Once in a while I spend some time thinking about the many things that have taken place in my life time. Time line I think they call it. To day I just happened to be thinking about the automobile. When I came along the car was what one might say well perfected. The days of the Model T which made Henry Ford famous was gone and his Model A was probably the going machine at the time and I must admit it was kind of fun to drive. However today it is not so much the car that I want to talk about but the way they started the engine. You see at first there was no electric starter. The car was started by CRANKING it. There was a small opening, under the radiator, in front of each car where the crank could be inserted. When a person wanted to start a car they would of course get everything set, inside the car, like setting the spark, choke, throttle and by all means have the car in neutral. With all of this done the starter, who was the owner, would go in front of the car insert the crank and with the crank and man power, turn the engine over. I understand that there were a lot of hurt, even broken arms resulting from engines backfiring. That is the cranker would be trying to turn the engine clock wise and all at once the engine would want to go counter clock wise. Anyhow when all went well the engine would start and the cranker would then become the driver as he or she hurried into the car and under the steering wheel to quickly set the choke and throttle so that the engine would continue to run. Now with this bit of background there comes my story.
This particular day I happened to be walking home. I was on the sidewalk and approaching the Blaine residence. Mr. Blaine had his car parked on the sidewalk, where he always parked it, with the front end pointing east which of course was the direction that I was walking so that I was behind the car. It just so happened that Mr. Blaine was in the act of cranking his car. Which of course was no big deal because there was people out cranking their cars all the time that is if they wanted to go someplace or maybe just liked to hear it run. You see at that time the price of gas was about eighteen cents. The thing the turned this event into an adventure was the fact that Mr. Blaine forgot just one little thing. His car transmission was not in neutral. It was in reverse and when he gave the crank a mighty yank the engine came to life and here the car came right toward me. I was so close that I did not have time to react and I just knew that the car was going to hit me. As it turned out for some reason just before the car got to me it turned and went out into the street with Mr. Blaine after it. What was interesting was that Mr. Blaine was a heavy set man but it was plain to see that when he needed to he could run because he was able to catch up to his car jump inside and stop it. Amazing!
Me, I went on home, doing as they say, pondering this event in my mind. I knew that I for sure had a very active GUARDIAN ANGEL.
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