MTFCA Forum

It shocks me to realize that I'm old enough to have lived in a time when some people were still using a Model T as their primary transportation. When the movie, "The Absent-Minded Professor" came out in 1961, it was plausible that Model Ts were still some peoples daily driver.

Greg,

What you say is true, but not very many of them actually flew.

HPetrino wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 27, 2020 3:10 pm

Greg,

What you say is true, but not very many of them actually flew.

Brings back memories. I don't remember anyone using a T as a daily driver in the 60's.
What happened to his right cowl lamp?

Bird Strike

My mother drove a 28 Model A to high school in the early 60s.

Looks like it has some 30” bush wheels

In the early 60's our neighbors had a bachelor uncle who lived nearby and was still driving his 1920 touring. He bought it new and it was the only car he ever owned. Going for rides in that car started my interest in Model T's . This car is mentioned in Roscoe Sheller's book "Me and the Model T" as Mr Mason test drove a car with a full load of friends in the car and with them in the car measured its height for the new garage he built while waiting for his to be delivered.
When the car arrived at the dealership (Sheller Motor Company) he had accessory springs installed. When he got to his home with the car it was too tall to fit in the garage.

My grand fathers 25 coupe that INow have was used by my dad to get to work many times. It has both a Cummins diesel plant sticker where he was an engineer in the fifties in Columbus, IN. Also has parking stickers from the college in upstate NY, where he was a professor and later, Dean of, before he retired.

I used mine as a part time daily driver in the late 80's... most reliable car I owned back then.

My first car in the 1950's was a 29 Model A. I drove it to high school. There were many kids who drove Model A's and some Model T's. In those days, the kids wanted to get newer cars like the 40-41 models!
Norm

Mark Osterman drives his car to work every day in Rochester, NY. He just finished installing a top on his car.

One of the girls I went to high school with, and graduated with, took over her dad’s leather back sedan when we were juniors.
She usually had the car full of friends.
Another guy drove ‘23 touring a couple years to high school. When we went lunch it always had 4 or 5 guys besides the driver in it.
One of the guys in our class had a father with a model A that we would see going real fast past the school after the fire siren went off.
He had to go to the fire station to answer the telephone and watch the place because everybody else went with the fire truck.
My uncle’s parents drove a ‘26 T sedan with bumpers until he died in the fifties.
My grandfather drove a model A until he died in ‘55.
Up until ‘53 a guy with a T sedan would come to our dairy farm to take milk samples of all of our cows and stay overnight to take samples again in the morning.

When I left home to go camping with Uncle Sam in 1965 our mailbox was out at the street and the postman drove a Model A panel truck. When I came home two years later there were sidewalks, the mailbox was back at the house, and the mail carrier was on foot. That's what's called progress.


I never noticed this before, but does anybody recognize what's in the background in that first picture? Hint: Buena Vista Street, Burbank.

Disney Studios, the covert model T landing strip not visible in this view.

My Dad was a Rural Mail Carrier in a small N.W. MO. town (90+ people) in the early '50's when I was a kid. He had a surplus Jeep that he used to use on the route but he had back problems and got rid of the jeep and got a Model A sedan. It had the old Knobby mud tires on it, he said it would almost go where the Jeep would in our Gumbo mud with tire chains on it. He drove that until the late '50's until he got a used '53 Ford Fordor. Dave

We have a guy in our club that uses his 26 roadster most of the time for a daily driver. He has had poor luck with modern cars, keeping them to pass emissions testing. So he always reverts to his Model T.

I bought my T when I was 15 in 1962, I drove all thru high school except after dark as my folks wouldn't let me. After all these years I've finally got back on the road with a hiatus of over 50 years. Looking forward to drives in it while I'm still able.

Don't forget Archie Andrews

Isn't there a flying fliver hanging in the museum?

The cowl lamp was shot off when they stole it back from the warehouse One of our local club members drove a 1922 model T coupe every day to work until 1964 ,that year he bought a new car the old coupe is still in the garage still runs but could use a little work.

I grew up in Dunsmuir, Ca--a small mountain town in FAR northern CA (we called it "The Great State of Jefferson"). Paul Livingston's model A pickup with 16" wheels on it was the only car in town that could drive UP Oak street in the middle of winter without chains. McCloud was a small town near us--a true logging town that was, at the time, entirely owned by "Mother McCloud" (the lumber company) now, of course it's owned by individuals. A few of the McCloud Railroad employees still drove model As to work, as they were so good for winter driving (it really SNOWS in McCloud in the winter). I did drive my model A to high School at the end of my senior year when I finally got it running. I stared working on it in 8th grade, after my brothers had taken it all apart and then went off to college.

Darn. I was hoping to open this and find a Pietenpol Sky Scout.

Another thing on the wish list once the money tree starts blooming.

jk

Ya me too! LOL Kinda got off the track of flying Model T's.