I was getting ready to unplug cables and start packing pieces parts to get on the road tomorrow. I had just about decided not to post anything when I remembered this photo from one of Mother’s scrapbooks.
I hope this isn’t going to happen to me.
Missouri 1919?
The tag number on the front and back are the same, so it’s the same car. I’m assuming the 19 mean 1919.
Isn’t it amazing how human beings will stare at broken mechanical devices in the hope that they will become magically cured. It’s sort of like the way men look at their cars after a fender-bender.
What’s amazing is that when something goes wrong mechanically with my car I pop the hood to look. As if I am going to be able to do anything under there other than add windshield washer fluid. But hey, I can change a tire.
The newlywed wife of a guy I worked with suddenly found she couldn’t stop on the way down a hill in a construction area. She sent workers and barriers flying in all directions before she finally ran out of momentum. When the first workers went running up to the car to see if she was OK, she wailed, “Was the water in the battery low? He always said if there was a problem to check the water in the battery first.”
(I can change a tire, too, but it has to really, really want to change.)
http://www.historynet.com/president-dwight-eisenhower-and-americas-interstate-highway-system.htm
When I see photos of older cars on unimproved roads like the above I am reminded of the story of The Eisenhower Interstate Highway System someone guided me to. The part about the convoy crossing the US in those early days is still facinating to me. I hope you try it also. The above is an account of how Eisenhower got the Idea for the Interstate System of Highways.
I read the book about the convoy. I’m not sure the Interstate system was ALL good, but you can’t argue that it didn’t transform the country. Remember when a trip to St. Louis was an all-day affair, particularly if you got stuck behind a line of trucks on the uphill runs?
See you Tuesday…
April, I am impressed that you know how to raise the hood of your car. Whenever the oil change guys tell me to pop the hood, I just give them a blank look. I consider their knowing how to get the hood up part of the price I am paying for the oil change. The only thing I know how to do relative to my car is how to call Triple A for service.
It appears that when the first picture was taken, the rear axle and differential of the car had just been replaced with either a new or a salvage part, considering the relatively clean condition of the parking brake on the loose axle. There must have been a failure of the differential in the original.
i just bet that kid standing there looking very apologetic grew up to be an auto mechanic
Ken, the photos above remind me of the old “35” Chevy I once owned that had mechanical brakes and one cold morning when I was living on North West End Blvd. , I was going south toward Broadway and hit my brakes to slow down and the brakes had frozen up due to slush on the road and I had to “curb” the car on that median strip on Boulevard to slow down. I did get safely stopped. I later owned a 49 Ford tha was bad about breaking rear axles but it was so simple to get another axle at John’s junk yard and slip the old axle out and but the good one in. With these cars today I don’t try anything more than to occasionally check the air pressure in my tires!
Joe Whitright “45”
I once had an ’84 Jeep Wagoneer which I bought used and dearly loved–for the first few years. Before I finally gave it up, it had gotten to the point that it would occasionally die – once in the middle of the Kingshighway/Broadway intersection during a sleeting episode. The only way to restart it was to open the hood, climb up on the front bumper and stick a screwdriver in the carborator. (I had to climb up because I am too short to reach it otherwise.) Then I would get into the car, restart it, get out and grab the screwdriver and off I could go. When I finally sold it, it was getting a whopping 7 miles to the gallon. Since then any kind of car repair has fallen out of my brain. That’s what God created sons and husbands for.