The weekly Alaska citizen., 1918-06-24
BLACK JITNEY The Autobiography of Ford-A ! Notwithstanding
 Revision of "Black Beauty"
By LAWTON MACKALL

I was carrying seem to have control over me or over themselves.
 All at once my left fore tire ex- ploded violently, veering me aside into mile post. My master and the young woman landed in clump of bushes, but I was maimed for life. Bad example and bad association had ruined me. Many an innocent. unsophisticated car is thus driven to destruction all because it's own CT fails to live up to his moral responsibility. lay there all the rest of the night, while my gasoline ebbed away drop by drop. In the morning some men came out from the city and dragged me in. They performed a most painful operation on me, ampu- tating various shattered members and grating on several feet of tin. Then, before was really convales- cent, was sold to new master. This person was harsh-speaking. unfeeling man, who cared for nothing but money. He drove up and down the streets all day, inviting people to get in and ride; and when they did get in, he forced each one of them to surrender nickel.
 He was very cruel to me. Instead of showing any consideration for my broken health, he would say openly, Well, I'll get what use I can out of this one. and then buy another" Not once did he ever throw blanket over my hood in cold weather or steady my slipping wheels with chains. He was so penurious that whenever he drove me through a crowded street, he would shut off my gasoline, and make me run on what I could breathe in from the exhaust of other cars.
 Wretched indeed is the old age of an automobile. Bereft of the beauty it had when it was new model, it declines into squalid neglect. No amount of painting and enameling can restore its youthful bloom. One day this master was driving me through an amusement park when broke down completely. He got out. and prodded be brutally in the magneto. had not the strength to budge.
 He grew very angry, and the peo- pie in the tonneau demanded their money back. A crowd of idlers gathered to witness my humiliation. Becoming purple in the face, my master nearly twisted my crank off. He heaped upon me the most in sulting and unjust imprecations, as though it were my fault that my health was gone, even making dis dressing insinuations as to my an cestry. Words failing him, he fell to belaboring me with hammer and monkeywrench.
 The spectators looked on with in difference. Some of them even urged him maliciously to the attack
 "Id sell the thing for fifty cents!" he exclaimed, with a shocking oath. Suddenly an elderly, kindly-faced man pushed his way forward through the crowd
 "I'll give you that for it," he said. "Only stop battering it."
 My master left off hitting me- He looked surlily at the speaker and then at the crowd.
 You can have it." he said between his teeth.
 Hot tears of gratitude dropped from my cylinders as my deliverer pushed me to his nearby home. From that moment to this I have never known anything but happiness.
 For my dear old master is photog- rapher, and he keeps me basking in his sunny studio, and friendly people, many of them young couples who have just been married, come in to have their pictures taken while sitting in me. I am petted and made much of. My working days are over. But what makes me happiest is the knowledge that I can never be sold.