Chapter Ten
THE MODEL T
Training Wheels, Uphill Backwards, Tri-pedals, Detroit
Brother Richard -- to begin with an understatement -- had mechanical aptitude. Also a great memory for anything automotive. He can recall and describe in detail a 1917 Model car that Dad once obtained in a trade, it having acetylene lights in front, kerosene lamps upon the cowel and in back, and it carried an acetylene tank on the running board such that when dusk approached the driver could turn a valve, open the lens, light a match and watch for the pop. Richard said it threw a fairly good light.
Subsequent to that car, Dad bought a succession of Model T Fords and these became my older brothers' training wheels. Living on a rural dirt road where automotive traffic was minimal -- we recognized by ear from a half-mile away the sounds and models of all neighborhood vehicles -- Ed and Rich learned to drive by trial and error with relatively little risk due to the scarcity of traffic. The two shallow ditches on either side of the one-lane road would bring an errant carboy to a relatively safe stop.
To me, standing behind, it was awesome and scary to see them drive. The Model T had three floor pedals and two levers fixed to the steering column, called the spark and the gas. All were in play.
Rich, the younger, being too short to reach the foot pedals without grasping the wheel in both hands and sliding down to feel for the appropriate pedal with his feet, was lost from sight until the car was fully in gear and he could emerge to make the necessary corrections to his steering. Luckily, the gas lever was controlled by hand and he could proceed down the road with reasonable confidence until it was time to hit the brakes, when he would again disappear from sight below.
Dad finally bought a newer Model T and kept this one around as a sort of farm vehicle. Edward and Richard adopted it.
After they became a little more adept we would frequently drive down Town Hill Road for about two-thirds of a mile to the Gill's farm. They had three boys of approximately our ages and another Model T they called the "Tin Lizzie." Neither our car nor theirs had working lights, though we sometimes carried a kerosene lantern. We found over time that we did better by moonlight since it accommodated the adjustment to vision better than the glare of the lantern. After many such trips we finally met the Gills head-on one night, but our speed was so reduced that little harm was done.
Brother Richard's propensity for things automotive was not limited to driving. He self-interned in the disciplines of automotive surgery and rehabilitation while constantly under the hood of that old Model T. He knew its every part and what made it function with its counterparts. He kept the old Model T running with some infrequent and monetary aid from Dad, but there could be no mistaking his natural aptitude for things automotive.
In preparing to write this book, I had asked him to give me a chapter on the Model T. He responded with such a complete, such an explicit and technical treatise that I am reluctant to transcribe it for fear -- like an apprehensive neophyte pianist playing an unfamiliar composition in an unfamiliar key -- that I should inevitably err to my embarrassment and incur the wrath of all perceptive Model T aficionados.
I do feel safe though in quoting important and representative excerpts:
"When you cranked you wanted to make darn sure you had your spark lever up. The lever controlled the advance and retard of the spark and if you didn't retard the spark before you started cranking it might fire before it got up to the top, dead center. That way it would kick backward on a power stroke and yank that crank right out of your hand and break your thumb or come around and break your arm."
(As an aside, Paul Conroy was our favorite cousin but in our view he ate far too many sweets -- his mother owning a roadside stand -- and his bones were thin and brittle so the Model T was not entirely culpable in breaking his arm.)
"It had a unique transmission which was mechanically operated. It was run by tightening bands down on three drums: one was low, one was reverse and one was the brake. The Model T was braked off the transmission, not the rear wheels. The emergency brake was the one that braked the rear wheels. The foot pedal braked the transmission. The way it worked was, if you pushed on your low pedal it tightened the band around that drum and that drum stopped. The rest of it turned the transmission which sent the power to the differential."
"When you pushed the reverse pedal it tightened the band on that drum and caused the differential to turn in the opposite way."
"The brake did the same thing. It stopped the whole transmission so nothing turned and that put the brakes on the rear wheels. You push your low pedal down half way and you were in neutral. You pull the emergency brake up and you were in neutral . . . "
That's as far as I could take it. The ideal place to halt, I thought, was while everything was in neutral. I did not fully understand his paragraph on the workings of the magneto, but do faintly remember standing by on bitter winter mornings as they lifted the buffalo robe off the hood of the Model T.
"It could be a real problem. You couldn't just crank them because they were so stiff. You were cranking the whole transmission, including all the cold grease and oil, so what you had to do was jack up the rear wheel, put the emergency brake forward so it would be in high gear and that way everything turned and there'd be less drag on it."
"Then you'd get a kettle of boiling water and pour it on the manifold so when the piston was going down it would suck in air through the carburetor and by pouring the hot water over the manifold it helped to vaporize the gas so it would fire a lot quicker. So the whole transmission turned easier when you cranked and if she started you could run around and pull the spark down a little bit, pull the emergency brake up to put it in neutral, put the jack down, and you were ready to go."
The family used to drive six miles away to the town of Bristol to attend church and go to the movies. "Chich" (brother Richard's nickname) tells about our ascent of Stony Hill, a fairly severe incline just outside of the village.
"When old Henry invented the Model T he musta been out in the flatlands somewhere and never thought about going up a steep hill. I know a few times we'd start up Stony Hill and at the steepest part we'd run out of gas because the carburetor going up the hill would be higher than the gas tank in the rear of the car and it would starve. So you'd back up a ways, turn around, and go up the hill in reverse."
"Finally in 1926 Henry wised up and put his gas tank up on the cowel."
Richard's never-waning interest in the Model T motivated him to travel with his wife to Dearborn, Michigan to visit the Ford Museum. They stayed in a nearby hotel that had been renovated back to the year 1923.
"When I walked into the lobby, a brand new Model T was prominently displayed on the floor. I said to the clerk, `You have a new 1927 model here,' and he told me, `No, it's a 1923.' And I said, `It's either a 1926 or 1927.'"
"He then said, `They renovated the building in 1923 and it was brought in then and placed there.' I said, `You see that gas cap there? Well, Henry Ford had that installed on the cowel in 1926 and also in 1926 he modified the shapes of the low and brake pedals to better accommodate the feet.'"
"The area was roped off and I told him to come with me and take a look. Well, he did, and there were the modified pedals and he said, `I don't know how they got it in here!'"
"Well, later I got to take a look at an album made at the time which showed a group of men disassembling a 1927 model on the lawn and bringing it in piece by piece to be reassembled in the lobby and that's how it came to be."
I apologize to "Chich" for mangling his masterful exposition and taking so many shortcuts and evasions, but assuming that anyone likely to read my works must share similar technical limitation, I chose the easy and least hazardous route.