I had a cousin who was a great storyteller. His granddaddy and my granddaddy were brothers. He was born in June 1899 and was 32 years older than me. He had a story about a man in the late teens or early 1920s who had ordered a Case car. He ran a country store and was very busy on the Saturday afternoon when it was delivered. The dealer showed him how to start the car and told him a little about driving it.
The store owner did not spend much time learning how to drive the car. Whenever he got a chance that afternoon, he would look out the store window to be sure the car was still there. On Sunday, he and his wife went to church in the car and then came home and had lunch. In the afternoon, he and his wife went joyriding and were having a great time when, all of a sudden, the car cut off. He tried everything he could think of, but nothing worked.
After a while, someone came along with a mule and a cart and carried the man to a place he could get in touch with the dealer. When the dealer arrived, he had a 5-gallon can with something in it. He opened a cap on the car and poured something in it, and then he poured a little in the motor and told the owner that it took two things to run a car: a tank full of a gas and a head full of sense, and he didn’t have either. The owner said later that he would have hit him, but he was afraid he would not fix the car.
This story is the only thing I had ever heard about a Case car. Thanks for the story about the Case cars (Farm Collector, February 2018).
Daniel W. Lang, Gatesville, North Carolina
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