THE RATTLETRAP

Press, 7 August 1976, Page 14

THE RATTLETRAP

In my young days I travelled mainly by horse and trap, in a gig drawn by a white pony called Flora. It was something like a jaunting-car and I had to sit back-to-back with the driver, always in terror of tumbling out, which I sometimes did. I might land in the ditch amongst the nettles, and if no one had noticed I was missing, I had to run after the gig, calling: *‘Wait for me! I’ve fallen out!” But after a time my father acquired his first motor car, a Tin Lizzie, otherwise known as the Rattletrap. It was without doubt the Tinniest Lizzie ever seen, and my father who was more at home with horse-power, could have won first prize as the world’s worst driver. There was no highway code or road test in those days, so father just went into a field and drove round and round, to the

surprise of the sheep, until he had got the hang of the gears, more or less. Chiefly less. But at least he was good at blowing the horn, and the Rattletrap had the loudest one ever heard. When he got it out on the road father drove the car as if it was a horse, shoogling back and forwards to help it up a steep hill. "Come on, old cuddy. Gee-up!” Every time we ventured out in the Rattletrap we never got very far before breaking down. Jessie used to wave us off and say: “Ta-ta. Ye'll likely be back in aboot five "meenits. I’ll keep the kettle on the boil.” Father was so used to letting Flora find her own way that he found it a strain trying to control the Rattletrap. The trouble was, he had no sense of direction, and was for every going down side roads leading to nowhere.

Often we ended in someone’s farm-steading or at the edge of a duckpond. Reversing was one of father’s weaknesses, so we all had to get out and push. “A wee bit to the right. No, the left! Watch out, or you’ll be in the ditch.” Oh! the misery of standing shivering in an icy wind while Father struggled to change a tyre or put clanking chains on the wheels. All too often we would be rattling along the road when we head ominous sounds, and then suddenly the Rattletrap would come to a standstill and refuse to budge. “What the dickens can be up with the beast now?” groaned Father. And out he would get to open up the bonnet. Sometimes a cloud of steam would come belching forth, and I would be sent to the nearest house to beg for a kettle of cold water. I remember trudging

along the road and knocking at a door. “Please could you lend me some cold water?” it seemed a daft thing to ask. But often the Rattletrap needed more than that before it would come alive again. There was always something wrong with its entrails. Certainly we never had a dull moment when we took to the roads. Either' the horn would start blowing and never stop, the door would fall off. the steering wheel would get stuck, so that father had to go straight on without turning corners I remember once landing up against a haystack, and very glad I was to find it was something so soft. I was always thankful, when father gave the Rattletrap a rest and yoked the white pony instead. As Jessie said *'Ye can aye lippen on a poxcnie."