Big Ez Zacharias pushed his weather-faded
postman's cap farther back on his shaggy head and expertly lobbed a mouthful
of tobacco juice fifteen feet into the waste box which stands under Gus
Wilson's workbench.
"High-angle fire," remarked Gus, "You
ought to join the Army, Ez. They could use you for a howitzer."
Ez grinned. "I got used in the last war,"
he said. "I got used so much they darned near used me up. If the U.S.A. ever
does any more fightin' over there in Europe, I'm a-goin' to pass up the
A.E.F. and stick to the old R.F.D. - give some young feller a chance to be a
hero. Harry, here, for example."
Harry, the Model Garage's grease monkey
and budding mechanic, stuck his chest out an extra inch. "I'm in the
National Guard," he said. "Anti-aircraft artillery."
The postman bit a conservative half inch
chew off a stick of black plug. "Now ain't that somethin'," he said,
unimpressed. "Well, I hope they learn you to shoot airplanes better'n you
shoot trouble on my bus. You checked my wirin', day before yesterday, didn't
you? And you told me it was O.K., hey?" Ez grunted. "Last night I got on
that dirt road back of Pleasanton, and what happened? Some darned thing that
happened before you checked my wirin'. I hit a bump pretty hard, an' all my
lights went out. Fuse blowed - same as before. It happened three times more,
young feller!"
Harry looked so crestfallen that Gus
spoke up in his defense. "Quit riding Harry," he told Ez. "If there is
something wrong with your wiring that he didn't find, the chances are that
neither I nor anyone else would have found it first crack out of the box.
Maybe we can find it now. Open her up, Harry."
He glanced over the wiring up front, and
shock his head. "Looks all right, and as Harry tested everything, it must be
all right." He walked around to the rear of the car. "Let's have a look at
the tail-light wiring." 'the tail light was mounted on the trunk door. He
raised the door and examined the wires. "Looks all - wait a minute! Here's a
bare spot on one of the wires - the insulation is worn right off."
"Shucks," Ez said, "I know all about
that, and even Harry spotted it. That there wire ain't been doin' any harm.
It's been that way since way back last fall, months before I began having
any trouble. That new bird dog of mine done it. The darn-fool pup gnawed the
insulation right off while I as eatin' my lunch one day I was out gunnin'.
The bare place ain't near any metal, so it can't make any difference."
"I was going to tape it over, but I
forgot it," Harry confessed to Gus in some embarrassment.
Gus didn't say anything. He lowered the
door carefully, stooping so that he could keep his eyes on the wires, which
looped down to within a couple of inches of the top of an open tool box when
it was closed. He raised the door again, and stood looking at the tool box,
which was empty except for a folding jack. Then he went over to his bench
and brought back a small wooden box, which he pushed under one end of the
jack. "Switch on the lights," he told Harry.
Harry switched on the lights. Gus lowered
the door again. As it closed, the car's lights went out. Gus laughed.
"Better put in a new tail-lamp wire, Harry," he said. "And a new fuse." He
turned to Zacharias. "There's your trouble," he said. "That jack was lying
in exactly the right position to bounce up and come into contact with that
bare place on the wire. Whenever you hit a bump hard, that's what happened -
the jack bounced up, hit the wire, short-circuited your lighting circuit,
and blew out your fuse."
"I'll be darned!" said the postman.
"Well, now, I call that pretty smart, dopin' that out. If you hadn't - "
Ez never finished that remark. It was
interrupted by the frantic squawking of an automobile horn outside the shop
doors, and by Joe Clark's voice, from the office, shouting urgently for Gus.
Gus got into the office just in time to
see his usually calm partner sprint out through the front door. He ran over
to the window and looked out. A sedan he recognized as Henry Miller's had
been stopped close to the gas pump. Thick blue-black smoke was pouring out
from under its hood. Mrs. Miller was crouching in the driver's seat,
alternately punching the horn button and emitting heart-stopping
heart-stopping shrieks of "Fire! Help! Fire!" Joe Clark was clawing at the
shop doors, trying to get them open from the outside, and shouting something
about an extinguisher.
Gus was out of the office and across the
driveway to the car in two jumps. He pulled open the door. Mrs. Miller
stared at him with panicky eyes, and let out another screech of "Fire!" at
the top of her voice.
"Take it easy, Mrs. Miller - take it
easy," Gus said soothingly. "Nothing's going to hurt you. Just you hop out."
Mrs. Miller was too badly frightened to understand what he said, but when he
reached in over an assortment of packages from the neighborhood chain
grocery piled on the front seat, and grasped her arm, she slid out from
under the steering wheel and stumbled out, still yelling shrilly.
Harry and Ez Zacharias came running over
just then together they pushed the burning car well away from the gasoline
pump.
Harry got the hood up. Through the cloud
of blue-black smoke that billowed out they saw that a greasy mess on the pan
at one side of the motor was burning fiercely. "I'll get the extinguisher!"
Harry yelled, and sprinted for the shop. Suddenly Gus remembered one of the
grocery packages he had noticed on the car's front seat - a big paper bag.
He reached in, found it raised it high above his head, and smashed it down
onto the hottest part of the blaze.
The bag broke. A white cloud rose and
mingled with the black smoke. The flames were blotted out as if a wet
blanket had been slapped over them.
Harry came running out with a fire
extinguisher. "Never mind that," Gus said. "We won't need it."
Harry's mouth sagged open. "What - what
didja' put it out with?" he sputtered.
Gus laughed. "A long time ago," he said.
"I read some place that flour will smother a gasoline or oil fire just about
as effectively as sand will. I remembered that when I noticed that Mrs.
Miller had a ten-pound bag of flour on her front seat. And it worked!"
Excitement died down with the fire. Ez
Zacharias drove away. Even Mrs. Miller recovered sufficiently to come out
and make a survey of the damage. "You saved me, Mr. Wilson - definitely save
me!" she gushed. "But my poor, poor car? Whatever will Mr. Miller say? It's
ruined - I'm sure it's ruined!"
"Oh, it's not that bad," Gus consoled
her, "not nearly that bad. You're going to need a new wiring job, but I
guess that'll be about all. Better leave the car here - it won't run - and
tell Henry to drop over and see me about it. Harry will carry your packages
over to your house for you."
Gus and Joe watched Harry escort the
still-talking Mrs. Miller down the street. Then they looked at each other.
"What a dame!" Joe said bitterly. "Imagine, parking a burning car right up
against our gas pump!"
Somehow news of the fire got around town,
and along after five o'clock, quite a little crowd of the Model Garage's
steady customers, who had dropped in to discuss Mrs. Miller's latest
motoring misfortune, was gathered in the shop.
"You don't see, or hear about, nearly so
many car fires as you used to," remarked George Knowles, who has been
driving since the Maxwell was a headliner.
Gus nodded agreement. "You're right
George," he said. "And most of the fires we have don't do much damage. Well,
it's easy to see why - automobiles are designed better and built better than
they used to be."
"But." Some are objected, "there still
are car fires. What causes most of them, I wonder?"
"I was talking to a fire-insurance claim
man about that only a couple of weeks ago," Gus said. "He told me that about
half the car fires are cigarette fires that don't burn anything but the
upholstery, and that nearly all of the other half are caused by defective
wiring. Either way, the underlying cause is the same - carelessness."
"How do you make that out?" Gus told him.
"Wiring doesn't go wrong suddenly once in a hundred times. When you buy a
new car its wiring practically always is all right. But after a few thousand
miles of driving, things begin to happen to the wiring - if the driver of
the car, or the mechanic who takes care of it, is careless.
"Trouble is a wiring system develops
gradually - sort of sneaks up on you. A short circuit in the high-tension
system isn't likely to cause a fire, although it always is a nuisance. But
there is enough juice in the starting-motor circuit, and in the high-tension
circuits between the distributor and the spark plugs to start a fire if you
get a short circuit anywhere where conditions are right for a fire to start.
If your car is clean under the hood, the worst that is likely to happen is a
bad smell of burning insulation and the replacing of a couple of lengths of
wire. But if the pans around your engine are covered with a half-inch-thick
mess of grease, old oil, and gasoline which has spilled out of the
carburetor, with maybe a couple of handfuls of oily waste stuck in it, any
spark from a short circuit or from a back fire is likely to start a blaze.
"To keep your wiring system from going
haywire, you should check it every couple of months," Gus advised. "If Mrs.
Miller had had that done, her car wouldn't have caught fire. The wiring is
too burned to spot just what caused the trouble, but it's a cinch that it
was a short circuit If the insulation of a wire looks - or feels - as if it
is pretty well baked out, replace the wire with a new one. Give special
attention to the insulation of the wiring between the battery and the
starting motor - it has to carry the heaviest load. See that no wires can
come into contact with any moving part. If the insulation of any wire is
broken, or even slightly chafed, either replace the wire or wrap the chafed
place with tape. But remember never to use friction tape on a high-tension
wire - it won't insulate ignition current, and it won't hold if it gets a
little greasy. Use linen tape and shellac it. See that all the connections
are tight - that they are properly soldered and taped. And be sure to take
an extra-careful look at the end of every stranded wire. See that the
strands are twisted together and soldered."
"We get you, Gus," Knowles said. "Just
make certain that the current in every circuit is guarded against leaking
out, and you won't have any short circuits."
"That's the big idea," Gus said, reaching
for his coat and hat. "If you don't have any short circuits, it is
reasonably certain that you won't have any car fires - unless, of course,
you're dumb enough to drop a lighted cigarette on your upholstery. The way
cars are built today, fires are unnecessary. Most of the few we have aren't
very serious - unless they are the result of a collision that breaks a gas
tank - but some of them are expensive. Ask Henry Miller - after Joe sends in
the bill!"
END
