One of my earlier blogs concerned a pocket watch my father got for Christmas one year from the owner of a greenhouse he worked for as a teenager. This next one occurred several years later, when he wa sin his early 20s.
One of his jobs was to drive the owner's Pierce Arrow truck to Philly to Third and Arch Sts. to pick up flowers and supplies. This was a round trip of about 3 hours on a good day and that included getting the truck loaded. I have driven to Philly on the roads before the Doylestown bypass was completed and I cna't imagine how fast he had to be driving.
It was a snowy day, and while the truck had a heater of sorts to protect the flowers, it didn't' have a defroster, which meant he had to stop every few miles and scrape the windows so he could see to drive. Somewhere below Doylestown he stopped to pick up a hitchhiking salesman, who proved to want to get to Easton also. he was one of these salesmen I remember from my youth. They come around door to door and have just about anything in a huge trunk they carry with them.
After seeing Dad stop every few miles to scrape the windows, he said that he had something in his case that would help. Dad started thinking he could have a gun in the case for all he knew. The man opened his case and pulled out a stick of something lie mustache wax or butch wax, got out and smeared it on the windshield and side windows. Dad had no more icy buildup to deal with for the rest of the trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment