Old Is Gold for Collector and Camping Buff

David Woodworth will drive a 58-year-old Ford across the country next summer, sleeping and eating in a tent trailer manufactured in the 1920s.

The Woodland Hills Baptist minister collects old things that were manufactured in the United States, ranging from whale oil lamps to automobile catalogues, partly because he hates to see old things tossed away and partly because he wants his daughters to have memories and scrapbooks to share some day with their own children.

Woodworth estimates that he has the nation’s largest collection of old auto camping equipment.

While there is little financial value to old items such as camp chairs, the historic significance is so keen that the Smithsonian Museum has an exhibit of motor camping memorabilia open in Washington through August. Woodworth contributed a camp stove, folding water bucket, kitchenette box to fit on an auto running board, lanterns and folding chairs to the display.

Other items in his collection will be packed next July for the cross-country trip in a 1928 Model A Ford, which he purchased 18 years ago for $300. His wife, Mary, not a camping enthusiast, will fly to the East Coast and be reunited with the family in August.

Sharing the Work

Meantime, the Ford will pull a 1920 tent trailer, which features an ice box that sold for $12 when it was new. Woodworth and his daughters, Sarah, 16, and Heather, 15, will share the driving and housekeeping tasks for the trip.

“Auto camping equipment 50 years ago is pretty much the same as today,” he said, “except everything used to be made from iron or wood and was much heavier than contemporary pans and chairs.”

He does not anticipate any mechanical problems and plans to make minor repairs at night in the campground. Long a collector of antiques, Woodworth learned how to care for old cars after he purchased the worn-out Ford.

He learned how to do the body work, mechanical restoration and painting, and now he often talks to antique car clubs on aspects of restoration.

While he expects no problems driving across the country, he will leave a crated engine in the Valley ready to be sent to him in case he needs it.

In the past the only problems on the road were a burned-out generator “and I managed that incident by charging the battery each morning” and then stopped driving in the late afternoon before the lights were needed.

Woodworth, who once was a diesel mechanic in the Coast Guard, said he learned to fix his car because he could not afford to pay someone else do the work. He uses tools made in 1926.

Father-Daughter Adventure

Eight years ago he started taking trips with his daughters and then enlarged the vacations to include other families who drove with older cars.

The trips arose out of his thinking of ways to enrich a father-daughter relationship.

“I had been taking each daughter out to breakfast alone once a week but that did not seem to be enough,” he said, and the camping-with-old-equipment venture was a natural evolution of his interests in collecting old American furniture and accessories.

The cooking schedule sounds arduous. Sarah bakes with an old oven heated by a gasoline pump, and Woodworth creates vegetable and cheese casseroles, burritos and fried chicken. Water has to be carried to the sheet metal “kitchenette” mounted on the rear of the car.

Woodworth, however, thinks that camping memories will last a lifetime.

“Adventures on the road sort of pull you together,” he said. “When you camp, you are involved in basic activities like trying to stay warm. You work together, and this is enjoyable.”

Office Filled With Items

Woodworth said that several studies have shown that “families with the greatest cohesiveness are those involved in camping.”

His office at the First Baptist Church is filled with old car catalogues, phonograph record players, buggy lamps and other antiques. He also maintains duplicate scrapbooks, one for each daughter so they can share their camping adventures someday with their own children.

The Model A is used daily on his pastoral duties, and he often relies on his touring and camping experiences in his sermons.

“I have compared the Bible to a road map,” he said. “You can, for example, take a tour without a map just like you can live your life without the Bible. You could just head east in your car and eventually arrive on the Atlantic Coast, but you might miss a lot of good things on the way without a map. And in life you might miss a lot of good things on your trip if you do not have a Bible.”