Island Of Misfits

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The above car mention triggered a wartime memory:

My Daddy was having a hard time starting the Ford. (Late Add: The FORD cabochon on the radiator front looked like jewelry to a little kid.)
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BTW -- The handle to crank the engine was ALWAYS left in that hole in the bottom of the radiator front, unlike the pic above which no have.

He pulled up the wooden trap door on the passenger's side to check the 6V battery... it could make a little spark, so it wasn't shorted. When the trap door was open, you could see all the way to the ground through the hole. The battery was in a sorta open box.

Then he fussed with advancing the spark thingy on the steering wheel.

Went and pulled the crank a few more times... He opened up one side of the motor room, and THEN he noticed that the spark plug being held together with rubber tape had fallen into two pieces.

Taped the sparkie back together with more tape, pulled again on the crank... and YAY!! The car started.

We went for a ride with me in the back. The seats were stuffed with Spanish moss. TINS.

When running boards went out of style, I think cars lost some charm.

And as long as I am thinking 75+ years ago, do you know a quick-and-dirty method to stop a radiator leak? Crack an egg or two into the radiator.

Won't last long, but it will last longer that driving with a dry radiator. Daddy did that.
 
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More about Daddy's old Ford: It had wooden spokes in the wheels. TINS.

OH!! And I remember the guy coming by who sharpened knives and stuff. His truck had solid rubber tires, and it was chain-driven like a ginormous bicycle.

It looked EXACTLY like this -- I remember him coming by one day when it was raining. The knife-sharpener guy could not drive very fast, because there was simply no protection from weather:
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