The Green Hornet

Folks, this experience will take more than one or two columns to unravel the whole story. So be patient.

In 1943 when Betty and I got married I was driving a 1941 Chevy coupe. I had purchased it new for $675. When Betty and I decided to go to college we had little or no cash. So we decided to sell the Chevy and buy and older car. We sold the Chevy for $800. World War Two was on and car prices rose. We located an old 1936 Chevy coupe and purchased it for a couple of hundred dollars. It was a sickly looking green color so we named it the Green Hornet after a character on a hit radio show. It didn’t look too hot but it ran okay. This is what we drove to college and kept until I graduated. Now in those war days gasoline was rationed and the speed limit set nationwide. It was 35 miles an hour and heaven help you if you drove over that speed and were caught.

This car served us well but we did have problems.

One day while we were returning from an infrequent trip home we had a flat tire. For you younger folk I must explain that in those days all tires had inner tubes. These were rubber tubes that were inserted in the tire and inflated with air. When you had a flat tire you had to take the tire off the rim, pull out the tube and put a rubber patch on it. All drivers kept a flat tire kit in their cars. So I got out my kit and proceeded to patch the inner tube.

When I finished, I put the wheel back on and we took off. Folks I hadn’t gone twenty feet when the tire went flat again. I proceeded to do this three or four times. I finally gave up and decided to walk to the nearest house with a phone and call my friend Fells Lam at the college to come and pick us up.

I was at a loss as to why my patching of the tube would not hold. Later I was to find out why. As I stated the tubes were made of rubber. This commodity became impossible to get because of the war. So they developed a substance called synthetic rubber. That is what my inner tubes were made of. I did not know that they could not be patched by the old method.

So I trudged up the road to find a phone and call my friend Lam. I finally got him and he came to pick us up and take us to our home on the college campus.

This is not the end of our experiences with The Green Hornet, but you will have to wait to read the next episode.

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