THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 25, 1995 TAG: 9502250001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A9 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: George Hebert
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
Ever hear of a car called a Dorris? Or of a Biddle? Or a Moon?
Well, I certainly had not - until a few weeks ago. Worse yet, those three names form just the tip of the iceberg of my ignorance about the variety of vehicles available at an incredibly early stage of automaking in this country.
Because my father drove a Model T Ford in the early l920s, when I was quite little, I have long had the impression that in those days cars were still pretty much of a novelty. The gasoline internal-combustion engine hadn't been around very long (only since 1885; I've looked it up), nor had the electric car (1892). And Henry Ford's mass-production lines were a very recent thing, too (start-up in 1903).
Well, one of my visits to Norfolk's Kirn Memorial Library was the eye-opener on how fast the car-making idea spread early in this century. On microfilm, I was looking for family information in Virginian-Pilot and Norfolk Landmark issues for 1920 (which happens to be the year I was born).
I came across lots of big and serious news. There were stories about various aftereffects of The Great War, in particular, President Wilson's desperate attempts to get the United States into the League of Nations and to win American ratification of a peace treaty. Curiosities abounded, too - eggs offered at 47 cents a dozen; other ads suggesting ``Lemon Juice for Freckles,'' announcing ``Hair Grown on Bald Head'' and testifying to the salubrious effects of something called ``Plant Juice.''
But one advertisement, a large one and firmly in touch with reality, intrigued me more than all this. A local Firestone dealer had spread out, on one of the newspaper pages, row on row of neat little line drawings of automobiles, each with the vehicle's name underneath.
There were a few names that were familiar: Packard, Nash, Studebaker, Locomobile, Maxwell (that last memorable as one of Jack Benny's running jokes).
But also illustrated and labeled were such other Firestone-equipped makes as the earlier-mentioned Dorris, Biddle and Moon, along with the Premier, the R.V. Knight, the Saxon, the Elcar, the National, the Kissel, the Owen-Magnetic, the Roamer, the Westcott, the LaFayette, the Peerless, the Columbia, the Haynes, the Templar, the Cole.
And: the Apperson, the Anderson, the Elgin, the Ferris, the Grant, the Daniels, the King, the Winton, the R & L Electric, the American, the Franklin, the Lexington, the Chalmers, the Standard, the Mercer and the Paige.
That's 39! And this doesn't even count the cars that didn't come equipped with Firestone tires.
And it doesn't count the one from the ad that I've saved till last:
The Crow-Elkart.
Nifty. Now there's a motorcar name with sticking power. Harder to forget than some of the others. But - as it turns out - not really. MEMO: Mr. Hebert is a former editor of The Ledger-Star. by CNB