Car Wreck Humor, 1904 Style: Is That My Eye On the Dashboard? No, That's One Of My Ears!
These days, with the nanny-state enforcers of IngSoc and Agenda 21 mandating 3,000 pounds of safety gear on each new motor vehicle, it’s refreshing to hear that folks in the very early days of motoring got some good yuks out of the idea of impalement on the tiller of a curved-dash Olds. We’ve dug up this 1904 Cal Stewart recording of “Uncle Josh In An Automobile” to demonstrate.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Lord Mr. Ford, what have you done?
Here's an interesting link to the Boston Public library. This is the largest vintage car wreck collection that I know of... http://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/sets/72157626646768526/
That 1984 reference is pure gold. We're not far away from that... the telescreen is already "smart" enough.