Roy Weekes, Model T's and the Depression
[This is one of a series of articles written by Merrill Weekes for the newspaper Old Autos, starting in April, 2004. The series is written with the collective title of "Model T's to Motor Coaches."]

South Elmsley Township in Leeds County was in the grip of the depression years as I was growing up and attending the one room school house one mile north of the Village of Lombardy. My two brothers and I (two sisters arrived later) were fortunate because our Dad was a farmer, and although there was very little money in circulation, we always had enough food on the table. Salt pork in the barrel, carrots and turnips in the sand bin, barrels of apples and shelves filled with Mother's preserves carried us through the long, cold winters. Of course, thousands of kids across our great nation were experiencing the rigors of the 30's and somehow managing to survive.

The great depression is an old, often told story, so, what is the connection with Model T's and motor coaches? Well, first, Model T's , Henry Ford's car for the working man including many thousand farmers, remained in use by my Dad and a majority of our neighbours until the late 1930's. As the economy improved, a few more successful neighbours purchased new or good used cars. However, many retained the old Model T and converted it to a pickup truck by removing the back seat and installing a platform or box in its place. A few other T's became farm tractors, utilizing tractor adaptation kits that were available from several suppliers. Still others were dismantled, the engine becoming a power unit with a flat pulley. The chassis served as a farm wagon or two wheel trailer.

My Dad was a farmer, but he was also mechanically inclined. I remember numerous times when a neighbour would bring his Model T for repair and then carry on the work Dad was occupied in, on the farm when he arrived. The apple orchard behind the barn became the resting place for several old Fords as they gave up their parts to keep other T's on the road. Transmission bands, timers, coils and differential gears and bearings had to be adjusted or replaced when necessary. Engine valves were ground and seated for $2.50 providing a new head gasket was the only new part required. A new gasket cost 75 cents. Times and prices have changed.

The arrival of one particular T for repair stands out in my memory. The owner had spent too much time in the beverage room at a Smiths Falls hotel on Saturday night, and on the way home drove off the road and rolled his car across a ditch. He was not seriously injured because the front of the car was on one side of the deep ditch and the back end on the back end on the other side. One front wheel was broken, the axle bent and the windshield and top bows smashed. The car was delivered to our farm behind a team of horses with the front end sitting on the back of a farm wagon. Parts from the derelicts in the apple orchard and a few hours work put it back on the road again. My brothers and I would sit behind the steering wheels of the "parts" cars and drove them thousands of imaginary miles.

Our family farm was a mile and a half from #15 highway. When winter set in, great drifts of snow blocked the township roads and the Model T's and other makes were parked until the snow melted in the spring and the gravel roads dried up.

Each farm house was built with a woodshed that was half the size of the house. Each fall, the woodshed was filled with wood, to fuel the kitchen cook stove and box stove in the parlor under the bed rooms. The wood was taken from the farm wood lot in the winter months and piled in sleigh lengths, and then sawed into blocks of suitable lengths by a circular saw powered by a l cylindar gas engine.

The labour for the event was supplied by a "bee" of nieghbours and farm ladies would assist each other in preparing the noon meal for the hungry workers. Later the wood blocks would be split into stove sized pieces and piled and left to dry for the summer months. My Dad owned an 8 H.P. Gilson engine and a circular saw and spent many days each winter sawing wood for the neighbours. If memory serves me correctly, he bought gasoline in the village for 5 gallons for $l.00 and charged $l.00 per hour for his machine. The 1 cylinder Gilson burned about a gallon per hour, so Dad had .80 cents per hour profit. Some of that profit would be spent for the occasional file and some cup grease. He also owned two 1 H.P. one cylinder engines, one to power a grinder in a small farm workshop and the other drove a pump to fill the livestock water tank. All three engines were hit and miss governed and utilized vibration coils.

My interest in and fondness for Model T Fords and other powered equipment was established early in life and remains with me to this day.

Merrill S. Weekes, April 2004