A little more than 80 years ago

THIS WAS GEORGE NIGHTINGALE’S dealersahip, as you can see by the advertisement. The ad was published in “Ye Olde St. John's” which was a rambling column (sort of like today's Rick Mercer rant) written and published in newspapers and in booklet form in the 1930s by well-known St. John's scribe, P.K. Devine.

Devine's non-stop narratives about “olde” St. John's, its people, stores and businesses was truly popular. Punctuation never got in Devine's way, we can guarantee! Reading any of this today, it sounds as though Devine never even stopped to take a breath!

Here's a portion all about the Englishman who came over here to live and did one-thousand-and-one things (including getting elected as a councillor on St. John's City council some 30 years after this was written): A spiffy, new four-door Auburn from 1936 starts off this weekend’s column. We can’t imagine that many of these were sold here, it being a Depression year, and all.

Mr. George M. Nightingale, born in Liverpool, served his apprenticeship in the Motor Engineering, afterwards coming to Newfoundland in 1911 to work for that well known firm of Angels, commenced business on his own account in 1913 till 1914, when he transferred to work in the Tool Department of the Munition Factory in Water Street West, in 1915 joined the royal Canadian Flying Corps as air mechanic, where he had charge of special testing motor department, after demobilization in 1918 commenced business again, where Nightingale's Motors, Feaver's Lane, operate a motor repair garage, also distributors of the Auburn Automobiles, Royal Enfield Motor Cycles, and other motor and classic accessories; here a successful business has been built up by experience and courtesy. Feaver's Lane also has the distinction of being the oldest road in the British Empire for it was up this track that Sir Humphrey Gilbert wended his way from King's Beach to Fort Townshend, the present Police Quarters

- Whew!