MTFCA Forum

Happy Birthday, Uncle Stan!

I'll second that! Happy Birthday to our hero of the carburettor and teller of country tales.

Happy birthday to the master!

Happy birthday Stan IF Chickasha happens maybe we visit again Rudy

HB Stan URD man

Happy birthday Mr Howe!

And I ,too, hope your birthday was great !!

Happy birthday Stan!

Happy Birthday, Unca' Stan!

Alles Gute zum Geburtstag!!

HAPPY B DAY STAN A DAY LATE>

Happy Birthday Stan

Ditto!
Norm

All the best to Stan

Thank you, guys
My birthday is actually Tuesday the 29th which means there is still time to get my presents here if you send them Fed Ex overnight, Next Day Air UPS or USPS Express Mail.
Although a day or two late is OK.

I will be 78. All things considered, I'm pretty healthy, girlfriend can drive at night, I'm eating steady.
, could be a lot worse.

What are my plans for my birthday??

I have a Rayfield UF almost done, doing a run of OFs, have an M1 to get in the mail to Norway now that the Christmas mail rush is over, an O-3 for a Pierce Arrow to New Hampshire and was going to try to clean the shop a little but that's no gonna happen this year.
Maybe in 21.

But I'll be in the shop working.

Hi Stan,
Hope you have a great birthday! Hope the heat is on in the shop too. . . . I will help celebrate your birthday by working on the Theatre Pipe Organ here. A long project that is almost finished!!! Then I can work on Ts and other stuff, including a player grand piano--I can't make music like you do, but I can play the player piano!

Well,....HAPPY BIRTHDAY Stan, whenever it is!

Yeah,....think that "cleaning up the shop" thing over very carefully! For sure,....it'll slow you down two different ways! First, the time it take to do the "cleaning up" will slow you down, and second,....you'll spend the next year or two wasting time because you can't find anything any more! Ask me how I know,...

Best Wishes Stan.
Thanks for the bright pictures.
Rich

Oops, I should have looked back. But we got the party started!

Happy Birthday Stan --- today is your day, enjoy. We met years ago when I was on a business trip (Kohler Co.) and had dinner. You gave me a tour of your shop and your activities (impressive). Take care, Jack

Happy Birthday Stan! Wishing you the best with many more years to follow.

Stan, I only know you through the forum. I wish I could meet you and a lot of the other guys face to face. I'll be 78 in about 3 weeks, so we'd probably relate well. Other than Chickashaw, do you do any other Model T activities? Possibly on the eastern side of the country?
I sincerely wish you a happy, healthy birthday and good health and much happiness for the coming years.

Have a Great Day and a very Happy Birthday Stan.

Rick Goelz

Put the carburetors away ... and break out the fiddle.

Happy birthday Stan! I need to hear the TT story again. I laughed so hard at OCF my face hurt. Enjoy your day and take a break.

Dallas and Stan, I don't know if I heard the TT story while at OCF, but sure would like to hear it again to refresh my memory if nothing else.
Thanks,
Keith

Keith, Stan told this story to my buddy and I in the parking lot waiting for OCF to open. He is quite the story teller.

Happy Birthday Stan!

Thank you everyone, I had a great day. Breakfast with friends at the Avon Cafe - up over the mountain west of Helena 30 miles; back home just as the phone was ringing for what turned out to be a two hour plus conversation with Savanna, my college age "daughter" who is a junior at Stanford; just time to fire up the Cadi and go pick up my 30 year business partner/advisor/friend Donna to motor down to Logan to the Land Of Magic for big steaks and conversation.
Lots of calls, cards, emails and Facebook messages including a few more this morning.
It was a good day.
Back to the shop today.
Thanks

Car guys.
Drove my 1986 F-150 with 82,000 actual on it to Avon. Two old guys in a 35
year old pickup pulling MacDonald Pass at 45 on a Tuesday morning just enjoying the conversation and the Montana December sun.
Not many years ago I wouldn't have owned a pickup that wouldn't pull the pass at 65.
I'm mellowing with age.
I kind of like this 300 six, not a lot of power but enough.

Stan - Glad you had a good birthday,...keep on havn' 'em! Someone (...think it was Steve Jelf) said that when you get old enough, "everything someone says reminds you of something", and, a month now into my 80th year, I guess Im "old enough"! Well, you did it to me Stan, and your speaking of McDonald Pass between Helena & Garrison, Mt. reminds me of a winter driving "experience" my son and I had on McDonald Pass, back in the mid-'70's when we lived in Deer Lodge, MT.

My eldest Son Tom and I met Lewis Rector due to our purchase of our first Model T and also because one of Tom's very first jobs as a young kid was polishing brass on many of the cars in the Towe Ford Collection when it was in Deer Lodge, MT. As you've mention before Stan, if Lewis Rector, who had done lots of work on old Fords (especially "T"s) liked you, he'd give you "the shirt off his back", and he gave my son a '30 Model A coupe body to add to Tom's collection of Model A parts for his Model A project,...all we had to do was to come over to Helena from Deer Lodge to get it.

The drive over McDonald Pass in our '67 Dodge 2wd drive crew cab pickup pulling empty trailer was fine, however it did begin to snow up on the pass, before we got to Lewis Rectors in Helena, and apparently, during the time it took us to load and tie down the coupe body on the trailer and start back toward home, it had obviously continued snowing up on the pass. When we were within a short distance of the top of the pass, altho' only a couple inches of snow had accumulated, there were stalled vehicles laying at all angles all over and on both sides of the highway! I kept that ol' 318 V8 with four-speed stick shift with "granny gear" low, 2-wheel drive crew cab and loaded trailer just barely moving while zig-zagging around and between stalled vehicles. The only conversation between my "wide-eyed" son and I was when I told him that if we stop, or even just let those two drive wheels slip one time,....we're done! Well, to this day, I really don't know how we did it, but somehow, I guess by applying just barely enough power and no more, "she didn't slip" and we were able to just barely keep moving ahead and over the top of the pass. I did have sense enough to position the Model A coupe body well forward for pretty heavy "hitch weight" and I guess maybe the Good Lord and Lewis Rector were both very much in favor of my son's Model A Ford project. I grew up and first learned about winter driving in Chicago in the '50's, and then REALLY learned about "winter driving" during the '70's in Western Montana!

Sorry if this is a bit "OT", Stan, but your comments about McDonald Pass reminded me of the most memorable piece of winter driving I've ever done, .....harold

No kidding. That pass was really something in spots before they rebuilt it in the 80's and turned it into a 4 lane. I came to Helena because I got a job here teaching school. I knew little about Helena including how much it snows. I had been driving fuel tanker for H F Johnson out of Billings for several years and was pretty used to 18 wheelers, we were mostly pulling truck and pup as the semi trailers were too big to get in and out a lot of places, especially some of the drops in Butte.

So when I got here I transferred from the H F facility in Billings to the H F terminal here. By the end of the first weekend teaching I was in a truck hauling fuel to Butte to the mines and over the Pass to the BAP Railroad in Anaconda. I'd hardly ever seen a mountain let alone trucking over one in the winter. I must have gone of Mac Pass and Boulder Hill and up through Elk Park and the Divide 5,000 times that winter. Seemed liked it anyway.

I did that the first 3 years I was here, then had a business going enough to where I could be self unemployed. I did pull some over the road trips in the summer for several years and then after Doug and I bought the Water Well Drilling business in Billings I drove the Rig and the water trucks off an on for several years. Every once in awhile I get the urge to buy an old Kenworth but I go take a nap until it goes away.

Thoughts of McDonald Pass brings back lots of memories Stan,.....used to be a "big deal" to take out-of-state visitors up to Frontier Town for dinner, but I'm sure Frontier Town is long gone, huh? I'll bet there's at least one heck of a neat home up there still though if nothing else! What a fireplace! Huge affair, built right into one side of a natural rock wall as I remember. And your last post Stan, speaking of driving a tractor/trailer westward over that pass,...I'll bet you've had quite a few cups of coffee at Welches Truck Stop at Garrison Jct on your way to the BAP RR in Anaconda, huh? I suppose Welches' is long gone now too,....a Loves Truck Stop or something now I think. WOW! .... McDonald Pass,....four lanes now, huh? Bet that was a long drawn out highway project! Well, things change I guess, even in Montana, huh? Been out here 40 years now as of this summer, and I guess we'd still be there if the CMStP&P RR hadn't gone bankrupt. Kathy still gets tears in her eyes when we think back about the good years we had, raising four boys in Montana!

There ARE couple things I don't miss though! Saw 42 below zero TWICE in Montana. Got called out sometime after midnight on one of those nights and had to drive that piece of junk '74 Ford Torino Milwaukee Road P.D.patrol car from home in Deer Lodge into Butte, and THAT was also an "experience" I'll never forget! Grew up in Chicago, and I remember in cold winters there, when automobile clutch, gear shift and steering was pretty stiff in the winter until things warmed up a bit. But that trip into Butte that night, with that stark-naked (typical "cheapo" railroad car) Torino that didn't even have power steering,....it did just the opposite! The steering got stiffer and stiffer until I finally had to stop at the Rocker truck stop and warm it up. Forgot how we did that,....I guess got it inside their truck garage or something while I got hot coffee. Speaking of that, that was one of those nights where there was a line of diesel tractor/trailers waiting to pull through their garage and get their saddle tanks warmed up! Garage was a big pull thru' affair that had overhead doors on both sides, and the guys would stop for a few minutes inside where they had a "salamander" burning on each side to warm up the saddle tanks to thaw out the jellied diesel fuel in trucks where somebody forgot to add an additive that would prevent the -42 deg cold turning the diesel fuel into jelly Well,...that's enough remaniscing I guess,.....like to think I'd see you at the next Puyallup Early Bird Swap Meet Stan, ......but altho' I hate to say it, that just might not happen this next year, huh? Take care,....and speaking of birthdays,....it might give you sort of a warm, fuzzy feeling to know that you'll never get (quite) as old as me,.....harold

RichJ wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 29, 2020 1:00 pm

Stan, I only know you through the forum. I wish I could meet you and a lot of the other guys face to face. I'll be 78 in about 3 weeks, so we'd probably relate well.

Rich, I felt the same way for a long time. In 2017, my girlfriend and I were on a road trip out west that coincided with the Montana 500. I figured that meeting Stan and hanging around the Montana 500 cars were reason enough to detour. I had been corresponding with Stan on the forum and by email for years, but had never met him. He gave us a nice tour around Helena and we went to dinner afterwards (at The Dam Bar, as I recall).

It took me nine years to learn how to spell "septuagenarian" and in ten months I won't be one any more....

Yup, That's the Dam Bar, right next to Canyon Ferry Lake, just off the government property where they can't sell alcohol. Still there, still great burgers, probably 4 or 5 owners since you were here.