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OF THE MONTH
} NEVER knew how good those Good Old Days really were until Miss Ruth Witman climbed out of her 1914 Overland roadster, dusted off her duster and became our Traveler of the Month.
Though she's an attractive young Pennsylvania schoolmarm with a manner as modern as plastic, she brought with her all of the lost charm and begoggled adventures of the Tin Lizzie era. And she had me thinking nostalgically of the days when life was no more complicated than the gear-shift on a Stanley Steamer, and things really were merry in that Merry Oldsmobile.
You see, Ruth Witman leads a double life. From nine to three every day, she teaches Latin and French at New Holland High School in Goodville, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. But in the afternoons and evenings — except for time spent marking papers, and teaching a Sunday School class — she's busy collecting and rebuilding antique cars. And if the kids at New Holland High want to make a hit with teacher, they pass up the traditional apple and put a nice monkey wrench on her desk.
For when that French teacher looks into the motor of an antiquated Stutz, it's strictly a case of Je vous aime. She loves old cars, and she'll travel around the country to find one, nurse it back to health and restore it to the glory of its road-hogging youth.
When Miss Witman stepped up to the ABC microphone at our Welcome Travelers broadcast at the
College Inn of the Hotel Sherman in Chicago, I had no idea that this crisp-curled brunette would be equally at home in a grease pit. She told me that she was a school teacher on vacation, and as I often do with our guests, I asked how she was traveling.
Her answer came with a perfectly straight face, and in a matter of fact tone. She said:
'Tm driving a 1914 Overland Roadster — from Pennsylvania to Milwaukee."
On Welcome Travelers we've had Dutch students who were hitch-hiking, a family riding a tractor, British bicyclists, even one courageous victim of polio who was pulled along on his tricycle by his pet dog — yes, we had had almost every means of locomotion. But never before a car that was supposed to have gone out of commission with Grandpa's mustache cup. So I asked Miss Witman why she happened to be riding around in an auto built before she was even born. Her answer, I think, was interesting^-and another chapter in the fascinating, never-ending story of America on the move.
"Old cars," Miss Witman said, "are my hobby. They're fascinating — and something like a mystery story. You search them out, then you track down original parts, one by one, and you recreate, many years later, a living entity from out of the lost past."
It developed that Miss Witman was on her way to Milwaukee — 1,000 miles from (Continued on page 98)
TOMMY BARTLITT
From the files if Welcome Travelers (Mon.-Fri., 12 N. on ABC) come the stories which Tommy Bartlctt. the program's M.C., retells each month (or Radio Mirror.
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