"Good morning, Gus - what do you know about real
estate?" said Joe Clark to his partner, just as the latter was unlocking the
door of the Model Garage.
"Not a durn thing at this time of day," Gus growled
crossly and a bit sleepily.
"Oh! All right, you old grouch!" grinned Joe.
"I only wanted to tell you that there's a house up my way that I want to
buy. I thought maybe you'd take a run up there with me and tell me if
it's a bargain."
"Humph!" grunted Gus. "One of those places over
on Biddle Avenue, I suppose?"
"No, sir!" answered Joe emphatically. "This one
is on East Main Street."
"I don't know anything about those houses," said Gus,
showing a bit more interest. "Suppose we take a run up there this
afternoon and give it the once over. The kid can take care of the
gasoline pump, and business is slack now anyway."
Along about half-past three Joe suggested that it was
time to start, and the two men climbed into Joe's flivver and started off,
leaving Bill, the kid who did odd jobs around the garage, standing
importantly beside the gasoline pump. This was the first time he had
been left in charge of the place, and he was as proud as a peacock.
"Gosh!" exclaimed Joe, as they rattled down the road.
"This boat certainly does steer hard. I can barely keep it on the
road."
Gus looked at his partner with a pained expression on
his face.
"Son," he said, "as a bookkeeper you are a whiz, but
you are surely a dummy about autos. Haven't you seen that this bus
rides as rough as a bronco? I was just waiting for you to notice that
your right front tire is almost flat! I suppose it would have to come
right off the wheel before you'd get wise."
Joe appeared decidedly crestfallen as he stopped the
car at the side of the road.
And his face registered downright chagrin when he
discovered that the jack was missing from the toolkit.
"Whatever became of that jack, I wonder?" he muttered
disgustedly. "Now I suppose we will have to run back to the garage on
the flat tire and ruin it in the process."
Gus meanwhile had been poking around in the toolkit.
"Drive back nothing!" he said emphatically.
"What do you suppose these 'sizzle patches' are for, except to repair flat
tires with?"
"Sure, I know what they are for," said Joe: "but
what good are they to us if we have no jack to take off the tire?"
"Don't worry about that," replied Gus; "just you get
behind this bus and push it along slow so I can see if I can locate the
hole."
Gus kept a sharp watch on the slowly revolving front
tire and his keen eyes soon spotted the head of what turned out to be an
extra long carpet tack in the rubber.
"Now," he said, "this is your car and I'm going to
light my pipe and boss the job while you do all the work. Get out your
tire irons, the clamp, and sizzle patches."
Joe did as directed, for he long since had learned
that when Gus said he knew how a thing could be done, he was pretty sure to
be right.
"Get busy with the irons now and pry off the head of
the tire right where we pulled out the tack and for eight or 10 inches on
each side of the puncture. That's the idea," he nodded, after a few
minutes of strenuous work on Joe's part. "Now pull out the tube and
find the hole."
Joe meekly followed directions and when he had found
the puncture in the tube, he proceeded to scrub the surface of the rubber
surrounding it with a rag dipped in gasoline from the tank, tore off the
protecting paper from the uncured rubber on the bottom of the tin sizzle
patch, clamped it firmly in place over the hole, and finally touched a match
to a corner of the brown cardboard-like substance, which immediately started
to sizzle and fume like a firecracker fuse.
Gus settled back to enjoy his pipe while the patch was
cooling.
"In five minutes, or thereabouts, we should be on our
way," he said. "And you will kindly notice, Joe, that we did not need
the jack after all. Of course, you couldn't do that with a straight
side tire, but it's a handy kink to know if you own a light car fitted with
clincher tires."
After waiting the prescribed time, Joe pushed the tube
back into the shoe, pried the head on the rim, pumped up the tire, and they
proceeded on their journey.
Soon there came the sound of a motor horn. Gus
looked around to see who it was trying to pass.
"It's old Mr. Conklin," he said. "Give him
plenty of room. The old duffer can't see well, and he's liable to tear
off a mudguard for you."
Joe pulled over close to the edge of the road and
Conklin rolled by.
"Look!" exclaimed Joe. "He has a flat tire too!"
"Give her the juice!" Gus called out sharply.
"That's a new tire he bought from us. We can't let him ruin it."
Joe opened the throttle and the little car quickly
picked up speed. The chase scarcely had begun, though, when there came
a resounding report from the car ahead.
"Now I suppose he'll blame us for selling him a
defective tire," Gus grunted. "Well, pull in behind him. We
might as well take our medicine."
But this time, both Gus and Joe were wrong. The
soft tire had not blown out. It was, instead, an old tire on the right
front wheel of Conklin's car that finally had let go.
Conklin was climbing out as the little car pulled in
behind him.
"Hello," he hailed them.
"You arrived just in time. You can help me
change tires."
"That's why we were trailing you," said Gus.
"How did you know I was going to have a blowout?"
asked the other in surprise.
"I didn't, but your left rear tire is almost flat.
We were trying to overtake and warn you when the other one surprised us by
blowing out."
Conklin swung around with a grunt.
"More bad luck," he said gloomily.
"Two flat tires and only one spare. What am I
going to do about it?"
"Nothing to it," said Gus. "Put the spare on in
place of the blown-out front shoe, and we'll fix this soft one for you.
Got a jack in your toolkit?"
Conklin produced a jack and a couple of spindly little
tire irons about eight inches long.
Gus looked disgustedly at the tire irons.
"There's a real tire iron," he said, holding up a two-foot length of spring
leaf. "You can't do good work on tires without at least one real man
sized iron."
"Look here, Mr. Conklin," Gus continued, as he
examined the front tire, "this tire is junk. You have got pretty good
mileage out of it, judging from the looks of the tread: but you
certainly knocked off at least a thousand miles by scraping against the
curbstone so much. See,- the blowout came right where the side wall of
the tire was worn nearly through."
"By jinks, you're right," exclaimed Conklin, bending
down and peering over the rims of his glasses at the ugly hole in the side
of the casing. "You know, I never can tell when the wheels are close
to the curb, and what with all these new-fangled regulations about parking
close to the curb, the only way I can be sure is to edge in till I feel the
tire scrape."
"Yes," Gus replied, "lots of people have the same
trouble. Even Joe, here wore out a couple of front shoes before he
invented a scheme that works fine. Tell him about it, Joe."
"Well, as Gus says, Mr. Conklin," explained Joe, "I
couldn''t seem to gage the distance from the curb to the tires at all, but
finally I hit on a scheme that works out fine. First, you park your
car carefully, getting out and observing its distance from the curb and
moving closer or farther away until it's just right. Then you get into
the driver's seat, look over the front of the radiator to the point where
the street touches the curb and notice just where this line appears in
relation to the top of the radiator. After that, all you have to do to park
the car at any time is to be sure that you are in the same driving position
and watch the curb line and the radiator until they line up right."
"Sounds like a good scheme," said Conklin. "I'll
try it out."
By this time, Gus had the blown-out tire off the
wheel, and had substituted the spare. Joe tightened up the rim bolts
and then jacked up the rear wheel.
"Must be a slow leak," Gus growled disgustedly, as he
carefully looked over the tread of the soft rear tire without finding any
visible cut or nail in its corrugated surface.
With a hammer, he pounded the lock on the rim around
to the open position and then, raising the tire high in the air, he brought
it down on the ground with a thump. He made sure, of course, that the
point of impact was about six inches from the break in the rim and on the
side opposite the looking lover. The jar snapped the rim open and it
was then a simple matter for Joe to pry the tire off the rim with the
erstwhile but treasured spring leaf.
"How are you going to find the leak?" Conklin
questioned, as Gus pulled the tube out of the casing. "We haven't any
water to put it in and watch for the bubbles."
"That's easy," said Gus smiling: "just watch."
He pumped up the tube to a diameter considerably
larger than normal, and then passed the tube, inch by inch, close to his
eyes.
"There!" he called out suddenly. "The hole is
right here."
"I wish I had eyes like that," said Conklin
admiringly, "I never could see a hole as small as that. I even can't
see it now you have pointed it out to me."
"I didn't see it either," said Gus. "I could
have found it just as well in the dark. The eye is a pretty sensitive
organ, and mine felt the small stream of air that was coming out of the
hole."
"Blowing up the tube till it was good and fat
stretched the hole so that a lot more air came out than when it was in the
tire."
Gus pulled a stubby indelible pencil out of his pocket
and carefully ringed the hole on the tube so that he would not lose track of
its location. Then the clamp and sizzle patches were brought out again and
shortly thereafter. Conklin's car was resting on four inflated tires.
"I'm ever so much obliged," said Conklin gratefully as
he climbed in behind the wheel. "Have another new tire ready for me
tomorrow. I'll stop in some time in the morning."
"By the way," he went on, "I've been thinking of
fitting the old bus with balloon tires. What do you think of the
idea?"
"I don't think much of it," answered Gus candidly.
"The tires you have are oversize, and your car isn't
heavy, so you can run the tires at fairly low pressure without injuring
them. A whole set of balloon tires with new wheels for them would cost
you quite a bit of cash. And besides, the slight improvement in the
riding quality would not be worth the extra expense incurred in the change."
"But I thought balloon tires made such easy riding
that you could go right up over curbstones or roll over a brick on the road
and hardly notice any bump."
"Not with balloon tires as they are made today," said
Gus. "That applied to the early models, which looked like overgrown
doughnuts and carried air at a pressure as low as 20 pounds. They rode
like a feather bed, just picked up all the nails in creation, the car
shimmied all over the road if you drove it fast, and the gasoline bill went
up and up. The balloon tires they are making today are really a
compromise between the old-fashioned oversized cord tire and the true
balloon."
"Of course if you were planning to keep your car for
another three or four years, it might be advisable to change because of the
slightly better riding qualities - "
"I'm going to trade it in next season,"Conklin broke
in.
"That settles it," said Gus. "Come around for
your new tire in the morning. Don't forget to ask me for an old spring
leaf for a tire iron."
"Looks like it's too late to do any house-hunting this
afternoon, Joe," he remarked, as Conklin drove off. "We ought to get
back now and see how many gallons of gas Bill has sold."
Joe agreed and when they rolled up to the garage it
was to find Bill engaged in conversation with a man who was just climbing in
his car preparatory to driving away.
"Howdy, Mr. Perkins," called Joe.
"Anything we can do for you?"
"Sure," said Perkins: "you can make me out a
receipt in full for this bill for $124.50 I owe you."
Joe got busy at once and Gus strolled over to Bill.
"How did you make out, son?" he inquired.
"I'm some gas salesman," said Bill.
"A whole gang of motor-campers who were traveling
together stopped here and I filled their tanks while they ate up all the hot
dogs down at Jerry's stand."
"Well," said Gus to Joe, who had strolled over,
"that's once, anyway, when we made money by trying to neglect business!
Let's take a whole day off tomorrow."
END
