championship in
pistol shooting in the 1896 Olympics. But
from my point of view his greatest accomplishment was to produce me a
wife.
Our new Corbin was low slung and sporty looking, but its principal
appeal to me was the noise it made — you could hear
it coming from a long way off. Once Eddie Green was repri-manded by the
Weston police for driving it through town with
his muffler cut-out open. He denied the accusation and told the officer
he would show him what it sounded like if he used the
cut-out. On hearing the deafening roar the officer jumped back,
and when he had composed himself he said, "I see what you
mean."
My father never cared much for the Corbin. It was very hard
to start and he claimed his back had been permanently injured from
cranking the heavy motor. After he had driven it over a stonewall on
Highland Street and cracked one of the main engine supports, he gave it
to the town to be converted into a fire
engine — the town's first motorized hook-and-ladder wagon.
In 1912 we acquired a Chalmers — the one that had an un-fortunate
experience in Wareham — already described — and we kept it until 1917
when it was turned in for a Stearns. In the interim we
had acquired a Fiat and a Peerless. In order to accom-modate our fleet
of automobiles we converted the cow barn into |
