Paperback 1110: Handbook for the Woman Driver / Charlotte Montgomery (Vanguard nn)

 Paperback 1110: Vanguard (unnumbered) (no ed. stated, 1960)

Title: Handbook for the Woman Driver

Author: Charlotte Montgomery

Cover artist: Elizabeth Pollock + [photo cover]

Condition: 7/10

Value: $8

[from a big box of books sent to me by reader "Gail"]

Best things about this cover: 

• I love the idea that women will naturally be wearing fancy driving gloves while driving. Also, that the steering wheel will be a freestanding plate or disc or fencing mask or robot helmet of some kind. Looks more like someone discovering an ancient artifact than someone driving a car.
• She's giving Eleanor Roosevelt. She also looks kinda like my paternal grandmother.
• Phillips 66 had a cool logo. Sincerely.
• I wonder what kind of assumptions this book makes about women drivers. Let's open to a random page and test the waters, shall we? — "Many women have confessed to me (as if it were a secret vice) [... go on ...] that they sing loud and lustily when they're alone in their cars." Thankfully, Mrs. Montgomery approves. She does not approve, however, of picking up hitchhikers or stopping on a deserted road or dressing or acting in any way that might attract "undue attention." I think she wants to say "don't dress like a whore," but that was probably deemed untactful by the editors.

Best things about this back cover: 

• Trop-Artic! For when the weather is ... too ... ar(c)tic?
• Trop-Artic! Not at all awkward and nonsensical! Really surprised it didn't catch on.
• The corporate synergy of Good Housekeeping and Phillips 66 is really something to behold.
• I love (Love!) how they're selling motor oil to women the way they'd sell beauty cream. Because "every woman" wants a "lubricating formula" (!) to help her car look "younger."
• "*A trademark" is a hilarious footnote. Oh, is that what "Trop-Artic" is? I just though it was an ad exec's bad idea.

Page 123~

Paper Play: Ticktacktoe; drawing a figure in sections, turning back the paper each time to hide what's already been drawn; folding a sheet and cutting strips of dolls. A drawing game for older children is played by making a sketch to illustrate a title, song, event, etc. The first to guess correctly wins.

"Paper Play" sounds like a very ... interesting ... driving kink, but this is just part of a long section on "ways to distract your annoying kids on a long automobile excursion." I like how the author basically invents Pictionary here. But that spelling of "Ticktacktoe" is cursed. 

~RP

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