A. C. Greene is a locally-famous historian of everything-Texan.
'Locally famous' is the next step above "a legend in his own mind," but A.C. can write. For instance, on Amazon you can find "Chance Encounters: True Stories of Unforeseen Meetings, With Unanticipated Results"
...or "Texas Sketches", in which he recounts the curious tale of "Dad" Garrett, who appears to be the first well-documented case of an inventor who was able to power his automobile on water - plus in-situ generated electricity. At the time you could buy an entire barrel of crude for $2 so it was a "yawner" of an invention but front page news in Big-D.
On September 8, 1935, The Dallas Morning News first announced that the water-fuel concept worked - at least it worked for "several minutes."
A few months later, "Pathe' News" - the media-outfit which many of us grew up watching on Saturday - before the matinee Western - before TV ruined that nostalgic pastime - filmed the Garrett car driving along Garland Road with the driver stopping at White Rock Lake to fill the fuel tank - with water !! before cruising off into the sunset, like in all good 'oaters'.
The film was shown on Pathe's "Stranger than Fiction" feature program, and indeed it 'fit the bill'. C.H. Garrett, Dad's son, said the only items needed to convert a gasoline-engine auto to a water burner was an electrolytic carburetor and installation of a generator of double normal capacity for the breaking down of the water.
He claimed instant starts in any weather, no fire hazards, cooler operation and plenty of power and speed. The car was not marketed, and no one seems to know its ultimate destiny.
In Dad Garrett's estate, there was rumored to be a surprisingly large amount of the stock of a number of Oil companies, notably the Simms Oil Company. I don't know which "sister" bought Simms. Richard may know this detail. However, it may be somewhat apropos, in the QM sense, that Bonnie & Clyde robbed the Simms Oil Refinery in 1932 a few years before the Dallas Morning News announcement.
It would not surprise me if, somewhere in Texas, in some corporate safe or warehouse, along with other ill-gotten and non-performing wealth, sits Dad Garrett's carburetor, gathering dust.
It is no doubt the prototypical 'genesis' story of this kind of thing, which spawned dozens, if not a hundred mythological urban myths about oil companies buying up competing technologies - especially efficient carburetors.
99 of that hundred myths are mostly BS but is the 'original' true - or just one of A.C. Greene's "Chance Encounters: True Stories of Unforeseen Meetings, With Unanticipated Results"
Jones
