Grandpa's T.

With all of the recent posts about Model T's, I gotta tell this. My maternal grandfather had a Model T coupe, a '26 or '27, one of the last ones made, with electric start, etc. He insisted on continuing to drive it even after the rest of the family had upgraded themselves.

My father was always the ultimate square when it came to driving. Anyway, one summer during wheat harvest when I was maybe ten, Grandpa had to go the grain elevator some three miles way on some business and asked me if I wanted to go along. I was more than willing.

Halfway between Grandpa's farm and the elevator was a slough with a one lane bridge over it. As we approached from one direction, an empty grain truck approached from the other. Grandpa yelled, "Let's see if we can beat him to the bridge!". He pulled the throttle on that old Model T wide open and in effect played "chicken" with the truck to see who would cross the bridge first. Grandpa won, and laughed at the truck when we went past.

As timid as my dad always was about driving, it really impressed me at that age that my Grandpa would play chicken with a truck for nothing more than the exhilaration of beating the truck to a bridge.

LOL That sounds like my maternal Grandfather Had a heart attack riding his motorcycle at 72. He used to talk about his model T he traded an Indian Motorcycle for. Him and a buddy were coming back from Traverse city where they were picking cherries and the old model T started knocking. They pulled over and figured out it was a rod. They pulled the oil pan found which rod was knocking, but being babbit bearings couldn't replace it. So Grandpa being the farmer mechanic cut off a piece of his belt and stuck it in there. His buddy got a ride into town and brought back some oil. Started the old T back up and went on their way. A week later he tightened up the cap a little more and continued driving it for a year that way untill he sold it.

Yup that is a very old mechanical trick. Just as long as you cut a little oil grove in it or bore a small hole if it has pressure oiling to spray the Pistons. Knew an old time mechanic many years ago who would brag about how many engines he fixed that way. Another thing is saw dust in transmissons and rear ends to quiet them.

A lady I knew who would be in her upper 90's if she was still alive talked about coming to Pomeroy Iowa from Clinton Oklahoma in a model T when she was a girl. This would have been sometime in the early thirties. Her dad put a box on the back of the T, put all of their possessions in and took off for Iowa with his wife and two kids, one of the kids being this lady I knew. She said they slept under the stars when darkness came. She said one time the car broke down and her dad lifted the engine out under a tree, throwing a rope over a tree limb. While he was fixing the car she and her brother played in the open prairie. I feel privileged to have lived around some of these folks who had to rough it back in those days because there wasn't anything better. There were no handouts, they had to do whatever they could do to make a living.