Ever since my oldest brother, Jerrold, nicknamed Jady, had taken Halsey Barton and me to the State Fair in Dad's Model T roadster, we, Halsey and I, had tried to attend every year. He and I were about the same age, were still in school but hadn't had any work lately and both dead broke. He owned a Model T touring car but had almost given up on going because we lacked expense money. Then one evening he said, "Brown, I think we have got a way to get to the fair."

He had been talking to a boy, Ken Harvey, who also wanted to go to the fair. Halsey told him we could take him for $3.50. Tickets were 50¢ so that would only leave $2 for expenses. So, Labor Day morning, Halsey showed up with a tank full of gas - I never knew how he managed that - and the room back of the front seat full of old tires. Someone, he said, had been good to him. We had our first flat by the time we got to Kilawog and that's where we found this person hadn't really been too good to him for when he started culling through those old tires we watched him toss one after another over the river bank. He ended up with one that we could use by putting a blowout patch in it. We had just passed through Cortland when we had passed a little farm road off to the right and down that road went rolling that tire we had just fixed. I pointed to the tire and said "Look." He glanced off to the right and said, "Some darn fool has lost a tire." But he never stopped and we rolled into the fairgrounds on three tires. A young State Trooper jumped on the running board and said, "All right if I ride aways into the grounds with you?" I asked him, "How are our tires?" "Everything looks OK to me," he said.

There is always so much to see for free at the fair that we didn't miss the scarcity of funds much. We each had a hot dog and a drink and started back to Union. We seemed to get along alright on that rim till we got shunted off on a dirt detour. The road was stony and the first we knew there went our rim. There was still some wood between the spokes but that didn't last long and next thing we were walking on the ends of the spokes. Halsey pulled off into a farm-driveway far enough to the side to be out of the farmer's way. There were some people sitting on the porch of the farmhouse and Halsey asked if it would be alright to leave his car there till he could come back with a wheel and tire. They said "Sure." We started hiking down the road to Cortland. A man came along with a stake body truck and gave us a ride there.

By this time we were getting hungry. Halsey had a watch that he'd paid $7.50 for and he took this into a shop that had a lot of cheap jewelry and watches in the window. The man said he'd give $2 for it on the condition that Halsey would be sure and come back and redeem the watch. He said he didn't want it, was just helping us out. We got some food and then started watching for people from Union and finally all got a ride home. I almost forgot, when we left the car at the farm, Halsey started to walk away and then turned and asked the woman if anyone was apt to bother his car. She said, "Listen, you drove that car as far as you could. What makes you think anyone is likely to try and make it go any farther?"