ABSTRACT
In 1958, a young mother named Ida Brinkman reflected on her life after contracting polio. Five years had passed, she told the readers of the Toomeyville Junior Gazette – a magazine for polio survivors – since she had become paralyzed in her arms, legs, and abdomen. Ida Brinkman's life as an "Electric Mom" extended beyond the plug-in chest respirator that drew her chest muscles up and down. Ida Brinkman was one of a growing number of people with significant physical impairments who lived at home in mid-century America. "Self-Help Aids" of the postwar era are artifacts of Dr. Howard Rusk's and other rehabilitation specialists' assumptions and expectations about disability. In pursuit of what the Toomey J Gazette called "quad driving", people with disabilities became auto enthusiasts of a very distinctive kind. "Quad drivers" operated on the fringes of an existing technological culture, deploying car technologies to achieve their own form of automobility.
