AA Assistance

 

In writing about the Automobile Association Handbook last month, I said the more you think about such artefacts, and the more other commenters contribute, the more you remember about them. The AA Handbook it a good case in point. I began to think about childhood memories of the AA, and later needing their assistance. It may be of interest only to me. I think there will be a third post, too. 

I was aware of the AA from an early age. At that time, AA patrolmen still used motorbikes, with sidecars for their tools and equipment. One garaged and maintained his bright yellow bike in the back lane behind our primary school. As six year-olds we were fascinated. I am delighted to see the brick garage still there in the wall in the lane, now locked but recognisably the same. I thought about the children who walked with me to school, and what we talked about. How many still remember that 70 years ago an AA man lived there? 

Until the 1950s, AA members were issued with metal radiator grill badges, and patrolmen would salute motorists displaying a visible badge. I have an early memory of being in a car and being saluted, but when and where I have no idea. 

No salute meant a problem or hazard ahead. Apparently, this originated as a warning to members of police speed checks. Patrolmen could not be prosecuted for failing to salute. The practice would have ended in the late 1950s when motorcycles were superseded by small vans, which have gradually increased in size to the much larger vans now used. 

The main role of AA patrolmen was then, as now, to rescue motorists whose cars had broken down. Members were issued with keys for AA phone boxes to summon help. These all seem to have gone now, presumably because mobile phones made them obsolete, but my key remains on the key ring. 

I have needed help on three occasions. One was in the 1980s, on the A1 south from Scotland. The front end of the exhaust pipe broke loose from the engine, hacking and scraping along the road like an ancient tractor. The AA men tied it up and drove slowly ahead with me to Halfords. That Talbot Samba was new, my worst car ever. 

Another occasion, around the same time, was somewhere on the M1 south when the exhaust pipe of the car in front fell off and bounced under mine. A little later, there was a smell of petrol. The fuel supply pipe was fractured, and an AA man mended it with a length of plastic pipe. It stayed in place until I sold the car. 

But my first need was on Sunday, 1st September, 1974, on the M62 going home from Leeds, the day before I started a new job. It was also the day the new M62 opened from Whitley Bridge (J34) to Leeds. I was in my clapped-out blue Mini (the one in the blog banner), and after accelerating from the new slip road thinking how great it was, the engine cut out and would not restart. I coasted to an emergency telephone, but they were not yet operating. There was very little traffic, so I walked across to the other carriageway hoping to get a lift back to Whitley Bridge for help. Almost immediately, a police car came along. I thought I was going to be in real trouble, but actually the policemen were very helpful. They drove me back to the car and called the AA for me.

My most unusual experience with the AA was around 1972, again in the blue Mini, in Leeds. I stopped to give way at the junction of Royal Park Road and Queens Road in Headingley, and the front driver’s side wheel collapsed. At that time there was a scruffy garage across the road, run by the appropriately named Mr. Greasley (like a name out of Dickens), who took in my car with his trolley jack. Apparently, a wheel bearing had broken. Yes, he could mend it he said, and did. 

Unfortunately, it began to make a noise within weeks. My usual garage said that a wheel spacer was missing. They repaired it again, but Mr. Greasley refused to refund me for his shoddy work. He asked for the broken parts, “in order to test them”, and lost his temper when asked for a receipt. After weeks of argument, I asked AA Legal Services for help, who obtained a full refund. It was not a lot of money, but to me at that time it was. 

Our most recent encounter with the AA was my wife’s. She had an auxiliary steering wheel lock which broke at home in the locked position. As we had the Home Start service, we call the AA. It took the patrolman over an hour to remove it. It made you realise how effective these locks are.