Our gears was hummin' a reg'lar tomcat chorus, but with the throttle
wide open the motor was hittin' on four most of the time.
Talk about your chariot race! Say, if we'd had Ben Hur aboard he'd
been down on the floor, clawin' the mat. Twice we scraped fenders with
passin' cars, and you could have traced every turn we made by the wheel
paint we left on the curb corners. It was a game of gasoline
cross-tag. We wasn't merely rollin'; we was one-stepping fox-trottin',
with a few Loupovka motions thrown in for variety. And, at that,
Auntie was holdin' the lead.
Down at Fifty-ninth, what does her driver do but swing into Fifth
Avenue, right in the thick of it. That was no bonehead play either,
for if there's any one stretch in town where you can let out absolutely
reckless and get a medal for it, that's the place. Course, you got to
take it in short spurts when you get the "go" signal, and that's what
he was doin'. I watched him wipe both ends of a green motor bus and
squeeze into a space that didn't look big enough for a baby carriage.
"Auntie must be biddin' up on the results, too," I remarks to Mr.
Ellins. "There they duck through Forty-third."
"Try Forty-fourth," sings out Old Hickory. "In here!"
It was a poor guess, for when we hits Sixth Avenue there's no yellow
taxi in sight.
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