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The Indiana Historical Society has an exhibit on the Model T Ford. This kind of car is what used to be called a “delivery.” If you wanted one of these, you ordered the frame, running gear, brakes – all that stuff – from Ford, and then you went to what they called a “coach builder” and had them make the wood body for it. Yeah – they don’t make things like they used to!
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On Saturday morning I awoke, slightly unrefreshed from five hours of sleep, and went to meet up with my dad and go to an estate sale. One of the fellas in his Model T Ford club had passed away, and prior to doing a public auction, the family had been kind enough to do a separate sale where they invited the Ford club members to come and go through all of it. Pops was interested, of course, and while I don’t have a T of my own at this time, it’s really hard to deny the allure of a trip through hundreds of must boxes and crates and shelves in search of buried treasure of some sort or another.
Dad got a speedometer he’s been wanting for ages, but my little visual gold (or brass, as the case may be), was coming across this doodad. What is it, you ask? You mean you don’t know??? Why, it’s very obviously a horn! What else could it be?
This is the business end of one of those old, circular brass horns you would have seen on a car in the teens. It had a big rubber bulb on it, and you just squeezed it to let the buggies ahead of you know that your flivver was hot on their heels at a blistering sixteen miles per hour. This one had a bulb, and I tried it, but it was out of shape, and I just got a gaspy sort of wheeze from it.
The had a lathe there too, folks. A lathe. Haven’t I addressed my desire for a lathe here just recently? If not, well, I want one. They wanted a grand for the one they had, which I thought was on the high side. That, and I’m broke anyway. No lathe for me.
And, though I try to limit my One Pic A Day posts to one picture, Melissa will doubtless be all OMG(!) over the old Fords and ask to see one, so here’s a lovely Ford truck that just needs a little scrubbing and maybe some new tires to get it back on the road.
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I’ll take a moment to say that I’m very happy with today’s image. It’s a lot more interesting than my drives to work, eh? Really the sort of thing I hope to bring you a little more often. I hope that I’m able to get out and do some more interesting subjects as the year goes on. My desire is to stretch out a little bit and do more than simply give you a visual diary of my daily life. I’m glad that for once I have something a little out of the ordinary for you.