Memories of Charlton County - by Gibson and Mays Back to Table of Contents 13. THE FIRST CAR JOHN GIBSON EVER SAW (Pp 19-20) Back in the early part of
this century the only transportation besides walking or riding a horse was paddling down the river in a boat or riding in a buggy pulled by a mule. Automobiles and airplanes were mighty scarce. My cousin, John S. Gibson, who was the son of Uncle Owen and Aunt Julia Gibson, was the first one in his family to see a car go by his house. A sandy lane ran in front of Uncle Owen's house and one day John happened to be in the front yard when he heard a strange noise. He looked
down the lane and saw a car coming, just churning up the dust. John didn't know a thing about an automobile, but he did have a loud voice. He yelled out "Look ayonder, Papa! Look ayonder! There comes a train just atearing up the road!" I remember when I learned how to drive. I was just a young boy and was living with Emory Dean on his farm in the Prospect community. I worked for him for $15.00 a month and board and washing. I was surprised one morning, as Emory
and I were going to town, when he told me to get in the driver's seat for I was going to learn to drive his truck. I had no idea he wanted to teach me how to drive but I got in on the driver's side and he taught me. It wasn't hard to learn, with only three gears. There were no graded roads then, mostly three-path tracks that ran around through the saplings. Once in a while there was a little strip of good road, but many of us learned to drive before the right-of-way was cut, the roadbed fixed
and it paved. Emory had a Model T Ford truck with no hood or windshield and it was hard to start. But he had a special way to get the engine working, if one hind wheel was jacked up, and the choke pulled as far as it would go. Emory could turn the crank in front of the truck and the minute the engine started, he could run around the truck, reach in the window, reduce the gas and throw it out of gear, and the engine would work just like it should. One
morning when it wouldn't start, Emory jacked up a hind wheel, turned the crank and when he started to run around to the driver's side to reduce the gas, the truck took off after him. He finally outran it then circled around, jumped in it and turned it off. If he had fallen down in that sandy road, that truck would have run over him! One year Emory planted a great big patch of cabbage on his farm. He was in the open field, about in the middle of it, plowing with a fat, lazy
old mule one day and did not know there was an airplane in the sky. The plane didn't make any noise as the aviator had deliberately cut off the motor. The mule was the first one that noticed the plane and he backed his ears and took off in a trot. About that time the plane was directly over Emory and the aviator turned its motor back on. It frightened Emory and the mule so bad that the mule ran one way and Emory went another. I remember telling Mr. Page at the train depot about it and he
smiled and said he bet that aviator laughed all the way to Miami about the trick he played on that farmer! | 
