The Automobile

(as told by Elizabeth Perkins Buchheit)

My Uncle Henry Buchheit had the first automobile in the state of Wisconsin. He had a Stanley Steamer. And he had three daughters with Aunt Eda. He said the automobile would get going like a big roaring geyser. He’d yell, “Jump, Tina, Jump!” And all these kids would jump because the thing might blow up. The automobiles would frighten horses and Uncle Henry had these big lawsuits. You can’t believe the lawsuits. Every farmer said the horse would run away. And Dad said, “You know something? The jury would be out in five minutes and they’d decide for Uncle Henry.” Isn’t that remarkable?

My father’s first car is in a museum up in Wisconsin. It was a 1911 Cadillac. And it was a touring car where you’d put the cover back, you know? And I was told, since it was before my time, that my mother always wanted to have the cover put on because she was afraid it was going to rain any minute and my father always wanted it put down so he’d take that chance. His Cadillac drove the whole length of the states of Illinois and Wisconsin up to the Upper Peninsula to Mead Papers. My Uncle Alex had invested in Mead and they were cutting the forest up there.

[The Buchheits and Friends]

My family finally got a modern car in 1935. There were about six colors and you looked at a catalog and everybody had a word to say, “I think we ought to get that or I’d like this.” I remember we got a blue Buick once and we thought that was simply marvelous.

You could drive in Illinois when you were 15. That’s because most places outside of Chicago —where there are no large cities to this day — are all agriculture. Kids on the farms had to learn how to drive. They just drove the tractors, no matter how old they were. In a lot of those high school years, we didn’t have a car. Kids didn’t drive to school. I remember there was only one, Betty Ann Johnson, who had a car available to her. All the cars were stick shift so you had to have your head turned on right to drive.

VERNON WORK MYERS: I knew someone who had a Model A Ford. I tried driving it and I clashed the gears. You had to have the engine just running at the right speed. I couldn’t shift gears on it. The transmissions these days make driving much easier.

I bought my first car directly after the war. I was going with Vernon at the time.

I said, “Vernon, guess what, I bought a car!”

And he said, “Yeah?”

“It’s marvelous!”

“How many liters and how many cylinders?”

“What? Who? I don’t know. It’s got red leather seats and it’s a convertible and it’s blue!”

“Oh, I don’t care about that.”

I should have known then. But that’s typical. He’s not visual. I’m very visual.