OT. Model A Ford

Mack

Post your Model A question and someone will know the answer.

Enjoy...

By the way, here's a Model T story to get you started. (Sorry it's not a Model A story, but there are Model A's in here, sort of) :-)

My Choctaw great-grandmother was a family matriarch in no uncertain terms, and pretty well-to-do for her part of Oklahoma back in the early 1900's. She and her husband (also Choctaw) had been early founders of that town, and he'd been its sheriff, mayor, and first banker back before the land was opened to white settlement. By the time the Model A came along, she was a powerful widow with 5 grown children (though one was a youth). Poteau, Oklahoma is real close to Ft. Smith, Arkansas, which is where they went to go to "the city." By this time, though, Oklahoma was no longer the Indian Nations, and the social rank of - and attitudes toward - Indian people had changed a great deal in that part of the country.

Well, Grandma Izorah decided to get herself an automobile. (Notice: the reason it's said she was interested is that she'd always had a fascination with machinery. I'm starting to notice this part of the story a little differently than I ever did before! LOL) So anyway, she went to Ft. Smith and went to the dealership to look them over. (Her youngest son, my grandpa, later helped unload traincars of Model A's -- see, they're in here -- into Poteau when that town got its own Ford dealership.) Anyway, apparently while Grandma was walking around this car, the dealer owner came out and suggested that an Indian certainly would not have money for such a thing, so she ought to just take herself on out of there. So she sent someone to the bank, got cash, and paid him in full for one right on the spot. (She was a tad on the proud side.)

Then she went home and the more she thought about it, the more she liked the car and the more she got mad about how the "johnny-come-lately" white people in that place were starting to think about the Indians who'd started the towns to begin with. So she sent one of her sons back to Ft. Smith in her new car to order FIVE MORE -- one for each of her children! The story goes that this set the whole county buzzing, and pleased her immensely! LOL

(OK, OK, Zane. Gimme' that wrench! LOL)

Dawn

Wish I was closer to where you are. I would love to have the tractor pile after you get through writing about it! :O)

You also need to learn how to inflat a tubeless tire without an air compressor. That's the way I taught a missionairy I once knew who worked in Belize in the jungle. She had an 8N tractor too that some church in the US had given her not having a clue that there was no gasoline etc in the place in Belieze where she lived and worked.

It involves starting fluid and a match!
Magic!
Kaboom! Sometimes have to let a little air out!

Don't know if the missionairy ever tried it????? Had tubes in the tires anyway so it wouldn't have stayed up long.

Zane

The story at the end of this post is about an indian they called "Chief" back in Lawson OK where the man who used to work for us at the Talladega Ford tractor dealership had once worked. He related the story about "Cheif" to me and I just used it myself in first person.

Just read a post about the old Ford two disc turning plow that one of the members was trying to restore. I can vividly remember plowing my brother in laws 48 8N all night with that plow hooked behind it. My brother in law would lay down the law to me when he was about to go back to where ever he stayed when he had me plowing. He had a pencil mark on the throttle quadrant and this was the point of no no. No faster than this and no gear faster than second.

Wonder if he ever wondered how I could get so much done in such a short time at those speeds.

When I was sure that he was out of sight and not lurking behind a tree watching me I would pull the throttle all the way and lift it up over the tab at the end of the quadrant and put the transmission in third gear and away we would go me and the 8N.

I remember that the exhaust would glow so bright that you could turn off the lights and see the right front wheel well enough to stay in the furrow as long as you wanted to. If it was warm weather you had to put your foot on the top of the transmission and that could get rather warm itself. Lots of the time I would rest my foot on the back of the pitman arms at the tie rod end. Did you know you can easily steer an 8N with your feet?????

Did you know that you can seriously injure you knees on the dash board corners if you hit a stump going wide open in third gear?????

A guy who worked for us back in the early sixties told me this story about when he worked at the dealership in Lawton OK before he came to us.
"Sold an N to an indian called Cheif once and he traded in a pair of horses. He said, "I showed him how to drive the N around the yard in number one gear and then sent him on his way telling him not to drive it in anything but one till he got the hang of it". Next day he came dragging the N down the street with a pair of horses with the whole front end bashed in.

He told me he put it in three and hit a tree!!!"

I'm going to have to try that steering with my feet thing, even if it's with the engine off - just to see how on earth you did it. I have to say, just trying to imagine it, I'm amazed it was your KNEES you injured when you hit a stump in third gear "wide open"!! LOL Whew! Glad you survived that one!

As to ulterior motives, I never have them. I just blunder into things as I dottle along having a really good time with living. I've really nearly (seriously) cashed in three separate times now, so I long ago gave up "do what you're supposed to do." And it's amazing -- things always go the most INTERESTING places!

Of course, there is ALWAYS plenty of YADDA YADDA with me. Can't help it. :-)

And as to alcohol, why on earth do you think I always head for the CHOCOLATE when I have an Arthur crisis!?!?! LOL!!!!

Dawn

I visited in Lawton OK back in 1955 when I was in the AF stationed at Witchataw TX and some of my hometown friends were stationed at Ft Sill. At the time it was against OK state law to sell alchol to Indians. Didn't keep any of them that wanted it from getting it though! Where there's a will there's a way!
Zane

Tim