Radiation And Modern Life: Fulfilling Marie Curie's Dream by Alan E. Waltar

Author:Alan E. Waltar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2009-11-12T12:37:00+00:00

CARS AND TRUCKS

As a boy, I can vividly remember the belching smoke wheezing out of the tailpipe of road vehicles in the forties and fifties. Ring wear in our farm trucks sometimes got so bad that we had to hold our breath any time we needed to move behind the open bed of the vehicles to load hay bales from the opposite side. In addition to the obvious pollution created by the engine wear, considerable power was lost as combusted exhaust slipped past the pistons-rather than give them an extra boost.

I got another dose of bad engines while attending graduate school. During my senior year at the University of Washington, I purchased my first car-an emerald green 1952 two-door Mercury with white leather seats. Boy, was I in hog heaven. That acquisition marked and hastened the engagement with my wife-to-be, and Anna and I were married the day after graduation. Immediately following the completion of my summer job assignments, we rented a NationWide trailer and lugged the bulk of our belongings three thousand miles across the states to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to begin my master's program in nuclear engineering at MIT.

After I finished my nine months of coursework and started the ensuing summer to wrap up my thesis, we decided we would return to the West Coast to complete my doctorate. Our first child had just been born, and we knew his grandparents would want to see him. Hence, I decided on the University of California at Berkeley to complete my PhD, and we made plans to head back across the states in late August.

But the '52 Merc two-door just wasn't big enough to carry all the extras that any young family requires. A crib, a stroller, extra blankets, toys, and diapers all had to go. So we reluctantly decided to sell my pride and joy just as soon as we could find a good used station wagon. After leaving many used-car lots with the disappointment of finding too big a gap between our desires and our wallet, we ran across an ad for a 1956 Nash Rambler station wagon that was in our price range. We drove to the advertised address, and to our delight the white wagon seemed fine. We asked the gentleman presenting the car if we could take it for a short spin. He politely refused-using the excuse that his insurance would not allow anyone else to drive it. But he took us for a short ride, and it seemed to pass the test.

He then assured us that the car was in mint condition. In fact, he insisted it was a one-owner car now in the hands of a dear old lady who drove it only on Sundays to take flowers from Boston to a New Hampshire cemetery to place on the grave of her recently departed husband. Having pity on his elderly friend, who now needed the money more than she needed the car, he agreed to sell it for her. And we fell for it!

We

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