Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 January 1909 — Toot! Toot! Get Out of the Way. [ARTICLE]

Toot! Toot! Get Out of the Way.

A few years ago the farmers were kicking about the automobiles. Now they are buying them. Every horse in the country used to shy when one of the red-devils hove in sight and the cows and the pigs and the chickens all took to cover when they heard the first sound of a chug-chug wagon. Farmers looked with the greatest disfavor upon turning the country roads over to the use of these electric passenger trains and there was constant friction between the farmer, and the plutocrat with a pair of goggles and a linen duster on dreaded an irate tanner more than a‘ sand hill. But as the old woman said when her daughter Lizzie married the opera house janitor, "Laws sakes, but how times change; when Lizzie was 18 years old we had It all planned for her to be the wife of the judge.” Last year the farmers began to stop the automobile drivers in the middle of the road and ask how many cylinders the blixened thing had and how fast she would go if you’d "jest cut ’er loose." Then the farmer and the auto driver became the best of friends and now "by gosh" the fanner is buying automobiles and testing the speed laws. Around Rensselaer there are now some six or eight farmers who own machines, and there are some twenty or thirty more who have the desire for one buzzing tn their bonnets, and about every other farmer ha* sent away for a catalogue. If we poor folks who couldn’t buy enough rubber to mend a puncture aren’t kept on the jump the next few year* to keep from getting run over by automobilea which our prosperous farmer citizen* are driving we mis* our guess Good Indiana coal, forked and delivered, >4 a ton at Maine* A Hamilton’*. • (