Museum Matters

When automobiles were starting to become popular, there were a number of manufacturers building them. Many of these early brands went out of business and have been lost in history. One of these early brands was the Saxon. Pipes and Keith was an early dealership here in Dublin in 1917. The showroom and auto sales were located in the Cooper Building. My search in the tax records shows their location was approximately where Milano’s Pizza is now, just south of the railroad tracks.

According to “Purvis, Erath County Texas” by Raymond Hancock, most of the old timers had trouble driving their first car. Most of them had plowed with mules or horses for years. For them, Gee meant turn right, Haw meant turn left and Whoa meant stop. Hancock went on to say, “Well, somehow the car didn’t seem to understand this. Very often the car would run through a fence, gate, or end of the car shed or barn and never stop, with the driver pulling back on the steering wheel and yelling, “Whoa! to the top of his voice.” (Purves Erath, County Texas, Compiled by Raymond Hancock) Hancock went on to share a great story: “Uncle John Turnbow’s first car was a Saxon. Uncle John was about seventy years old at the time he bought it. He got it headed out of Dublin for Purves and home, but just as he passed the present airport site, the Saxon took a notion it wanted to roam around in Adrian DeLay’s field awhile, and it did! It went through the wire fence in one place, made a circle, came out through the fence about 200 yards farther down the road, and headed for home.”

“Uncle John said that he was yelling, “Whoa! Gee! Haw!”, and a few other words, but the car paid him no mind; so he finally let it have its head, since it was where it wanted to anyway!” (Purves Erath, County Texas, Compiled by Raymond Hancock) Visit us at dublinhistorical.org