The Bad Boy Relates the Automobile Ride He and Dad Had--They Sneak Out
of Town.
“Give me a package of your strongest breakfast food, and a big onion,”
said the Bad Boy, as he came into the grocery, looking as weak as a
fever convalescent, “and I want to eat the onion right now.”
“Well, that is a combination, sure enough,” said the old groceryman, as
he wrapped a package of breakfast food in a paper and watched the boy
rub half an onion on a salt bag, and eat it greedily. “What is the
matter with you to look so sick, and eat raw onion before breakfast?”
“Oh, it is this new-fashioned way of living that is killing little
Hennery. When I lived at home before we used to have sassidge and
pancakes for breakfast, roast meat for dinner and cold meat for supper,
and dad was healthy as a tramp, ma could dance a highland fling, I could
play all kinds of games and jump over a high board fence when anybody
was chasing me. Now we have some kind of breakfast food three times a
day because ma reads the advertisements, and dad is so weak he has to be
helped to dress, ma goes moping around like a fashionable invalid, I am
so tired I can't hit a window with a snowball, and the dog that used to
fight cats now wants to lay in front of the grate and wish he was
dead. Gosh, but there ought to be a law that any man that invents a new
breakfast food should be compelled to eat it. Gee, but that onion gives
a man strength.”
[Illustration: “Jerusalem, but You Are a Sight,” Said the old Grocery
man.]
“I should think so,” said the old groceryman, as he took a rag and set
it on fire and let the smoke purify the room. “But I suppose your folks
are like a great many others who have quit eating meat on account of the
meat trust, and are going to die in their tracks on health food. Is
your dad going out today to get the fresh air and brace up for his next
trip?”
“No, dad is going to stay in the house. He wants ma to get him a female
trained nurse, but ma kicks. They had a trained nurse for a week, once,
but ma had one of those little electric flash-lights that you touch a
button and it lights up the room like a burglar was in the house, and
she used to get up in the night and flash the light into dad's room. Dad
always had nervous prostration after ma flashed the light, and the nurse
fainted dead away, so ma and I are going to do the nursing until dad is
strong enough to travel again, and then he and I skip.”
“Where are you going first?” asked the old groceryman, as he opened the
door to let the odor of onion, and burned rag out of the room. “What
kind of treatment do the doctors advise to bring the old man around so
he will be himself again?”
“They want him to go where he can take baths, and gamble, and attend
horse races, and go into fast society, and maybe have a fight or two so
as to stir his blood, and we have decided to take him first to the hot
springs and turn him loose, and we are packing up now and shall go next
week. They tell me that at the Arkansaw Hot Springs you can get into
any kind of a scrape you want, and you don't have to look around for
trouble. It comes to you. Oh, we won't do a thing down there. I broke
the news to dad last night, and he said that was good enough for him,
and he has packed up his poker chips and some marked cards he used to
win money with from the deacons in the church, and he wants to go as
quick as possible. You will have to excuse me now, for I am going to
take dad out in an automobile after breakfast to give him his first dose
of excitement. I will make dad think that automobiling is a sport next
to fox hunting, and I will drop in this afternoon and tell you about
it,” and the Bad Boy took his breakfast food and went home.
“Jerusalem, but you are a sight,” said the groceryman late in the
afternoon, as the bad boy came in with a pair of black goggles on, his
coat torn down the back and his pants ripped up the legs. “What a time
you must have had in the automobile. Did you run over anybody?”
“Everybody,” said the bad boy, as he pinned his trousers leg together
with a safety pin. “There they go now with dad in a milk wagon. Say,
these airships that run on the ground give a man all the excitement he
needs.”
“Hurry up and tell me about your automobile ride,” said the groceryman
as he brushed off the bad boy's clothes with an old blacking brush.
“Well, dad said he had never taken a ride in one of the devil wagons,
though he had got a good deal of exercise the last year or two dodging
them on the streets, but he said he was tickled to death to hear that
I was an expert performer, and he would go out with me, and if he liked
the sensation, he would buy one. The machine I hired was one of those
doublets for two persons, one seat, you know, a runabout. It was a
runabout all right. It run about eighteen miles in fifteen minutes. I
got dad tucked in, and touched her on a raw spot, and we were off. I run
her around town for a while on the streets that had no teams on, and dad
was pleased. He said:
“'Hennery, I like a boy that knows something about machinery, and who
knows what dingus to touch to make his machine do a certain thing, and I
am proud of you.'
“We had to go through the business part of town, and dad looked around
at the people on the streets that he knew, and he swelled up and tried
to look as though he owned a brewery, and told me to let her out, and
I thought if dad could stand it to let her out I could, so I pulled her
open just as one of these station fruit venders with a hand cart was
crossing the street. The cowcatcher in front caught the hand cart
right in the middle and threw it into the air and it rained bananas and
oranges, and the dago came down on his head and swore in Italian, and
dad said, 'Good shot, Hennery,' and then the machine swung across the
street and knocked the fender off a street car, and then I got her in
the road straight and by gosh I couldn't stop her. Something had
got balled up, and the more I touched things the faster she went. We
frightened four teams and had three runaways, and the air seemed full of
horses rearing up and drivers yelling for us to stop. One farmer with a
load of hay would not give any of the road, and I guess his hay came
in contact with the gasoline tank, for the hay took fire, his team ran
away, and as we went over the hill I looked back and saw a fire engine
trying to catch up with the red-hot load of hay, and the farmer had
grabbed hold of a wire sign across the street and let the wagon run out
from under him, and they had to take him down with a fire ladder.
[Illustration: “It Rained Bananas and the Dago Came Down on His Head.”]
“We kept going faster, and dad began to get frightened and asked me to
slow up, but I couldn't. We must have got in the country about eight
miles, and dad was getting scared, and his face was just the color of
salt pork, and he said:
“'Hennery, this excursion is going to wind up in a tragedy, and if I die
I want you to have a post-mortem examination made, just to see if I am
right about those doctors leaving that monkey wrench in me. For heaven's
sake make the machine jump that fence, for here comes a drove of cattle
in the road, more'n a hundred horned steers, and we never can pass them
alive.'”
“Gee, but when I saw those cattle ahead and the machine running away,
I tried to pray, and then I steered her towards an old rail fence that
looked as though it was rotten, and then there was a crash, the air was
full of rails, and dad said, 'This is no hurdle race,' and we landed in
a field where there was an old hard snow bank. She went up on the side,
hit the frozen snow, turned a summersault, the gasoline tank exploded
and I didn't remember anything till some farmers that were spreading
manure in the field turned me over with a pitchfork and asked me who the
old dead man was standing on his head in the snow bank with his plug
hat around his neck. As soon as I came to I went to dad, and he was
just coming out of a trance, and asked him if he didn't think a little
excitement sort of made the sluggish blood circulate, and he looked at
the blood on the snow, and said he thought there was no doubt about the
circulation of his blood.
[Illustration: “The farmer had graced hold of a wire sign across the
street.”]
“He got up, got his hat untangled, told the farmers he was obliged to
them for their courtesy and then he called me one side and said:
“'Hennery, this attempt on your part to murder me was not the success
that you expected, but you keep on and you will get me all right. Now,
as a business man, I want to say we have got to get out of this town
to-night or we will be arrested and sent to the penitentiary; besides, I
will have to pay a thousand dollars damage at the least calculation. Get
me a carriage for home, and you stay and set this machine on fire and
skip back to town in time for the evening train south, and we will go
where the climate is more genial.'
“Just then the steers we saw in the road came into the field through the
fence we had broken, and when they smelled the blood they began to paw
and beller, and look like they would run at dad, so the farmers got dad
into a milk wagon that was going to town, and when the wagon started
dad was pouring a cup of milk on him where the gasoline had scorched
him when it exploded, and I walked in town helping the fellows drive the
steers, and here I am, alive and ready to travel at 8 p. m.
[Illustration: “Hennery, This Attempt on Your Part to Murder Me Was Not
the Success You Expected.”]
“If my chum comes around tell him I will write him from Hot Springs and
give him the news.”
“If that don't beat anything I ever heard of,” said the old grocery man.
“I have always been afraid of those automobiles, and when one of the
horns blow I go in the first gate, say my prayers and wait for it to
go by and run over some one farther down the block. Did your dad say
anything about buying an automobile after he came to?”
“Yes, as I remember it, he said he would see me in h---- first, or
something like that. He remarked, as he got in the milk wagon, that
every man that owned an automobile ought to be examined by an insanity
expert and sent to the penitentiary for letting concealed weapons carry
him.
“Well, good-by, old man,” and the bad boy went limping out of the
grocery to go home and tell his mother that he and dad had been scoring
up for the good time they were going to have when they got out on the
road for dad's health.