This is the next section of this long letter to Lad in Venezuela.
By the way, I am finding a number of folks up this way who are much interested in having me save the Venezuelan stamps that come on your letters and it occurred to me that if it would not be too much trouble, we might give a bit of pleasure to a number of people if you could save the various foreign (to the U.S.) stamps that might come to your camp locally and enclose a few with your letters as you think of it each week.
Alfred Duryee Guion (Grandpa)
I think I shall have to spend a portion of the 50 bucks you sent me to fix up my car. I noticed the clutch has been slipping lately, not badly, but enough to indicate that it ought to be taken care of before it gets worse, but the worst is a short somewhere in the lighting circuit. I first noticed it the night when we were coming home from work about five o’clock. It was quite dark and on the way up Noble Avenue, with Dick at the wheel, suddenly all lights silently went black. The horn also refused to function but the engine ran O.K. We continued up to George Knapp’s place and, being a sort of a Boy Scout, I was prepared by having an extra fuse along. This Dick put in, we started and had gone about 5 feet when that fuse also blew. Aided by streetlights and other cars which we got behind and followed closely we got home all right. I mentioned taking it over to Arnold to have him look it over but Dick talked me into letting Ced take care of it. Ced looked it over, fooled around a bit and came in later telling me that he did not know what was the matter or what he had done but the lights worked O.K.
Thursday I left the office at five just at the rush hour which is a little worse than ordinary this time of year, and in order to avoid the worst of the traffic jams I decided to come home by way of Park Avenue where it intersects the Merritt Parkway and then on the Parkway to Rocky Hill Road. Everything went fine until nearing the Parkway at the end of Park Avenue where there were no streetlights and no moon, out went the lights again. Ahead of me I could see the lights from the passing cars on the Parkway, to reach which, however, I had to negotiate a winding road, down a steep hill through a cut alongside of the steam shovel with boulders strewn all around, incident to the building of a bridge across the Parkway. It was absolutely pitch black. I couldn’t stay where I was because the road was narrow and just a minute before I had seen a car come up from the Parkway and knew if another tried to do the same thing, I would be blocking the road and there was just a chance that ,with no lights and a crooked road, he might not see me. The only thing then was to go ahead cautiously the few hundred feet until I hit the Parkway and then try to keep behind some lighted car until I got to Main Street, Long Hill, from which I could go up to Doyon’s Garage and have him fix the lights.
So I started, trying to see the sides of the road. It was just as though I were driving with my eyes closed. Neither could I tell the speed of my car, although I thought I was going very slowly. Evidently, being a steep downgrade, I was going faster than I thought because, first thing I knew, I slammed bang into something which I afterwards surmised was a boulder, although I could not see it, the car careened way over, but did not upset, punctured the tire and bent the tie rod so that it was very difficult to steer.
Tomorrow I will continue with Grandpa’s stressful car problems.
Judy Guion
"Greatest Generation" Life Lessons 