Bob Read
docbob@jayco.net

Table of Contents

All the folks of Granddad’s generation had been around before automobiles. Some never owned one, but many joined the thousands who bought a Ford Model T or something similar. Farmers did not prosper from the end of the Great War to the beginning of World War II. If they managed to get a Model T, they sometimes drove it all through that time. Such was the case for Jim and Rose Seymour who lived just out of Franklin in the Providence neighborhood.

I can see them in my mind’s eye, cruising down the country road south of Rees Station. Jim was so skinny you had to look at him twice to see him. Rose, on the other hand filled a generous summer print. Model T springs were soft; as they putted down the dusty road, the Ford was tilted precariously toward Rose’s side.

But she never slid out that I knew of. Had she, that old car would have suddenly flipped poor Jim across the road.

On a hot summer day in the late 1930s I experienced an opportunity to be up close and personal with Jim and Rose and their Model T. Granddad Read loaded brother Jim and me and three buckets into his Model A and headed southwest out of Franklin to find a blackberry patch. Rounding a curve to exit the Durbin Road we spied the Seymour Model T stopped on the road. Jim was at the front of the car vigorously working a crank, trying to start the engine. Without Jim in the seat to counter some part of Rose’s weight, the car was dangerously tipped. Each time Jim heaved on the crank, the car and Rose bobbed up and down. Ganddad stopped and we all climbed out of his Ford. Jim was mopping his face and appeared tuckered out.

Granddad offered "Howdy, Miz. Seymour, howdy, Jim. Hot day for that work. Reckon we could spell you?"

"Be much obliged, Fred"

Granddad turned to me. "Bobby, you’re a strong boy, would you like to crank Mr Seymour’s Ford and start it up for him?"

He knew he could get me to try anything by telling me I was a "strong boy". I was around the old car immediately, grabbed the crank, and braced to give her a spin. As I tightened up to heave, I was suddenly clutched from behind and nearly thrown to the ground. I twisted around to see Jim holding me. He was a lot stronger than I imagined.

"Whew, Bobby, that was close." Said Jim.

I could only look at Jim and at Granddad and Rose, both were chuckling.

"Here," said Granddad, "let me show you how to grip the crank." He laid the handle of the crank in my right hand. "No, no. Not like that. Don’t wrap your thumb around the handle. Just lay it in your palm and on your thumb."

I held the crank just as he said, but I sure was puzzled. Wrapping my thumb around the top seemed a much better grip. Granddad and Jim saw my doubting look.

Both had loaded pipes and spoke between drags on the just lit tobacco.

Jim, still holding the crank, said, "Bobby, about every fourth or fifth time you turn that old engine over with a crank, she backfires and that crank whips hard around backwards. You got you thumb around the handle, you got a broken thumb! You want to try again?"

I did. The old Ford started on the third try. Jim and Rose waved as they cruised away, Granddad knocked out his pipe on the heel of his shoe, climbed in the Model A, and the three of us went after blackberries. As we rode, Jim broke the silence. "I don’t ever get to try anything."

The generation who made the transition from buggies to Model Ts and from Model Ts to the cars with newer transmissions had many self-taught or totally un-taught drivers. Granddad Hart was one such. He had a 1928 Chevy kept in a tiny garage between his house and his blacksmith shop. He had taught himself to drive in a Model T. Gear shifting was done with the feet. When he got the Chevy with a gear-shift on the floor, he never trusted it. When he went to the garage and climbed into his Chevy, we were all alert. The engine started with the accelerator pressed to the floor and held there. The gears were ground into reverse, and the clutch was slowly pumped out and in. Slipping the clutch, Granddad backed out of the garage, the engine roaring at top RPM, the car leaping like a frightened frog. We always watched this procedure in awe. If Granddad’s foot should slip off the clutch, he would surely be across the road on his neighbor’s front porch before he could stop. It never happened.

He wasn’t the only such driver in Franklin. Willie Rees, Milford’s father, Bill’s grandfather, exited in his car in similar manner and proceeded to drive all the way downtown in low gear; he lived up in the "swellhead" part of Franklin near banker Miller Keplinger and Mayor Marion Mansfield.

Then there was Uncle Billy Hart from Hart’s Prairie. He was really Pastor William Hart of the Hart’s Prairie Baptist Church and my Granddad’s uncle. I think everyone knew him as Uncle Billy. He was well known for his use of colorful language, more colorful than I should reproduce here, in his sermons. Well, he bought a new car, don’t remember what variety. Put his buggy in the barn, got a ride into Franklin with a neighbor, and took delivery. I think it was Mr. Woods who sold him the car and warned him, "Now Uncle Billy, you must "break this car in". Drive it slowly for several weeks to "break in" the engine. Allow all the parts to get used to each other before you drive fast."

Several hot summer days later Uncle Billy drove into Mr. Wood’s place.

The steam was pouring out of the car. It was obviously overheated. Woods grabbed a rag and loosened the radiator cap releasing even more steam.

"Uncle Billy, what in the world were you thinking? I told you to take it easy with this engine."

"I did. I most surely did. I drove all the way to town in little. I never put that car in big one time!"

Got Milk?