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a garage, moving the cows to a
new-to-us barn that Aunt Mary Fiske gave to my father because she had no
further use for it. It originally stood on Concord Road a short distance
north of Cherry Brook station.
We bought our 1912 Fiat from the Pushees. There was some-thing in
its motion that irritated Mrs. Pushee's gallstones, and
they decided to sell it after a few months. It was bound to be in
A-1 condition mechanically, my father said, because it had been driven
and cared for exclusively by Arthur Wyman, the Pushee's chauffeur, and
Arthur was the best driver in town if not in the world.
Mr. Pushee, on the other hand, was an indifferent driver. He always
had a smaller automobile for his own use, and one of
them was a Maxwell 'runabout' — a two-passenger vehicle with a seat
behind to accommodate a third person. He drove the Max-well to Weston
center one day to do some errands, and while turning around another
automobile suddenly came down the road and
ran into him, causing so much damage that he had to walk home.
When he told Mrs. Pushee what had happened she looked at him
suspiciously and said, "George — you've been up to the
Dicksons again !"
Our Fiat was a seven passenger touring car, hand cranked, and
required lots of strength to get it started on a cold morning — or any
other morning as far as that goes; but once started it went along
fairly smoothly, barring the customary blowouts and dif-ficulties with
the cooling system. Instead of a fan it had blades
in the flywheel, located at the rear end of the motor, and a good five
feet from the radiator. This highly inefficient arrangement provided
inadequate circulation of air, and overheating in the |
