W. C. Fields : his follies and fortunes (1949)

W. C. Fields had breakfast in bed." Later on it developed that Fields was still smarting from a near-escape he'd once had from a Southern railroad accident. Driving through Georgia with Grady and a girl, he skidded on a railroad track and came to rest crossways on the rails. The car refused to start. They worked at it apprehensively for five minutes or so and a cracker came along in a wagon. "A train ever pass along here?" Fields asked. The man pulled out an Ingersoll watch, studied it, shook it, looked at the sun, wound his watch, and said, "The six-fifteen's due right now." "Well, get a rope!" Fields yelled. "Pull me out of here." The man climbed down from his wagon and tied his horse to a sapling, after which he got an old curtain out of the wagon and put it over the horse's back to keep off the flies. Then he found a piece of rope. He ambled over to the car, sat down on the front bumper, and, while he untied a knot in the end of the rope, asked pleasantly, "Yawl from the Nawth?" Fields, who was in back of the car, futilely shoving, screamed at him to quit talking and hurry, and the man tied the rope on. Then he untied his horse, put the curtain back in the bed, led the horse over, and fixed the other end of the rope to the wagon. The horse leaned half-heartedly into the traces, but the car still stuck fast. They heard a train whistle far down the tracks. "She's coming!" Fields screamed. "We'll have to lighten the load." He and Grady started tossing out objects like press booklets, hampers, rugs, the girl, borrowed watermelons, and even liquor. By now the cracker was down with an ear to a rail. "Yes, sir," he said, straightening up, "she sure is coming." The train, an antediluvian shambles, came clanking around a curve at about fifteen miles an hour and stopped. The engineer 166