On Thu, 29 Jun 1995, Denise Thorpe wrote:
> A. B. Bonds said:
>
> > What's with the "M|G" painted on the trannie cases? I have yanked
> > about half a dozen from A's and B's, and they all have this rune
> > slopped on the upper side of the bell housing. It was green for the
> > A's and red for the B's, though this might not be a general rule.
> I finally got around to looking at the spare B trannies in my garage (one
> crunchbox, one crunchbox w/OD, and one '72 w/OD) and none of them had an
> "M|G" on them. The crunchbox w/o OD has never been rebuilt or cleaned. I
> don't know if this is a local singularity at your locale or mine, but either
> way, I THORoughly enjoyed your flight of fancy about the Abingdon worker.
>
AB, Denise, everyone! I have it! Eureka! (Always wanted to say that.)
You see, Cecil Kimber was getting bored with the MG within an octagon
motif about the time of the transition from the A to the B. The actual
letters M and G had to be kept, because they were by now too entrenched to
consider scuttling, even though they were only chosen in the first place
because M and G were the only letters that occupied the 13th and 7th
places of the alphabet, respectively. Instead of MG enclosed within an
octagon, he thought perhaps it would be nice to have M and the G separated
by something.
As we all know, he was an inveterate doodler (probably an inveterate of
the First World War, but I digress). If he was away from his office, and
had no paper near, he doodled on transmissions. His best efforts were
taken home to think about; the rejects were discarded and used in cars.
The slash was only one symbol he considered. In the end, he decided to
keep the octagon badge on the outside of the car, but by now he thought it
would be very nice to cast M and G into the transmission, separated by
something. He choose the letters OWO to to separate the M and the G on
transmissions. When his daughter died, she bequeathed hundreds of
transmissions with Kimber's doodles on them to the BMIHT, who haven't yet
figured out quite what to do with them.
You heard it here first.
Ray Gibbons Dept. of Molecular Physiology & Biophysics
Univ. of Vermont College of Medicine, Burlington, VT
gibbons@northpole.med.uvm.edu (802) 656-8910
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