Car Embarks on Driverless Jaunt

Nebraska, 1934

A runaway created a few thrilling moments for folks on main street Tuesday, but it wasn't the familiar spectacle of olden days when frightened horses often embarked on a mad jaunt minus a driver; the runaway in this case was a "horseless carriage" belong to Rudolph Gustafson.

Gustafson stopped his car, a Model "A" Ford, in the alley at the side of his house on Second street, behind Jacobs' studio, and apparently forgot to set the brakes properly. He stepped into the house and when he returned, the car had started its ride to freedom. Gustafson attempted to run after the car and stop it but he stumbled and fell, and the auto continued a winding path westward and downhill, toward the bright light section.

At the bottom of the hill the car jumped the curbing by the Jacobs studio and kept rolling across main street until its journey was terminated abruptly by a collision with a cement block in front of Nelson Bros. garage. Had it not turned a bit too much to the right, the author would have gone straight through the door into the garage.

It missed, however, and now it reposes in the garage through necessity. The crash into the cement block bent the front axle and the front end of the frame, and also broke the flywheel and clutch housing.

—Oakland Independent and Republican, Oakland, Nebraska, June 29, 1934, p. 4.