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Motorists coming west on 125th Street from the Triborough Bridge saw a speaker standing in the tonneau of an old muddy battered US Army command car, parked in the amber night light at the corner of Second Avenue, in front of a sign which read: CHICKEN AUTO INSURANCE, Seymour Rosenblum. None had the time or interest to investigate further. The white motorists thought that the Negro speaker was selling “chicken auto insurance” for Seymour Rosenblum. They could well believe it. “Chicken” had to do with the expression, “Don’t be chicken!” and that was the way people drove in Harlem. But actually the “chicken” sign was left over from a restaurant that had gone bankrupt and closed months previously, and the sign advertising auto insurance had been placed across the front of the closed shop afterwards.
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