Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 July 1909 — WOES OF OUR CHECKER-PLAYERS. [ARTICLE]

WOES OF OUR CHECKER-PLAYERS.

Story of Their Auto Trip to Kentland a Few Days Ago and the Mishaps En-Route. A. Halleck, J. A. Mcarland, E. M. Thomas, Sam Stevens and Frank Hill, composing the greater part of Rensselaer’s checker enthusiasts, started over to Kentland about 5 p. m., last Thursday in the first named’s auto, bent on securing the scalps of the Kentland checker players and tieing them end to end and trail them in the dust behind their gasoline car, on the return. Unfortunately, while bowliug along between Remington and Goodland—the engine never having missed a stroke or slipped a cog—they encountered a Philistine from Goodland named Johnson who was driving a devil wagon in the opposite direction. The roadway was a little narrow at the point of meet—though the R. C. P’s. say there was a dirt track to one side which the other fellow should have turned down to ■■—and the chauffer of the Rensselaer car, to avoid a collision pulled out to one side into the tall timothy grass growing by the. roadside, and which concealed a treacherous ditch. Boos! Bang! The tire of the Kentland-bound niachine slid oft and the inner tube exploded with the report of an elephant gun. From this point on their troubles were many. Another inner tube was substituted but it was rotten, and it was one continued round of taking off the tire, pulling out the tube, blowing it up and then hunting some water to put It in to find out where the leak was; patching the leak, putting the tire back on, blowing up the tube, and all getting in the auto with the firm belief that “this time we have got it fixed for good, and we’ll soon have the scalps of Bringham, et al, hanging to our belts,” going ten rods and having the tire go flat again. This was kept up most of the night, and finally they became somewhat vexed at the confounded thing and took the tire completely off and drove the last three miles in on the rim alone. The return journey was a little better. That is, for a part of the crowd, who deserted their comrades over in Jordan tp., some plade and came in with Wm. Washburn in his reliable Cadallac. It seems they borrowed an inner tube of Warhle McCray at Kentland,