THE CLEVELAND SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA AT NASHVILLE It was early fall in the year 1921. I had just become ten years old on September 25, and my mother's birthday present for me was a trip to Nashville to hear a concert by the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. Since I had never heard a symphony orchestra, I became quite excited about the coming event and was anxious to go.
(Some did not come to hear the music)
Screen 1 of 4Since some friends were to take us in their car--an old Model T Ford--the only expense we would have was the cost of supper and the price of two general admission tickets to the program. I remember that my mother had said earlier the total cost of the trip for us both would be "almost eight dollars!" a rather substantial amount of money for us in those times. But we thought such an expenditure would be justified, and we agreed we could manage it somehow.
We left Bowling Green quite early in the afternoon. Fortunately, the weather was good. We were thankful for this, because our only means of protection from rain in that open touring car would have been to put up some button-on side curtains-- the kind with small isinglass windows--and Mr. Harris, the owner of the car, said it would take some time to put them up.
We had allowed ourselves four hours to cover the sixty-five or seventy miles to Nashville, just in case of car trouble. And we did have car trouble, but nothing serious. The road was very rough--mostly gravel, cobblestone and dirt, and therefore the tire puncture we had just south of Franklin was not unexpected by Mr. Harris who told us that nearly everyone with cars had punctures when they went away from Bowling Green on an automobile trip.
Mr. Harris was neither surprised nor upset when the left front tire went flat. It made an awful noise as it bumped along for a short distance after the puncture, but it didn't seem to bother him. He first slowed down the car by pulling up the hand "gas feed" lever just below the steering wheel, and then pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. After tightening the hand-operated emergency brake, he got out of the front seat, took off his coat and said to me with a smile, "Chester, we've got work to do."
For those accustomed in more recent times to "putting on the spare" when a puncture occurs, I should make clear that having a puncture in 1921 usually meant also fixing that puncture on the road, since very few cars at that time carried spare wheels and tires and since we had no spare, we had to fix the puncture.
Following Mr. Harris' instructions, I did what I could to help. First I put some big rocks I found in the roadside ditch against the back tires to keep the car from rolling forward or backward. We then jacked up the front left corner of the car, but not before it fell off the jack two or three times. Next we removed the large but very narrow tire and its inner tube from the rim of the wheel with the help of the "tire tool" he got out of the metal tool box bolted to the left running board. This tool, made of iron and quite flat on one end made it possible for us to complete this step without too much trouble. As I was helping him prize the tire off the rim, he cautioned me not to pinch the inner tube with the tool. "That sharp edge will tear the tube if we are not careful, he said.
Laying the tube out on the grass at the edge of the road, Mr. Harris began to look for the hole to be fixed. He soon found one, after stretching the rubber around it. Then he found another hole close by. "Hm-m, two holes," he mumbled, as he moved over to the running board tool box and looked into it. I wondered if he thought I had made the second hole when I was using the tire tool, but he said nothing about that.
"Mother," he asked his wife, "where is that can of patching material? I was sure I put it right here in this box, but I can't find it."
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