The Perils of Early Automobiling
When Joe Bonn took his new Ford out for a spin in White Bluffs, he discovered that driving, unlike the locust trees lining the road, is not something you can just run into.
Some say it was because he lacked experience as a driver and others contend that the car had been poorly trained by its former owner, but whatever the cause, when Joe Bonn swung around the bank corner on his way home from the produce store Saturday afternoon in the Ford he had talked out of Roy Nye of the Nye-Benson sheep company, and started to climb the locust tree just at the back of the bank, his friends thought it was time to call a halt and rushed to his assistance. They finally got him back in the road and Joe started merrily on his way again. Little Alice had heard he was coming and ran out to meet him but frantic screams of the father were unnecessary—the child’s intuition told her that the uncertain course the car was pursuing was not a good omen so she beat it back to the house. He finally got the car home and stopped. That is about all of the story except that Joe says when he gets that car out on a good piece of road a few times he will take some of that 'bucking stuff' out of her. And Kincaid has a sign on the locust tree which reads, 'This road is closed.'
“Little Alice had heard he was coming and ran out to meet him but frantic screams of the father were unnecessary—the child’s intuition told her that the uncertain course the car was pursuing was not a good omen.”
Early 20th-century motoring stories often captured the chaos of integrating high-speed machinery into small-town life. Today, as we navigate the transition to autonomous vehicles and new infrastructure, the tension between the 'bucking' technology and human intuition remains surprisingly familiar.
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