Wheels in His Head: It Shouldn't Work--but It Does
by M. M. MUSSELMAN
1
WE WERE living in Chicago, on Monroe Street, just south of the Midway, when A. J. bought his first automobile. This mongrel vehicle, called a Pope-Bullet, theoretically accommodated four passengers, back to back, two riding forward and two facing the rear. It was powered by a two-cylinder motor under the seat, and was steered by a tiller. It was cranked at the side — often and strenuously.
I forget the details of the deal by which A. J. became the owner of this antediluvian auto-buggy, but he was elated over his great bargain. I think the Pope Manufacturing Company made this one model and were so discouraged by its performance that they never made another.
A. J. drove it home from the freight house one Saturday afternoon. We took a ride that evening on the Midway, causing two runaways and quite a stir. A. J. and Mother rode facing forward, while Aunt Ora and I faced the rear. The car performed beautifully except on a short incline, where all of us except A. J. got out and walked. After that the engine overheated, making the seat slightly uncomfortable. But aside from those trivial inconveniences, our first automobile ride was a success, with no hint of the unhappy experiences we were to endure in this and other motorcars.
In fact, A. J. was so delighted with the PopeBullet that he wanted to show it off. He telephoned his cousins, who lived on the West Side, to learn if they would be at home to Sunday callers.
“We thought we might take a drive in our new automobile,” A. J. explained casually. The cousins were so impressed that we were invited for Sunday dinner.
After A. J. had hung up, Mother began to worry about venturing so far from home in the new car.
“It’s quite a trip,” she reminded A. J. “Must be nine or ten miles to where they live.”
“There’s nothing to worry about,” A. J. assured her. “I bought a map of Chicago today and you can see for yourself there are boulevards every inch of the way.”
He spread the map out before Mother. “This is where we live,” he explained, “and right over here on Washington Boulevard is where Cousin Della lives.”
Mother examined the map critically. “They’ve got this map all mixed up,” she said. “Lake Michigan is on the wrong side of town.”
A. J. turned the map around so that Lake Michigan was on the proper side of town. “Don’t worry,” he told her.
“But I do worry,” Mother insisted. “This map is very confusing.”
A. J. went to some pains to explain that driving to Cousin Della’s was simplicity itself. All we had to do was follow the green lines on the map: they represented Chicago’s wonderful new boulevard system.
We started out after Sunday breakfast. It was a fine summer day and we chugged westward along the Midway in gay spirits. But when we came to Washington Park, Mother insisted that the map directed us to go left. A. J. convinced her that we must turn right.
Somewhere in the vicinity of Ashland Avenue and Garfield Boulevard, Chicago’s wonderful new boulevard system petered out on us. As we bumped off the asphalt onto a temporary road that looked like a hog wallow, Mother was triumphant.
“You see,” she said, as she opened the map. “I knew we should have turned left.”
A. J. pulled up at the side of the road, took the map, and studied it grimly. Then he shook his head. “The map must be wrong,” he declared.
Mother nodded smugly. “That’s what I told you last night.”
“I mean,” A. J. said, “that the map shows this to be a boulevard when it really isn’t.”
“If I were you,”advised Mother, “I’d return that map and get my money back.”
After a wrestle of about five minutes with the crank, we started off again.
If the Pope-Bullet had springs, they must have been designed for use on a freight car. We were bounced, jarred, rolled, churned, and jerked as A. J. and the auto-buggy fought a desperate battle with the spurious boulevard. To negotiate its bumps and chuckholes, it was necessary to travel in low gear; but traveling in low gear overheated the engine.
Mother protested finally. “Stop!” she commanded. “I want to get out!”
“What’s the matter?” A. J. shouted over the roar of the engine.
“Never mind what’s the matter,” Mother shrilled. “Just stop!”
A. J. stopped and turned off the ignition, while Mother scrambled out. Immediately she began waving the back of her skirts in the breeze.
“Why didn’t you tell me the seat was too hot?” he demanded.
“I don’t know why you couldn’t feel it too,” she answered with asperity.
For several minutes the engine continued to give explosive coughs as unexploded gas fumes were ignited by the red-hot cylinders.
“If you think I’m going to ride this rolling stove another inch, you’re very much mistaken,” Mother declared.
Although the neighborhood was sparsely populated, a handful of curious spectators had already assembled.
“Let’s not make a spectacle of ourselves,”A. J. muttered hoarsely. “As soon as we get back on the asphalt, everything will be rosy.”
“I can tell you something that is already rosy,” Mother hissed. “And if I ride another mile, it will be fried to a crisp.”
About this time a policeman appeared.
“Do you happen to know,” asked Mother, “how far it is to an El station?”
The policeman knew exactly. It was six blocks.
“You can ride that hotbox to Cousin Della’s if you wish,” she told A. J., “but I’m going to take an El train.”
Mother and I arrived at Aunt Della’s in time for Sunday dinner, but A. J. barely made it for supper, covered with grease, oil, and sweat. He denounced the Pope-Bullet as a failure and determined to get rid of it as fast as possible.
The next day he inserted an advertisement in the Chicago Tribune: —
FOR SALE
Four-passenger Pope-Bullet automobile. Almost new.
Perfect condition. Powerful engine. Easy to drive.
Owner leaving town must sacrifice.
“But that’s telling a lie,” Mother protested. “You’re not leaving town.”
“I certainly am,” A. J. answered. “I’m going to Milwaukee next Thursday on business.”
Several prospective purchasers answered the advertisement, one of whom was from Peoria. A. J. selected him as the most suitable victim, figuring that once he took the car to Peoria, he would be too far away to seek physical revenge.
A. J. met the gentleman from Peoria and gave him a demonstration ride down Michigan Boulevard. The car behaved beautifully and the prospective buyer was impressed; however, he had a cautious nature.
“Runs fine on level ground,” he said, with a tinge of suspicion in his voice, “but how does she go on hills?”
“Fine,” A. J. lied glibly. “This car was built for mountain climbing.”
“Will she climb the Twelfth Street Hill?” asked the man from Peoria, naming the sharpest incline in Chicago.
“The Twelfth Street Hill!” echoed A. J., his voice full of disdain. “Why, this car can climb that hill backwards! ”
The stranger from Peoria raised his eyebrows in amazement. “You don’t say? If she’ll do that I’ll buy her on the spot.”
A. J. drove to the foot of the Twelfth Street Hill, turned the car around, and went up the hill in reverse, the only gear in which the Pope-Bullet could possibly have made it. The man was so delighted he bought the car and started for Peoria that same day.
2
THE next car A. J. selected was called the Paterson 30, and I have never met anybody else who ever heard of one. It was a touring car, covered with lots of shiny brass gadgets and accessories, and had a four-cylinder engine which suffered from anemia.
In those days of dirt roads, the slower your car, the more dust you ate. Every time we went for a ride in the country we traveled in such a haze of dust, as other cars dashed past, that we seldom knew for certain just where we had been.
Another feature of the Paterson was its delicate springs. If we hit a bump when we were going over twenty-five miles an hour, we broke a spring. One Sunday we went for a forty-mile drive and came back with both front springs and one rear spring broken. A. J. discovered that a short length of two-by-four and a piece of wire would replace a broken spring so well that we hardly noticed the difference.
On our Sunday tours we always took a couple of two-by-fours with us under the back seat. When the inevitable broken spring occurred, A. J. would pull up beside a fence; then, while I jacked up the car, he would take his pliers and nip a few feet of wire from the lower strand of the fence. We sabotaged fences all the way from Lake Delavan to Kankakee.
A. J. intended to patent his broken-spring fixer, and to sell two-by-fours with the wire already attached for quick repair jobs. But the idea fell through — I think because vanadium steel springs became standard equipment about this time and solved the problem of broken springs in a much more satisfactory manner.
The Paterson is remembered in our family, mainly, as the car in which Mother learned to drive. She never wanted to learn, I’m sure; she did it only because she thought it was an economic waste to have a car sitting in the garage all day long while A. J. was at the office. One evening she insisted that he give her a driving lesson. I went along for the ride.
As Mother took her seat behind the wheel, A. J. gave her a few preliminary instructions, to which she paid very little attention. She seemed to believe that an automobile was not much different from a horse and buggy: that the engine would perform its essential duties if just given its head.
“Drop in the clutch,” ordered A. J.
Mother dropped it like a hot potato and the car leaped away with a jerk that cracked our necks.
“No, no!” shouted A. J. “ You’ve got to drop it in slowly.”
“How can you drop anything slowly?” Mother demanded. “And don’t shout at me!” She clutched the wheel and waited for further instructions.
“Shift to second,” he implored.
Mother seized the gear shift; there was a clashing and grinding of gears.
“Throw out the clutch!” pleaded A. J.
“What do you mean?” shrilled Mother.
“Step on it!”
Mother stepped on the gas. Again our necks cracked. A. J. groaned and held his head; but somehow, Mother finally got the car into second and then high.
“Turn right,” A. J. instructed.
Mother pulled on the steering wheel without slowing one whit and we careened around the corner.
“Slow down!” he clamored. “When you turn a corner, slow down!”
“Stop shouting at me,” commanded Mother.
As we neared our house, A. J. ordered hoarsely: “Stop the car! Push the brake! Stop it!”
Mother brought the car to a stop with one wheel over the curb. A. J. leaped out and wiped his brow.
“I’ll drive it into the garage,” he said.
After a few brief excursions, Mother thought of herself as an expert driver. She piloted the Paterson with nonchalant abandon. The car had a recalcitrant gear-shift lever, and Mother would often turn the wheel loose and seize the lever with both hands to grapple with it; or, if she had left the house hurriedly, she would drive off to the grocery store or the Twentieth Century Club, letting the car meander down the street on its own while she adjusted her hat with one hand and shifted gears with the other,
A. J. was worried. He invented an attachment by which it was possible to shift gears entirely with the feet. He hoped, thereby, to encourage Mother to keep at least one hand on the wheel.
Fut-Shift, as the device was called, was a metal stirrup on the end of an arm, which clamped to the gear-shift lever. It was really a very handy gadget. A. J. always used it to shift gears. But Mother spurned Fut-Shift. She seemed to feel that it was a device needed only by amateurs and incompetents.
3
MOST of A. J.’s ideas were inspired by some simple observation. Or he might get an idea for some laborsaving device simply because he needed such a device for his own use. For instance, when he found a monkey wrench unsatisfactory for bicycle repair work, he designed a wrench with several fixed openings which would fit every nut on a bicycle. It sold for a quarter, in amazing quantities.
The majority of these ideas were soon discarded. But some would occupy his mind, during leisure moments, for days or weeks before he would either start work on them or decide to abandon them as impractical.
Once he read in the newspaper about a man who fell and broke his neck while stepping out of a bathtub. Such an item would have no more than passing interest to the average reader, but it set A. J. to thinking about bathtubs and how many accidents they caused. A safety bathtub, he reasoned, would be a boon to mankind and worth millions to its inventor.
It would be nice to say that A. J. solved, the problem of how to build a safety bathtub, but he never did. He thought of putting a door in the side of the tub, but that, obviously, was not the answer. He thought of bathtubs with safety railings, tubs with pneumatic cushions inside and out, and tubs with hoists. But in the end he decided that the bathtub was one of those refinements of civilization which would always be a menace to life and limb.
A. J. learned by bitter experience that many of his best ideas, when patented and put on the market, failed to capture the public fancy. The public would have none of the best device A. J. ever invented — his Pneumatic Auto Bumper. It was a honey. He installed the first hand-made job on a Model T Ford which he had acquired for transportation to his office. It worked so beautifully that, in traffic jams, A. J. used to give the car ahead an intentional bump just to advertise the superiority of his bumper over other kinds.
The Pneumatic Auto Bumper absorbed minor collisions without noise, jar, or jolt; and in major crashes it helped preserve the original shape of both cars. At the Underwriters’ Laboratories, where all automobile bumpers must pass certain crash tests, the gentlemen in charge were amazed to find that their battering ram, which bent and mangled ordinary bumpers, had no effect whatever upon A. J.’s bumper.
The construction of the Pneumatic Auto Bumper was quite simple. It consisted of a four-inch hose, mounted on a metal cross-member and inflated to fifty pounds of air pressure. In black and white, or in colors, it was handsome; the superiority of its performance was unquestioned; but for some reason the fickle public preferred less practical bumpers of steel. The failure of the Pneumatic Auto Bumper was one of those things nobody could explain.
Probably it was a search for some way to soften the homicidal attacks of his Model T Ford that inspired A. J. to invent the Pneumatic Auto Bumper. For on more than one occasion the Model T, which originally had no bumper of any kind, tried to mash him against: the rear wall of our garage. This was a family trait of Model T’s. As they grew old and cantankerous they would often attack their owners while being cranked, by slipping out of neutral and into high gear. It was not uncommon, in those days, to see a Ford pushing its owner down the street.
In the coaster-brake business A. J.’s worst headache was the basic defect of all friction brakes: they wear out. Next to tires, brakes were the one part of a bicycle that needed to be repaired most often.
But that had always been so and it was assumed it always would be so. For the theory of friction brakes had been well established for many years: one braking surface should be relatively hard, the other should be as soft as is consistent with the factors of wear and heat resistance. On an automobile, for instance, a shoe of asbestos, impregnated with a soft metal, and a steel brake drum are typical braking surfaces. On A. J.’s coaster brake a bronze shoe was used against a high-carbon steel hub.
With little hope of finding anything better, A. J. suggested to Mike, the mechanic in his experimental shop, that he have several brake shoes made out of different alloys, try them on the test apparatus, and tabulate the results. A few days later the experimental brake shoes were ready. Among them, A. J. was surprised to see one with a distinctive gray sheen.
“What’s this?” he asked. “It looks like chromium.”
“That’s right,” Mike answered. “Somebody made a mistake and gave one of the regular shoes a coating of chromium. I was going to try it along with the others.”
A. J. snorted impatiently. He explained that chromium was one of the hardest substances known; that although it would withstand friction, it could not, for this very reason, act as an effective braking surface.
“But go ahead and try it,” he instructed. “I’d like to know the results.”
The results were astonishing. Chromium against carbon steel not only made an efficient brake but seemed almost impervious to wear. The whole idea was ridiculous, of course, because nobody had ever used two ultra-hard metals for braking surfaces. But whether the theory was right or wrong, chromium against steel worked.
After numerous tests had shown that the chromium was superior to anything he had ever tried before, A. J. called on his patent attorney and asked him to file a patent application. Then he hurried to tell his largest customer about his discovery, and to get an O. K. for a change of specifications.
To his dismay, the company’s engineers refused to allow any such change. They began explaining the theory of friction coefficients.
“I know all about friction coefficients!” A. J. roared. “I made brakes before you fellows were out of diapers!”
The engineers shrugged. According to the theory of —
A. J. exploded. “What sort of insanity is this? Does a boy who buys a bicycle care about friction coefficients? All he wants is a coaster brake that won’t wear out!”
In the end the company equipped one thousand bicycles with chromium-plated brake shoes. They planned to check on the number that came back for service during a year’s time.
None came back. The engineers shook their heads, but at last they were convinced.
4
ON THE day Lindbergh landed in Paris, A. J. and I had lunch together. It was obvious that A. J. had something on his mind and I thought, of course, that it was the sad state of the radio business he was in just then. But it was, instead, the wheels in his head going around.
“The perfect shape for an airplane tire,” he said suddenly, as though I had been privy to his preceding thoughts, “is a sphere, with opposite points pushed in so that it looks like a big doughnut.”
“Then why don’t they make them that shape?”
“They say it can’t be done.”
“Why not?”
He didn’t answer. Like many slightly deaf people, he could only hear when he wanted to. Through the remainder of lunch he stared into space.
Right after lunch he started for the golf club and his usual Saturday afternoon game. But on the way, driving along in his car, he suddenly visualized a completely new method for building a pneumatic tire — a tire that would look like a huge doughnut, so big and fat that the wheel on which it fitted would be nothing more than a hub.
There was only one way to find out if it would work, and that was to build one. He drove straight home, his golf game forgotten. Mother was so surprised to see him that she thought he must, be ill.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, looking worried.
“Nothing. Got an old piece of muslin?”
Mother found an old flour sack for him.
“Have we got a sewing machine?” he asked.
“Of course we have a sewing machine,” she answered, a little wearily. “The same sewing machine I’ve been telling you we ought to give to the Salvation Army.”
“Good thing we didn’t,” A. J. told her. “I’ve got something here I want to sew.”
Mother frowned over her glasses at the piece of muslin. “What are you trying to make?”
“A tire.”
They went upstairs and Mother sewed up the muslin according to A. J.’s directions. The result was a large sleeve with a wide hem at each end.
“You’re going to make a tire out of that?” Mother asked incredulously.
“It’s just an experiment,” A. J. admitted, as he headed for the basement.
There he cut a hole in each hem and slipped two pieces of iron wire through them, like drawstrings. Then he inserted a broom handle through the length of the sleeve and pulled the wires tight until the sleeve looked like a big tobacco sack with drawstrings at both ends instead of one. The result was not prepossessing. A. J. scratched his head and wondered whether, when it was inflated, that floppy piece of muslin could possibly bloom into something resembling a big doughnut. There was only one way to find out, of course, and that was to make an inner tube for his casing, and try it.
He found some inner tubes, cut several wedgeshaped bands from them, and then began patching the pieces together with rubber cement. It was a tedious task which took until almost ten o’clock that night. The finished tube was a messy, misshapen affair, with a bicycle valve stem projecting from the side of the tube instead of the inner circle.
A. J. removed the muslin tire carcass from the broomstick, stuffed the inner tube into it, and pulled the valve stem through a hole cut in the muslin. Then, substituting an old bicycle hub for the broomstick, A. J. pulled his wire drawstrings tight, so that the ends of the muslin sack were gathered tightly inside the flanges of the hub. It was a ridiculouslooking object.
At this moment, Mother came down the basement steps. “It’s bedtime,” she announced. “How long are you going to putter around down here?”
“I’ve just finished,” A. J. answered, “and I think I’ve got it.”
“Got what?" asked Mother, looking at the flabby bag tied to a bicycle hub.
“The first real balloon tire!”
“Does a balloon need tires?” Mother inquired.
A. J. explained patiently what he meant and then handed Mother a bicycle pump which he had connected to the valve of this tire. “Just pump,” he instructed, “and you’ll see.”
Mother felt put upon at having to pump air into such a silly-looking contraption, but she did it. As she pumped, the muslin carcass began to fill out. A. J., wearing a worried frown, fluffed it and patted it to make the muslin folds, formed by the excess material at the hub, slip into place. The tire began to take shape; and as it slowly bulged out into a big fat doughnut, A. J.’s frown was replaced by an expression of wonderment and delight.
“Look at it! ” he exclaimed. “It works! ”
At that precise moment, the tire exploded in his face. Mother dropped the pump and regarded the remains with a just-as-I-expected expression. But A. J. wasn’t perturbed in the least.
“Sure it blew up,” he admitted. “But it won’t when I make it out of tire fabric, cover it with rubber, and vulcanize it.”
5
EXCITED by the realization that he had accomplished the dream of every inventor, A. J. had a difficult time going to sleep that night. He had created a process that might affect an entire industry. He had invented a method of tire construction that even the big tire research laboratories had failed to discover.
Then he was tortured by doubts. Could it be that since the first pneumatic tire had been invented, in 1845, nobody had ever thought of making a tire in the same way he had? What about Thompson, Dunlop, Welch, Fleuss, Palmer, and Pye?
For the next couple of weeks, A. J. fretted and worried while waiting to hear the results of a patent search in Washington. He knew from experience that the patent searcher, poring over the descriptions of thousands of patents on pneumatic tires, might discover that someone had already patented a similar tire. He knew, also, that even a patent search was not infallible proof that a similar method of tire construction did not exist . However, when word finally came from Washington that the search had revealed no invention even remotely like his new tire, A. J. was reasonably certain that his invention was original. His attorney immediately began drawing up a patent application.
Meanwhile, A. J. started building a new experimental model of the tire, which would be satisfactory for laboratory tests. To do this it was necessary to design and construct a new type of hub onto which the tire could be firmly clamped. He spent a good many hours in a machine shop on Desplaines Street superintending this job. It was also necessary to design inner tubes of a size and shape that had never been seen before, and to find a small rubber company that would take the trouble to make experimental samples.
Last of all, a good many yards of cord fabric had to be cut and sewn in a West Side bag factory, while A. J. hovered over the workmen. The latter job was the most difficult, since the cutting and sewing of the fabric involved mathematical problems which were beyond A. J. But by a tedious process of trial and error, a carcass of the proper size, with the cords laid on the proper bias, was achieved.
The new model tire was twenty inches in diameter, with a cross-section of ten inches, and tests showed that two tires would support a 3000-pound plane with only ten pounds of air pressure. Tires then in use on similar planes were thirty inches in diameter, with a cross-section of five inches, and the required air pressure was fifty pounds.
This first experimental model was still not a finished tire, for the casing was not sheathed in rubber. But that made its construction easy to see, and showed clearly the way in which the fabric formed the desired doughnut shape.
A. J. was like a child with a new toy. “Isn’t she a beauty?” he would say. “Pretty enough to hang in the Art Institute.”
When the patent application had been filed, A. J. put the big tire in his car and drove to Akron, Ohio, where five large tire companies were located. He headed for the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. He was a total stranger, and asked to see the head of the development department. A few minutes later a group of engineers were examining the tire with envious appreciation. That same week A. J. signed a license agreement and a contract as research engineer in charge of the development of his own tire.
When A. J. came home and told Mother that the ridiculous muslin contraption she had helped to make had turned out to be worth a lot of money and that they wouldn’t have to mortgage the house after all, she was pleased but skeptical.
“How can those people in Akron be so sure your tire will work on an airplane?” she asked.
“Don’t you think it will work?” A. J. demanded.
“I hope so,” she confided, thoughtfully, “but I keep worrying about the way that first one blew up.”
In 1939 A. J. sold his business and retired to an elaborately equipped farm near Hudson, Ohio. It had sixty-five acres and enough power-driven agricultural gadgets to till half the county. He built two houses — one for Mother and himself; the other for my sister, her husband, and their three children. Appurtenances were installed that Grandma never dreamed of: oil furnaces, water softeners, electric butter churns, and roomy electric refrigerators. The basement of his house was designed as a workshop and office, into which he crowded tools, workbenches, golf trophies, filing cases, half-finished experiments, comfortable chairs, and a desk.
“This is the only way to be a farmer,” he said with a grin, when I visited him. “If I feel like it, I go out and do a little work; if I don’t, I just loaf or fool around in my shop. Of course I operate at a loss, but I can deduct it from my income tax. Now, if farming had been like that back in Kansas, I never would have quit it.”
During the next three years he wrote to me occasionally in Los Angeles, where I was living, and I could tell that he was as contented and free from worries as any man could be in these times. And then, one Saturday afternoon, came a long-distance call from the farm that left me stunned. A. J. had been run over by a tractor and was dying.
It was Wednesday morning when I arrived in Hudson. My sister met the train and raised my hopes; A. J. was still alive. While we drove to the hospital, she told me the details of how he had managed to throw her three children out of the path of the tractor, which had got out of control in the hands of an inexperienced hired man; and how A. J. had slipped and fallen under its wheels. It had crushed all the ribs on his right side, as well as his collar bone. Pneumonia had developed and he had been placed in an oxygen tent.
When we arrived at the hospital, it was still early in the morning. We went directly to his room without seeing anyone who might tell us whether his condition had improved or not. I opened the door and walked in.
He looked white and haggard; his eyes were closed; the oxygen tent had been removed. I was frightened as I crossed to him. Then his eyes, dulled by the morphine they had given him, opened slowly and looked at me. It was a moment or two before his face lit up with recognition, then crinkled in a smile.
I took his hand and tried to smile encouragingly. He gripped my fingers till they hurt.
“What’re you doing here?” he asked hoarsely. “Somebody tell you I was going to kick off?”
“Yes, but I never believed it. Where’s Mother?”
“In the next room sleeping,” the nurse interposed.
“Doesn’t he need the oxygen tent any longer?” I asked.
“Last night he swore till we had to take it off.”
“Damn nuisance,” A. J. interrupted. “Too hot. Anyway, I’m not gonna die. Got something that has to be built first.”
“Take it easy,” I warned.
“I’m O.K.,” he insisted. “Last night I got an idea for a new airplane brake. You know those big babies — the 17’s and 24’s? Brakes are no good. But I’ve figured out a brake that’ll stop ‘em. Get some paper; I’ll draw you a picture.”
“You’ll have to let him rest now,” the nurse cut in.
“You can show me tomorrow,” I told him.
“ Why doesn’t she go away?” grumbled A. J. “ All right, tomorrow. Damnedest brake you ever saw. Got a —”
“Time for your drops,” the nurse broke in.
Outside we saw the doctor.
“I don’t know how he pulled out at his age,” he said. “But last night he suddenly started yelling to take off that tent. Completely unorthodox.” Then he grinned and shrugged. “Oh, well, he’s that kind of a guy.”