[DHZIEMAN]

This Model A Story is from my childhood, the years for this story cover probably 1946 to 1949. My dad, a mechanic had owned a Model A Ford since about 1935! The car was the 4 door DeLuxe with 2 wheel wells! (that he never put spare tires in.) and it had a full box trunk on the back that he used to carry water, as we had no plumbing.

From about 1938 on, in Chicago, my dad worked for a lumber company as a mechanic to keep trucks of the day going delivering lumber and bringing in lumber from the Western and Northern States and Canada.

During WWII, a lot of lumber got used for crating for the war effort. Any kind being cut was used, even exotic stuff. After the war, dad got involved with someone who had a lot of crating put together that was no longer needed and they were either going to burn it or they would deliver it to his property. I have never seen such a big stack of wood.

Anyway, my dad had been modifying the model A Ford to allow the place that the crank would be used to start the car to be set up with a pillow block on the bumper with a pinned shaft put into the crank hole, all aligned to drive a wide flat belt. ( the kind that was used on farms with tractors of the day to run wheat grinders and stationary implements of all kinds)

He also had built a high flatbed trailer with a very smooth wood surface, and installed in the very middle a saw arbor that had a large saw blade mounted. I do not remember the size of the blade but, 10x10 lumber pushed thru it you could still see blade. He put a trailer ball on the end of the model a bumper, blocked the trailer with wood to lock it in place installed a long leather flat belt, and then the fun. As a kid I pulled nails every day, and when dad got home he pulled nails from all this crate lumber. Let me tell you, some of this lumber was 8x8x12 or 16 and some was bigger.

Once we had the nails out and he and mom and I had stacked the wood, he set up the trailer saw to cut 2inch lumber. I would sit in the model A Ford, dad would give me the sign to rev it up, and he told me to keep the engine speed constant, once I hit the right speed. That effort went on for weeks. Eventually all the wood was cut into 2x4’s or 2x10’s and he had the lumber to build our home, and he did complete all framing from that lumber.

That old model A Engine, running as a stationary power plant and me, a 9 year old kid being the throttle engineer for my dad, is just something, I will never, never forget!

Today, we as a people in this world are not into this kind of use of a vehicle, as a kid, neighbors that had one, would take off a rear wheel and put on a pully belt and use 1st gear to pump water.

After the effort was completed, my uncle who had a farm in Indiana bought the model A Ford and trailer and drove it to his farm to cut wood there! Never saw the car or trailer again!

Henry built one heck of a vehicle for the world to use to improve life! That is the story!