Wes Robison's Truly Shocking 1950 Cadillac
A funny thing can happen, when cleaning up old photo's and enlarging them for posting. Things can be revealed in the backgrounds, that you might never otherwise see. Such was the case, when working with three such photo's I posted earlier, of two of my older siblings.
I was enjoying a visit into the past, with my twin sister, scrutinizing each picture I had put up of us children, on the blog, and talking about old times. Suddenly she began to point out things in the backgrounds that I had never noticed, and recalled a story told long ago, by both Grandma Lillie, and our mother. So here we will revisit the three pictures, I had already posted.
The story went something like this:
It seems along about 1955 or 56, my father made the purchase of a 1950 Cadillac, which you will clearly see in the following pictures. He loved this car, and took some pride in it. However, he began to lose gas from it, and very soon figured out, that someone was coming and stealing it, nearly every time he filled the tank. This made him very angry and he determined to stop the thief, by an ingenious method. He would take a truck battery and step up the voltage, by attaching it to a high voltage transformer, and from there to the gas cap, which would shock the daylights out of the thief. My mother, being fearful that the current would leave the thief permanently stuck to the back bumper, requested that he not do it. All her suggestion did however, was to have him wire an old incubator in line, which had an intermittent cutoff, and a power pole insulator, to kick the perp off the tailgate. The thief must have gotten wind of this apparatus, because no one was ever caught, or shocked, and the thieving stopped.
Up Date: After my husband, who is an electrician and I had a chat, and he viewed the pictures, he said, "You can't get a transformer to work properly from a battery. The battery is direct current, the transformer is alternating current. He would have to have had, an inverter." I looked at the picture's again, and sure enough, there's one in the picture, right beside the battery. My husband couldn't tell me how much voltage this hazard was putting out, since there was no way to know the battery size, or output of the transformer, but no doubt it would give you a nasty surprise.
This leads me to the question. I wonder if my mother confused the word, "incubator", with the word, "inverter?!" This is very possible.
Now it must be confessed, I thought little of this story as a child, and thought it was too crazy to give much credence to. These pictures prove that the story was for real. Which brings me to this question. Was my father born stupid, or did he take lessons?! Who in their right mind, would build such a thing, with his children playing within ten feet of it?! If they had touched it when it was on, it could have killed them instantly.
Cadillac's from the year 1948 - 1956, had the weird feature, of having the gas-cap located under the left rear tail-light. This made it very easy for my dad to rig up his gas thief trap, but thank God no one was ever electrocuted!
Here is that picture again of Blaine welding, you can clearly see, this is the old 1950 Cadillac.
Here is that darling picture of Cheri again, with Dads 1950 Caddy again, in the background.
Look closely behind Cheri, at the left rear bumper of the Caddy. The power cable can be clearly seen, coming from the back bumper.
Here again is Blaine, interacting with the trike Cheri is no longer riding.
The left tail-end of the Caddy is just barely showing, but that same cable, is hanging down. The center of this blow up, clearly shows the truck battery, and the "inverter", between it and the transformer, which is the tall bucket shaped object in front of the tractor tire. The brown object, lying in the road, in line with the cable coming from the bumper, is a brown porcelain high voltage insulator. Can we say death trap children?!!!
By some miracle no one was hurt by this insane contraption. If my Dad were alive today, I would say, "What in the heck were you thinking?!!!"
Another crazy childhood story, just proven to be true. Sorry Mom, I always thought this one must have been a windy! HOLY COW!!! You were telling the truth!
I was enjoying a visit into the past, with my twin sister, scrutinizing each picture I had put up of us children, on the blog, and talking about old times. Suddenly she began to point out things in the backgrounds that I had never noticed, and recalled a story told long ago, by both Grandma Lillie, and our mother. So here we will revisit the three pictures, I had already posted.
The story went something like this:
It seems along about 1955 or 56, my father made the purchase of a 1950 Cadillac, which you will clearly see in the following pictures. He loved this car, and took some pride in it. However, he began to lose gas from it, and very soon figured out, that someone was coming and stealing it, nearly every time he filled the tank. This made him very angry and he determined to stop the thief, by an ingenious method. He would take a truck battery and step up the voltage, by attaching it to a high voltage transformer, and from there to the gas cap, which would shock the daylights out of the thief. My mother, being fearful that the current would leave the thief permanently stuck to the back bumper, requested that he not do it. All her suggestion did however, was to have him wire an old incubator in line, which had an intermittent cutoff, and a power pole insulator, to kick the perp off the tailgate. The thief must have gotten wind of this apparatus, because no one was ever caught, or shocked, and the thieving stopped.
Up Date: After my husband, who is an electrician and I had a chat, and he viewed the pictures, he said, "You can't get a transformer to work properly from a battery. The battery is direct current, the transformer is alternating current. He would have to have had, an inverter." I looked at the picture's again, and sure enough, there's one in the picture, right beside the battery. My husband couldn't tell me how much voltage this hazard was putting out, since there was no way to know the battery size, or output of the transformer, but no doubt it would give you a nasty surprise.
This leads me to the question. I wonder if my mother confused the word, "incubator", with the word, "inverter?!" This is very possible.
Now it must be confessed, I thought little of this story as a child, and thought it was too crazy to give much credence to. These pictures prove that the story was for real. Which brings me to this question. Was my father born stupid, or did he take lessons?! Who in their right mind, would build such a thing, with his children playing within ten feet of it?! If they had touched it when it was on, it could have killed them instantly.
Cadillac's from the year 1948 - 1956, had the weird feature, of having the gas-cap located under the left rear tail-light. This made it very easy for my dad to rig up his gas thief trap, but thank God no one was ever electrocuted!
By some miracle no one was hurt by this insane contraption. If my Dad were alive today, I would say, "What in the heck were you thinking?!!!"
Another crazy childhood story, just proven to be true. Sorry Mom, I always thought this one must have been a windy! HOLY COW!!! You were telling the truth!
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