The Ol’ Model T Still Revs Up Fans’ Enthusiasm
In saying the other day that no man ever forgets his first Model T Ford, I should also have said no woman ever forgets her husband or boy friend’s first Model T.
On the stationery of the Model T Ford Club of America (San Fernando Valley Chapter), Clara Jo Ostergren writes that she is so involved with her husband, Ben, in his love for his 1922 model that she is secretary of the club and editor of its newsletter.
Like me, Ben bought his 1922 in the late 1930s; he drove his to high school in St. Paul, Minn. “He remembered it so fondly,” Mrs. Ostergren says, “that three years ago he decided to get another one like it. He finally found one in . . . Hudson, Ohio, and rushed there with his truck and trailer to bring it home. . . .”
Lester F. Ziegler of Arcadia encloses a panegyric he wrote for Old Cars Weekly some years ago about his first T--a 1913 model that was 7 years old when he acquired it as a boy. “A lad of 15 yet to know the scrape of a razor, a rural crossroads town, and for the first time--a genuine, stem-winding automobile of my very own. . . . I photographically remember her every contour, provocation, dent and rewarding exhilaration. . . .”
Debra Wilson insists it was her way with her boyfriend’s Model T that caused him to marry her. When she met him in 1977, he was building a 1924 Model T roadster from parts. “When it stopped running, the one who didn’t know how to drive it (me!) had to push it to get it going. My husband has always said he married me because I was the only girl he knew who would push the Model T fast enough to get it going!” On their wedding day they rode home in the rain in the open roadster.
Meanwhile, several readers have written to correct Robert Taylor’s recollection of driving a 1918 Model T from Los Angeles to Phoenix in 1926, when he was 16. Taylor said they drove several miles over a road of railroad ties that traversed the sand dunes between Yuma and Phoenix. That road, I am told, was made of planks, not ties, and was between Calexico and Yuma, in California.
Lambert Ford of Yucca Valley says it was called the Board Road, not the Plank Road, as some have called it. He says it ran between Holtville and Winterhaven, in California. “It was made up of one-inch boards fastened together with flexible metal strips.”
Ford owned a 1922 Model T touring car he had bought for $4. It had been hacksawed into a roadster. He used it to deliver papers and finally sold it for $5. “The buyer drove it off on the rims.”
Taylor says he still remembers the road as being made of railroad ties and running between Yuma and Phoenix. But that was long ago. Dr. Graham Gilmore Jr. of Orange questions another part of Taylor’s saga.
Taylor told of climbing down a ladder of an abandoned mine pit; a rung broke and he hung by his hands, his feet bicycling in air, until his brother tied one end of a rope to the Ford’s axle and lowered the other end to Bob, who tied it around his waist and was pulled up.
“Regarding your vivid description of poor Bob Taylor hanging on the last rung of a ladder in a deserted mine shaft with both hands, his feet both dangling helplessly. Please, if you will, describe for your faithful followers how he tied the cord around his waist while in this predicament.”
That was Taylor’s vivid description, not mine. I forgot to ask him about it when I phoned him to ask about the road. But the answer is easy. He simply placed his feet on a higher rung and balanced there while he tied the rope around his waist. Not easy, but possible.
My own recollection of driving my 1922 T around the Southern California mountains from one CCC camp to another is questioned by Zane Boychuk of Carlsbad, who writes that Model Ts couldn’t climb.
“The T had big problems in climbing because the gravity-fed gas would not flow to the carb, and the driver would have to back the hot-rod up the grade. . . .”
Here I hang in air, my feet bicycling . . .
