The Magnificent Torpedo, or Some Things Never Change (short story)

-

Bill Crowell

Well-Known Member
Joined
Oct 16, 2007
Messages
1,170
Reaction score
804
Location
Diamond Springs, CA
Dad and Mom each really want to buy a new car, even though their old car is only a few years old, still runs well and looks good. Of course they each really want a newer model because their friends and neighbors all have newer cars, but neither of them can admit to their real feelings because they are afraid their spouse will consider them irresponsible or extravagant.

Thus begins their kabuki dance, in which they each provide the other with a rationalization and justification for the unnecessary purchase.

torpedo.jpg


The Magnificent Torpedo
by Dean Evans [pseudonym for George F. Kull, (1911-1963)]
originally published in Argosy magazine for October, 1951

I HAVE OFTEN PONDERED ON THE UPBRINGING MY FATHER must have had, for he was the most virtuous of men. He didn’t drink (except very, very little); he didn’t curse openly in the presence of women or children. He paid his taxes when they were due; and he voted the straight Republican ticket without batting an eye. He provided faithfully for his wife and child (I was that latter), and he weeded his lawn with a quiet determination and persistence equaled by few in the neighborhood.

My father prospered. He showed that prosperity in quiet ways; our house was painted every five years; my mother had a brand-new water-power washing machine; and last but not least, we owned an automobile. We were the first ones in the community to own an automobile.

Like the automobile, which was a Chalmers Torpedo, father rode his calm way over the bumps along the streets of life, and there was but one time that I can remember when that serenity was ever in doubt. And - oddly enough - the automobile was directly involved.

I remember that car as though it were yesterday. It was a handsome vehicle with a wide rear seat done in leather with little black metal buttons for tufts. The front seat was leather as well but it seems to me it was quite a bit narrower. This narrowness was part of the overall theme the makers had in mind when they designed it. Wide at the rear and tapering gracefully toward the shiny brass radiator shell in front, a swept-back look was obtained by the two gleaming brass rods that went from fender braces to the corners of the demountable top.

In the sunshine the thing glistened like a piece or monstrous jewelry. In color it was a dark, glittering blue. The striped trim was a light yellow. The long, thin wooden wheel spokes were green. It was a marvelous car and it had a steering wheel on the right side.

Often, in the summer evenings, father used to lean over the picket fence and talk automobiles with our next door neighbor, Si Barrow. That was before Si Barrow bought his Dort Touring, of course. I remember one night when Si Barrow said, looking across our yard at the Chalmers out in front of the barn:

“That monstrosity is going to blind me one of these days, Al.”

Father was immensely pleased. “She is shiny,” he admitted. He wasn’t boasting, mind you. Just stating a fact already stated by Si Barrow. He smiled quietly. “Yes,” he repeated. “She is shiny.”

“How do you keep it clean like that, A1?” said Si, coming through nicely.

Father hunched his shoulders slightly. He? got out a paekage of Omar cigarettes (he had lately started using them them instead of his pipe, which mother had insisted for years was smelling up her lace curtains). He gave Si a cigarette. He took one himself.

“Well,” said father mildly. “It’s no trick, Si. A little Oliver’s Automobile Soap—it’s a paste, in a pail of lukewarm water. Sponge her good all over and then a good dousing off with the hose. Latest thing, that soap. Doesn’t streak.”

“Oh,” said Si Barrow, and I could feel the envy working in his voice. “Use that stuff on the top, too?”

“Well, no,” said father in a qualifying tone. “Not on the top, of course. Every now and then a light coat of Peele’s Top Dressing. . . .”

“Bet you have to put some muscle on the brass radiator,” said Si Barrow.

Father took a long puff on his cigarette and looked serious. “Not at all,” he said calmly. “A little polish on a rag . . .” He left it unfinished. Even one so ill-versed in the lore of the automobile as Si Barrow could follow the reasoning.

“Quite a wagon,” said Si.

“Torpedo model,” said father.

It wasn’t that he was snobbish about it. Quite the reverse. He just loved to chin with folks about the Chalmers. It was very much as women loved to talk about their operations (appendectomies were just getting to be the thing).

And then father would take a look at the dying sun and say reflectively: “Might rain in a little while. Better put old Betsy to bed.”

That was a moment I loved. I would follow father over to the car. I’d get in the front seat on the left hand side, father would go around the other side. He’d get in, pull out the ignition button. He would adjust. another button that said “choke” on it. He would adjust the levers at such and such notches. Precisely. Lastly, he would lean out the door and, grasping the handle of a shiny brass pump mounted on the side, he would give it a few vigorous strokes up and down.

We were ready. Father would give everything a last, lingering look and then get out of the car and around the front and lean down on the crank. And then he'd look up, look at me through the windshield and say:

“Emergency brake on, son?”

I’d give it a tug. I’d nod and grin. He’d nod back and get down over the crank once more. Then, with his left palm on the top of the brass headlamp for steadiness, he’d pull up suddenly on the crank. He’d do that maybe three or four times. And then he’d stop. Knowing Si Barrow was still leaning on the fence watching, he’d say to me very calmly, very casually:

“I believe she needs a little more choke, son. Just a little.”

My meat. How I loved that old Chalmers! I’d give the choke button a yank outward. Father would lean over the crank again. A spin . . . ah!

It was truly marvelous. The engine roared wildly. The car shook from headlamps to the tips of the mudguards on the rear. Father would rush around his side. Without getting in, he’d adjust the motor to an even roar. Only then did he step in and turn his head and smile friendly-like to Si Barrow who was still watching. We were on our way toward putting the car in the barn.

Si Barrow wasn’t the only one who talked to father about the Chalmers. There was Sam Hendrys, the butcher, of course. Sam didn’t own an automobile but was very interested in them. He’d been very interested for years. On Saturdays, father would drive the Chalmers down to the butcher shop and park right out in front. I was allowed along, for on Saturdays there wasn’t any school. Mother would get out and go down the street to the grocer or maybe to the dry-goods store while father and I would go in to see Sam Hendrys.

“Good morning, Sam,” said father.

“Morning, Mr, Ackerman. Ah, a fine morning. I see you drove down in the horseless carriage.” His little joke - they hadn’t been called that for years.

Father laughed. “Better than walking, Sam,” he said. “How’s that new Swiss cheese you’ve got there?”

Sam would reach in the showcase and, with a long knife which he wiped off on his white apron, he’d cut of a little wedge and hand it to my father.

“Not bad,” said father, tasting. “Eleanor will be along presently to pick out a roast. You might put up two pounds or so of that to go along with it. Yes, it beats walking, Sam. The automobile is definitely here to stay.”

And then Sam would look out the window at the Chalmers sitting by the curb all glistening and shiny. He’d say, “That’s a darb of a car you have, Mr. Ackerman.”

“I’ve always thought so,” father said, pleased.

“You know? I’ve watched you pull away lots of times from here. Never seen the car to match that power. Really goes, I’ll tell you that.”

“Oh fair, fair,” said father modestly.

Well, that would be Saturday at the butcher’s. Pleasant. Nothing you’d ever be ashamed of, for father wasn’t given to boasting. But father enjoyed talking about it to Sam. It used to be part of his Saturday, you could see it. And I think Sam enjoyed it, too, although he didn’t know one car from another.

A year or so later Si Barrow bought his Dort Touring, and I think that was the beginning of an awkward period for father.

He told father about it one evening over the back fence. “Gone and done it, Al,” he said to father. “Got me a gas buggy today. Not a new one like yours was, of course, but pretty good, anyhow. Second-hand.”

“Well. well. well!” said father, his eves blinking in surprise. “At last, eh, Si? Well isn't that fine!”

“Yessir!” said Si. “A Dort/Touring. Four-cylinder, she is. Wonderful car, the Dort. Known all over the country.”

As he talked, it seemed to me, his stomach went in and his chest went out.

“Oh?” said father in a peculiar-sounding’ voice. Then he corrected it. “Well, splendid, Si, that’s splendid.”

“Yessir. Gonna get it tonight. In fact, you’re gonna get it, ha, ha. Y’see I don’t know all the ins and outs of steering yet, Al, so I figured you and me would mosey down and you could drive her back and show me. . . .”

“Why - why surely, Si,” said father. “Any time you say.”

“Right now, I thought,” said Si, and there was eagerness in his voice.

“Can I go, too, Father?” I said.

“Well, now . . .”

“Oh, let the kid, Al,” said Si expansively. “She’s a big touring, you know. Lots of room. Matter of fact, I’ll get Sue and you tell Eleanor and we’ll all go down and all ride back in her. Like a test run, sort of. Eh?”

“All right,” said father.

The Dort Touring was big, all right. It wasn’t built so high up as our Chalmers. I noticed that right away. And Si said at once, “A lot lower-slung than the Chalmers, Al. She hugs the road, you know.”

Father didn’t speak. He leaned down and examined the finish. He still didn’t say anything. I ran my finger across the dust on the front fender.

“Don’t do that, boy!” Si said. “That’s a sure way to scratch the varnish, you know.”

Father’s head jerked up. He looked at Si and then he looked at me. Then he said to.S‘i, “Paint looks a mite crazed in spots, Si. Looks like she’s seen a bit of weather.”

“Well, yes,” said Si. “Confidentially, that’s the reason I got her. On account of the finish, they knocked off a flat one-fifty on the asking price.” He winked solemnly. “I snatched her up,” he added.

Well, we went for a ride, the five of us. Father and Si Barrow were in the front and Mrs. Barrow and mother and I were all in the back. Father drove and tried to explain it to Si - the shifting and the working of the clutch. To me it seemed like the Dort did a great deal of hopping around before it settled down each time we started up. But, naturally, I didn’t say this.

“Peppy, eh?” said Si Barrow, putting his arm on top of the seat and facing sideways at father. “One thing the Dort is noted for, they tell me. Plenty of pep. You feed her the right mixture, and right away she’s gone, let me tell you! Just like that!”

Father didn’t say anything to that. We drove out Eleventh Street toward Anacostia. In those days, of course, there wasn’t much traffic. But there were plenty of bumps.

“Notice how she recovers when we hit them holes?” said Si eagerly. “Notice that, Al? First thing I noticed myself when Jimmy Barnes took me out for a ride in her. Jimmy owns the garage, you know. Swell fellow. Belongs to my lodge. I called Jimmy’s attention to it. Y’know what he said, Al?” Si Barrow fixed father with a look that said, go ahead, ask me quick.

Father didn’t ask, but Si wasn’t fussy. He went on excitedly: “Jimmy says to me, he says, ‘Si, this here is one sweet bus. I wouldn’t be letting it go at all at that price except that you’re a lodge brother!’ What do you think of that, Al? Boy, was I lucky!”

Father said quietly, “Somehow, it seems to pull a little to the left, Si.”

“What? What’s that?”

“Doubtless nothing at all,” said father. “Probably one of the tires is a little soft is all.”

Si Barrow straightened up in the seat. For a long time he just sat there and watched the road while father drove.

The next night father took Si Barrow out once more to show him about clutching and shifting the gears. I was allowed to go, too. We went down Pennsylvania Avenue past the White House and then around the Capitol. Si was a little nervous but aside from jerking the car terribly at first, he did all right. Once, on Constitution Avenue, he stalled the engine, but that was all. When we got home, father and I went into the barn where the Chalmers was. Father got a flashlight and played the beam on the side of the car. He was smiling quietly to himself. I know what he was thinking. He was thinking that even if Si Barrow’s Dort Touring was newer than our car there wasn’t any doubt which one was best.

In my mind there never had been the slightest doubt. The Dort didn’t shine and glint wickedly like the Chalmers.

Behind the wheel of the Dort Touring, Si Barrow was a surprising man, and I believe that was what led indirectly to his accident a few months later. Behind the wheel he wasn’t old Si Barrow any more. He was a speed demon. He’d get the Dort going and you could see something change in his face. He took to driving that way all the time, I noticed. Not carefully, not precisely, like father.

One rainy afternoon he skidded and went up the curbing and smashed into a big horse trough. And that was the end of the Dort Touring, for that horse trough was solid iron. Mother told father about it that night when he got home. “That wild man next door has wrecked his car, finally,” she said. You could read the shock in father’s eyes. The man next door - our friend and neighbor. It couldn’t have come any closer unless it had happened to us personally.

After a while father asked, “Was he hurt badly?”

Mother snorted. “Not at all! God-fearing people would have been killed outright. But him? Hah!”

But her sarcasm was entirely lost on father. He just looked sad. “That’s a darned shame. A darned, doggone shame, that’s what it is. I suppose now old Si will never get up the nerve to drive a car again.”

But he was wrong there. The very next week Si Barrow drove home with a new Chandler sedan.

“Self-starter, y’notice, Al?” said Si.

“I see,” said father.

“Boy, this is sweet,” said Si. “Boy, let me tell you this is sweet!”

I noticed father’s eyes widen. “It’s new, isn’t it?”

“You bet! None of them second-hand buggies for me again. Nosir. You know something, Al?” Si’s face took on a deadly serious look. “You remember the night you first drove the Dort? You remember saying you thought she pulled to the left? Well, you were right, by Godfrey! That’s what caused the accident.”

“But the horse trough was on the right,” Father began to say.

“Sure! I’d just tried to yank it around straight from swerving over to the left. That’s how it happened. Then she all at once went wild, sort of, and the first thing I knew . . bang! Bye-bye Dort Touring.”

Father didn’t say anything to that, but he looked as though he was doing a bit of thinking.

“A sedan, Al!” went on Si Barrow enthusiastically. “No more this putting up the side curtains, nosiree. And look at this!” He darted down, unhooked the right side of the hood, then raised it, and pointed dramatically.

“Ever see a power plant like that before? Six cylinders. You know what they call her? The Pike’s Peak motor.”

“Do they? Do they really?” said father thoughtfully.

That Saturday, Sam Hendrys down at the butcher shop mentioned it to father. “Hear your neighbor, Si Barrow, got one of them new Chandlers with the Pike’s Peak motor in it. That must be a bear of a car, huh, Mr. Ackerman?”

It took father a moment to recover, but he did so at last, completely and like a gentleman. “It’s a beautiful car, Sam,” he admitted, “simply beautiful, and Si’s got a right to be proud of it.”

“Well, he is that,” said Sam.

It seems to me that was the rising point so to speak, although looking back on it later, I could see that the whole thing had started innocently enough when Si Barrow had got that old Dort Touring. Up until then father had been the only one in the neighborhood who had a car. When Si got his, part of the glory seemed to filter off, somehow. I don’t think father consciously realized it, though. Not then. Perhaps not ever. And then something happened. Something else. The old Harrington mansion down on the corner which had been vacant for a couple of years was sold to a Mr. Thackeray Lampkin. And when he moved in Mr. Thackeray Lampkin brought with him as part of his furnishings a big Stearns Knight sedan.

That made three people in the same block who now owned cars. Si Barrow’s Chandler was brand-new; Mr. Thackeray Lampkin’s Stearns Knight was also brand-new; Father’s Chalmers Torpedo was not. Sam Hendrys, the butcher, said that Saturday, “Understand that block of yours is getting to be quite the automobubbil row, Mr. Ackerman.”

Father allowed as how he might be right.

“Lord,” Sam Hendrys went on, “that there is a boxcar if ever I seen one. Stearns Knight, Mr. Ackerman - I asked Mr. Lampkin. I never heard tell of a Stearns Knight before this. But. what a wagon, what a wagon!”

“Sam,” interrupted father. “Let me try a bit of that dairy cheese you’ve got there.”

“Know something, Mr. Ackerman?” said Sam, nicking off a piece of the cheese and passing it over. “Other day a feller stops in here and he’s got one of them racy-looking things out to the curb. Looked foreign, sort of, you know what I mean? And shine? Man! He says it’s a Mercer. That’s another buggy I never heard of before.”

Father said quickly, “Cheese hasn’t too much flavor, has it, Sam?”

On the way home father stopped at the Chalmers Agency and went in and brought out Joe Morrison who ran the Agency. He said in a very quiet tone of voice, like when he’s not tolerating any foolishness:

“Joe, I want you to listen to this motor. I want you to look her over very carefully from stem to stern. Then I want you to tell me just what you think. The truth.”

Joe didn’t know what it was all about, you could tell. But he did as father asked. He lifted the hood and listened to the motor. He listened for a long while, first running it slowly and then racing it. He looked at all four tires. and kicked twice at each one. He looked at the leather seats and ran his hand over the paint. Finally, he drove around the block. When he came back he looked my father in the eye.

“You want the bald truth, Mr. Ackerman?”

“That’s what I want,” said father. “The whole, bald truth.”

“All right, then. There isn’t a damn thing wrong with this wagon. She’s as sweet as the day you took her off the showroom floor.”

I smiled happi1y - but father glowered. “Thank you, Joe,” he said after a moment. “Do I owe you anything?”

“Good grief, no, Mr. Ackerman. Glad to oblige. Any time.”

We drove home in silence.

That afternoon mother called to father that the grass in the back yard needed cutting badly, but father didn’t seem to notice. He was washing and polishing the Chalmers. He worked for hours, and when he was through the Chalmers had never shined so smartly nor looked so wonderful and new. At least, that was what I thought; I couldn’t tell what father thought, for he didn’t say a word. He stood off to one side and folded his arms and stared at the car. He moved a little to the left so as to get the glare of the afternoon sun on the shiny hood.

Then he unfolded his arms and sighed a deep sigh.

It was a bad Sunday. It was one of those Sundays when it rains and the wind blows in gusts that sweep the rain like a broom sweeping off a wet front verandah. Father stoodat the front-parlor windows and stared out at it. Mother was knitting. I was sitting on the floor watching them both.

A car went by. You could hear the hissing of the tires on the street. Mother looked up briefly, craned her neck in the direction of the window and asked, “Isn’t that Mr. Lampkin in his Stearns Knight, Albert?”

Father grunted. “In the rain. He goes for a drive in the rain.”

“Well,” said mother calmly, “it’s a sedan, Albert. After all, he isn’t getting wet, is he?”

Father didn’t answer that. Looking at his face, I could see a horrible spasm working there. But quietly. Underneath, sort of. A little while later another car started up next door and went roaring olf down the street. Mother knew the sound of that car.

“Si Barrow,” she said, without looking up. “The wild man. Although I will say he seems to drive a little more sanely since he’s gotten his new sedan.”

Father didn’t make any answer to that one, either.

I got up and went to the window and stared out at the rain. Mother said in a tone that meant, she was speaking sotto voce (although she didn’t actually lower her voice any):

“Sue says she’s glad they got the sedan. With her that way and all, you know, she can still go out for a little spin and have some privacy.”

Another car went by. “There goes an Auburn Beauty Six,” I said.

Mother said, “A sedan will be nicer, too, for the baby, of course. You can pull up the windows and keep the drafts away.”

“There goes a Velie,” I said.

“That’s a Marmon,” said father.

“No, it’s a Velie,” I said. “Marmons have different wheels.”

Father just grunted.

Mother said, “The lawn needs weeding badly, Albert.”

“I know it, I know it!”

It was the first time I had heard him use a tone of voice like that to mother. But she didn’t seem to notice a thing. She was quietly knitting. I’d have bet she’d be put out at that, but no.

I gave it up. I turned back to the window. “There goes a Haynes,” I said.

Father said gruffly, “How do you know?”

“It has those little step pads. It looks racy, doesn’t it?”

Father’s lips curled down for an answer to that one.

A little silence went by while the rain came down outside and the wind blew. Father moved away from the window. He put his hands behind his back and paced over to the mantel and stared hard into the face of the Seth Thomas. Then he made a funny noise in his throat and paced down the room and through the archway into the back parlor. He got out his old curved-stem pipe and his tobacco and filled the pipe and lit it. Then he came pacing back, blowing smoke furiously.

Mother looked up sharply. For a moment I thought she was going to say something, but then all of a sudden the look left her eyes and she dropped her head over her knitting again.

After a long while she finally said very quietly: “That Doctor Perkins whose wife is in the Eastern Star - she was telling me something interesting the other day. She was saying her husband has a medical theory that too much riding in an open car is responsible for half the sinus cases going around these days.”

Father said, “What?”

I said, “Theregoes an Apperson. Not a Jack Rabbit, a new one.”

Father said shockingly, “Shut up!” And to mother: “Doc Perkins told his wife that?”

Mother nodded.

A thoughtful look came over him. “Why, you've got that sinus trouble yourself, haven’t you, Eleanor?”

Mother nodded again.

Father put his pipe on the mantel and said in a suddenly loud voice, “Well, I’ll be. . . . All this time and I never realized. Thunderation, that’s simply awful!”

Mother nodded - for the third time.

Father said, “That old Doc Perkins knows his stuff, too. Why didn’t you tell me, Eleanor, I never for one moment realized . . .”

Mother lifted her shoulders as though to say, I didn’t want to be a bother.

The next day father didn’t go to the ofiice. He drove out with the Chalmers early in the morning and it wasn’t until late in the afternoon when he came back. And when he did he was driving the biggest, the longest, the most magnificently stunning automobile ever devised by the minds and hands of man. Or so I thought at the time.

It was a seven-passenger Pierce-Arrow sedan and it had little seats folded away in little hidden recesses in the back of the front seat. It had everything. It had . . . Or as father put it to Si Barrow a little while later:

“Notice the heater grille on the floor in the rear, Si? Manifold heater. Hot air. Latest thing. To my mind it’s merely a question of time until they all have heaters like that. Notice the gas-tank pump on the dash? Keeps a pressure of two pounds back there. Positive fuel delivery.”

“My Lord,” said Si Barrow in awed tones that I could see pleased father immensely. “Look at those headlights!”

“On the fenders,” said father. “Yes. That’s another thing. First thing you know all cars will have them built on the fenders. And another thing. Look here.” He lifted the mammoth hood and pointed. “Twin ignition. Two sets of spark plugs.”

I looked over across the yard at Si Barrow’s Chandler sedan next door. It was very muddy-looking. Compared to the Pierce-Arrow it looked like it would always be muddy-looking.

Father’s clincher was: “You won’t believe this, Si. You know something? They put twenty-six coats of paint on this baby. That’s a finish for you!”

Father was an very happy man that night. At dinner he suddenly got up and went around and leaned over and kissed mother on the cheek. And he chuckled. And mother didn’t say anything. She smiled quietly. But I think the thing that really setfled father down into the old smooth way of life again was when we went to the butcher shop that Saturday. Father parked as usual right out in front. Looking through the front window of the shop our Pierce-Arrow was the most glittering, most simply stupendous black gem of a thing I had ever in my life had the pleasure to lay an eye on.

And Sam Hendrys saw it right off. His mouth dropped. “Holy smokes!” he exclaimed. “That a new car you got, Mr. Ackerman?”

“Pierce Arrow,” said father. “Riding in an open car was bad for Mrs. Ackerman’s sinus condition. I had to turn in the old Chalmers.”

“Yeah?” said Sam. And then, and in a vastly diiferent tone: “A Pierce Arrow?

Father nodded, smiled.

“Why . . .” said Sam, “. . . why that’s the kind of a car they use over at the White House, ain’t it? Ain’t it a Pierce Arrow the President rides around in?”

“I believe it is,” said father quite calmly.

“Well, I’ll be . . .”

Father cleared his throat and leaned, down over the glass counter. “Grind up three or four pounds of that round steak, will you, Sam?” he said. “The wife has a new meat-loaf recipe. And—oh, yes. Wrap up a pound or two of that dairy cheese. It’s a little mild but I think we might like it for a change.”
 
-
Back
Top