The Car We Had To Push by James Thurber, 1933
The magic trick:
Only using the main storyline as a means to riffing on other funny anecdotes and characters
“The Car We Had To Push” isn’t really about the car that they had to push.
Sure, it shows up here and there. It’s more of a recurring topic than the basis of a traditional plot. The story springs off in different directions, always returning to the infamous car. The result is an eclectic web of childhood memories and oddball characters.
And that’s quite a trick on Thurber’s part.
The selection:
Gasoline, oil, and water were much the same to her, a fact that made her life both confusing and perilous. Her greatest dread, however, was the Victrola – we had a very early one, back in the “Come Josephine in My Flying Machine” days. She had an idea that the Victrola might blow up. It alarmed her, rather than reassured her, to explain that the phonograph was run neither by gasoline nor by electricity. She could only suppose that it was propelled by some newfangled and untested apparatus which was likely to let go at any minute, making us all the victims and martyrs of the wild-eyed Edison’s dangerous experiments.
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