Grandpa Percy and the Model T

You've had a glimpse at some of my relatives on Mom's side, So I'll rend the veil that covers the past just a little and give you a glimpse of a few of Dad's relatives.

My grandparents, Percy and Evelyn Marsh lived on a small farm in Rushford, New York, which is a little town (At least it was when I was a kid) about 80 miles south of Lockport where I grew up. Grandpa Percy worked as a traveling salesman most of his life and could HE ever tell a story. Until I was ten years old I thought peeing your pants from laughter was what you were supposed to do when Grandpa told a tale!

Anyway, Grandpa was a salesman for many years until his father, whole owned the farm, Great Grandfather Warren became ill and Grandpa Percy had to stay home and keep the farm going. Times being what they were, in the years following the Depression food was often more important than the little money he brought home from selling and the small farm's rich black soil produced it in abundance.

Later on when I was old enough to remember, Mom & Dad and my Sis and I would ride to Rushford on Saturday morning and spend Saturday and Sunday with the grandparents, and it was seldom that we went home without a couple of bushels of beautiful produce in the trunk of Dad's car - Apparently Percy was a much better farmer than he was a salesman. As long ago as that was I can still taste with astonishing clarity the huge, ripe tomatoes, still warm from their daily sunbath, pulled from the vine and wolfed down on the spot, salt and pepper was not only unneeded, but somehow would have been insulting on fruit of that nature.

Sweet yellow corn ripened around July and we were somehow, always on hand to help Grandpa pick it and Grandma process it so that in the dead of winter you could open a jar and have a bowl of summer when you wished.

And in the fall there was a special treat - Grandpa had three Sweet Chestnut trees on his land - Years before there had been a blight in the United States which was supposed to have wiped out all the European Chestnut trees in the country, yet here, impossibly were three trees that yielded their treasure every late summer and one of our greatest treats was for Dad to roast some chestnuts ( or as Mom called them " Castagne") in Grandma's ancient oven - My Sister and I had the job of sticking a knife or fork into each nut so that the steam could escape while they roasted, but somehow, whether by accident, or design, one or two were almost always missed and after they'd been in the oven for half hour Dad would check them and shuffle them around on the cookie sheet - The minute he opened the oven door and the cold air hit the ones that weren't pierced they'd go off like hand grenades! Dad would turn from the oven covered in chestnut funk and just give us one of his looks - My late Dad was not only one of the smartest men I ever met, but also one of the most patient.

Grandpa had a huge oak standing in his front yard - the tree had died many years before I came along and to while away some time Grandpa trimmed all the dead branches from the tree, cut a door into the trunk using the actual trunk cut-out as the door and hollowed out the interior of the trunk. He cut windows in a couple places and even put a piece of old linoleum on the roughly leveled floor - All the children in the family loved to play in the tree house and everybody had their own fantasy about it - Mine was being one of the Lost Boys from Peter Pan living in the forests of Never-Never Land, My sister Val used to pretend she was going to visit Winnie the Pooh, but in her fantasy she was Christina Robin.

Eversince he could remember Grandpa Percy loved Model T Fords and he must of had a dozen of them out behind the barn - He always had one or two that would "Run" after a fashion and the others he kept around as cadavers who would donate their aging innards so that Grandpa's favorite Frankenstein could continue to lurch around the surrounding countryside terrifying man and beast alike (Grandpa was always more fond of the past than the present...sound like anybody you know?)
Sunday morning Grandma Evelyn would go to Sunday mass and usually Percy would drive her in his old Buick but when we came to visit Percy would sieze the opportunity to miss mass, which he privately confided was a ritual he looked upon with some degree of indifference, by insisting that we children had begged him to go to Cuba Lake Pavilion and feed the Catfish. Eventually Grandma would cave and Mom would drive Grandma to church in our car - I'd of loved to been a fly on the dashboard during those rides - Grandma looked upon Mom with her stylish clothes and shoes, and make-up, with somewhat of a dim view. Not that she was a spiteful woman, or didn't like Mom, but grandma was not only one of the plainest women I ever knew, she was one of the toughest. (My wife holds the current title) - Evelyn was tougher than a nickel steak! She'd work most younger men to death and then cook dinner, and somehow my Mom looked to be...well...a little soft.

Cuba Lake was about twenty miles further south of Rushford and at the speed the Model T would travel it would be about a three hour ride - First we would stop and see Aunt Pauline who lived in Rushford proper and have a glass of cider while Grandpa sipped his coffee. Aunt Pauline was a widow and lived alone in a huge old house on Cottage St. For many years her next door neighbor was the daughter of Secretary of State William Seward, who, under the administration of President Andrew Johnson purchased Alaska for the United States in the 1800's.

Family legend has it that Aunt Pauline's mom who lived in the house before her was good friends with Seward and when he moved to Washington to take office he asked to store some articles in her attic because he was renting the house during his tenure. Among the items was a set of china dishes, a silverware service with his monogram engraved on them, a cedar chest and a wonderful inlaid poker table. Time went on and a few years later Seward died without calling for his goods. His relatives took the house back from the renters and soon after that Aunt Pauline's mom passed away, but Seward's goods were still in the attic and years afterwards in a fit of "I'm going to clean out the attic" Aunt Pauline distributed the forgotten items among her relatives.

Uncle Warren (Named for Great Grandpa) got the dishes, somebody else got the silverware (Who I don't know) the cedar chest went to Grandma Evelyn and Percy got the Poker Table. Years later when Grandma & Grandpa passed guess who got the Poker table? and guess once again who came to possess said article of furniture when sadly my father went to his rest?

True or not? who knows? As the saying goes "The price of rice in China grows in the telling and shrinks in the selling" I've never had the table looked at or appraised, probably because if somebody offered me a good price I'd be tempted to sell it, and that would be to ignore family tradition. At any rate it's a beautiful antique and an amusing story that when my grandchildren are old enough to understand I'll pass on to them.

After the coffee and cider Aunt Pauline would send us on our way with a basket of Apples and maybe a fresh pie she had baked. Now, Model T fords had some curious design features, one of which was the way fuel reached the tiny carbeurator - The Gas tank on T was right in front of the passenger compartment where a modern car's firewall would be - There was no fuel pump - the gas just fed by gravity to the carb, which was ingenious and economical, but if you were low of fuel and had to go up a hill the fuel would run to the back of the tank and the motor would starve for fuel. One way of circumventing this catastrophe would have been to turn the car around and back up the hill - This didn't do much for Percy, so he figured out a fix - He soldered the guts from a valve stem from an old bicycle inner tube into the gas cap and if he were low on fuel (Almost always a forgone conclusion) he'd pull off to the siding, pull an ancient bicycle pump from underneath his seat and give the gas tank a few strokes, thus creating a crude, but effective pressurized fuel system - So up the hill he'd go.

We were making fairly good time, veritably flying along the North Shore road at an incredible speed of about 30 miles an hour. The sunw as warm, the soda from the gas station was cold, the apple Aunt Pauline had given me was a Winesap - and the crispest, tartest, most delicious apple I had ever eaten. It was right about then that the entire Model T began to shudder and vibrate horribly and with one unbelievably loud crash the engine fell right out in the road...just like that!

Okay....Okay....We're sitting there on North Shore Rd. with an ancient, broken Model T in the middle of the Southbound lane with the motor sorta sitting on the asphault surface of the road. Fortunately, at that time there weren't many cars whizzing by as you'd have today and thinks were pretty sedate. The Sun was still warm, the soda (Nehi Orange I seem to remember) was still cold, the apple was still crisp and tart, so I did what any helpful child would do when an adult has a situation - I ate my apple and drank my soda.

My sister Valery did what she did best, being older and smarter than I - she cried.

Grandpa just stood there for a few minutes looking at the engine laying on the roadbed like "Frankenstein" had suddenly developed a huge, obscene mechanical hernia and smoked a Lucky Strike. After I finished my apple, being the curious young twit that I was, even then, I took a closer look at the engine and found that while the motor was indeed lying smack in the middle of the road bed Henry Ford had apparently built these automobiles to survive about anything - The transmission and drive shaft were still attached and for all intents and purposes, unscathed. I mentioned earlier that the Model T had a number of curious design features - As it turns out, one of these features was the way the motor mounted into the auto - In a modern auto the engine sits on a set of stiff rubber and steel motor mounts which usually bolt to the frame of the automobile. In a Model T the engine hung suspended from steel and rubber straps, much like a muffler hangs beneath the car. I guess the theory was that this arrangement would deaden vibration from the motor. When these strap mounts aged and finally failed, the motor just fell out on the road with little or no warning, bye and bye, winding up here.

As I said Grandpa Percy didn't seem unduly perturbed - He finished his Lucky Strike and ground the butt into the pavement with the toe of his well-worn workshoe. Then he helped the still blubbering Valery out of the back seat and gave her a hug and bade her go rest underneath this big Elm tree which sat with it's neighbors the Cedars and Jack Pines at the side of the road. He went to the trunk of the T and pulled out, among other things, 2 red flags on coathanger wire which he stuck in the soft asphault in front of and in back of the disable beast, a rusty, but serviceable carpenter's saw, One of these multipurpose tools for fence building which incorporated a wire cutter, a staple puller and a hammer, a well used scissor jack and handle and a long crowbar. Seeing this I gathered that this might not have been the first time this had happened to Percy - It was just a little too pat .....

Grandpa walked to the side of the road where an old fence run to the limits of our sight, silently guarding the summer wheat within and with the aid of the fencing gizmo and the crowbar liberated a fence post from it's entwining wire. He was careful to take the crowbar and pull the slack out of the fence wire and re-staple it to the nearest post. After all, borrowing a fence post was one thing, leaving a big loose hole in the fence was another - and he was when all was said and done, a fellow farmer.

He eyeballed the width of the space between the frame rails in the engine compartment and sawed the fence post off with his old saw, and when that was done he smoked another Lucky.....When he was finished he wormed the long crowbar through a chink in the front sheetmetal and got it underneath the front of the motor, and with a heave he levered the motor up off the ground a few inches. Then he sat astride the wrecking bar and told me to slide the scissor jack under the oilpan of the motor, which I did.

Grandpa then jacked the motor up until it was about at the height it was before the fertilizer hit the windmill - Then he knelt down in front and eyeballed the alignment front to rear, looked at the height again and made a minute adjustment, and when he was satisfied he took the fence post he had shortened and got underneath the car and sort of wormed it into place so it was resting between the two frame rails - the engine was up off the fence post a little so Grandpa took the fencing tool and a big screwdriver and split some thin sections off the remaining piece of the fenceposts to use as shims.

When he finally had the shims in place and was satisfied he pulled a coil of bailing wire out of the trunk ( Just happened to have some) and cocooned the motor to the fencepost and shims as securely as he could, tightening the bond with the fencing tool occasionally.

Seeming satisfied with this phase of the repair he turned his attention to the last injury Frankenstein had sustained - When the motor went South the rotating fan blade tore a fairly good size gash in the back of the radiator and all the time he was jacking and wiring the radiator was hissing and leaking. Well, he thought about it for a while then asked my sister

"Sue, (Her name was Valery Susan) you have any gum in there?"

Grandpa knew full well that she was a Bazooka bubblegum addict and usually looked like a major league pitcher with a plug in her mouth - Reluctantly she surrendered her wad and Grandpa rummaged around in the trunk and found an old inner tube from which he cut a strip about the size of the rip in the radiator core. - He plastered that rubber patch to the radiator with the bubble gum, working the gum around the edges into the fins of the core - Then he took the gallon pickle jar of Lemonade Grandma Evelyn had packed us for lunch and filled the radiator with the lemony liquid.

Tools were collected and stowed in the trunk, Val restored to her position of honor in the backseat - Grandpa behind the wheel - and me...I had another Winesap. Grandpa pushed the starter button down into the floor and the old engine rolled over and caught and sat there chugging and wheezing just like it had before the fall. Percy gave a little sigh and turned to me and said

" See Robbie - Tougher than a damn cat - couldn't kill em' if you were tryin’ to..."

He ground the gears and let out the clutch and we were on our way, and presently arrived at Cuba Lake Pavilion.

Cuba Lake was a large fresh water lake and a favorite place for canoeing and row boating - Fishing wasn't allowed because the fish in this lake were old friends of just about everybody who'd been to the lake in many years. When we arrived there were many families enjoying the beautiful Indian Summer, Flying box kites their fathers had made of balsa wood strips and newspaper soaked in wheat flour paste stretched and dried with so much care. Mothers bustled about the picnic tables in their Sunday raiments like so many multi-colored butterflies ( Gotta give credit for that last description to one of my favorite aurthors, James Clavell - I've never thought of a term that would better described the scene - One may have thought that Clavell had been there and seen that and mused that that description would fit nicely in one of his novels)

Then, there were the catfish....looking out over the surface of Cuba lake you were taken by the serenity of the scene, the fuzz from late summer weeds floating past your vision occasionally, illuminated by the hazy sun so that they looked like tiny fairies , the half heard keening of a Mourning Dove somewhere in the scrub behind you...and then you'd scatter a crumbled saltine cracker across the surface of the lake and it the quiet lake would begin to furiously boil with an incredible number of large catfish who were all vying for a choice morsel. The size of the fish and their sheer numbers would leave me awestruck regardless of how many times I had witnessed the spectacle. But the most incredible feat, that which defied belief was performed by Grandpa Percy.

After we had fed the fish a while Percy went to the edge of the park and cut a willow branch from one of the willows which grew profusely around the area. He walked to the edge of the lake and reached in his pocket, retrieving a small wax paper wrapped parcel. Inside was salt pork he had brought from home.

"The Big Guy's favorite" he'd tell us..." Nobody else'll even come near when he comes for his tidbit."

With that he laid the wax paper parcel of pork rind at the edge of the lake and stood there tapping the bank with the willow branch....After a few minutes a few fathers and children stopped their activities and came to watch what appeared to be an old loon in well-worn work shoes tapping the ground in front of a piece of salt pork oblivious to everything around him.

But after a few minutes there was a movement out in the lake - not furious and violent like the feeding frenzy we had seen before, but more like a ripple that started way out and spread to the shore, as if something had stirred in the depths of the lake. The ripples continued and within a minute or so you could see a vast, dark shape moving into the shallows from the deeper part of the lake.

Even as I watched I doubted the reality of what I was witnessing because out of the edge of the lake, dead in front of Grandpa emerged the head of the biggest catfish I had ever seen...The sight was so amazing that I stood transfixed, doubting my sanity for a moment.

"Afternoon Big Guy....I brought you your favorite, but hold still a minute and let my grandkids get a good look at you - we're both getting on in years, and they may not get up this way to see you again."

And, God as my witness, that fish looked at Grandpa with recognition in his round dark eyes - Don't ask me how I determined that, perhaps it was like the look that a familiar person gives you - just a look, but different than the look you’d get from a stranger. And that fish sat there for what seemed to be an eternity before finally wiggling up onto the bank and taking the chunk of salt pork before retreating into the depths of Cuba Lake.

Grandpa Percy watched the big fish disappear into the dark water, and he looked a little lonely for a minute, then he smoked a Lucky Strike before announcing we'd better start back.

The ride back to the farm was uneventful and when we arrived Mom & Dad were on the porch drinking Iced Tea with Grandma Evelyn.

By then the sun was inching down toward the horizon, dusk gathering, the fireflies were swirling in their delicate , bees forraging in the late summer clover.

And Dad asked Grandpa:

"Anything exciting happen on the ride Pop?"

" Nope, nothing unusual"

"Did you remember to take a piece of salt pork?"

"Yup"

"You say hello to him, for me?"

" The kid's turn today - but I could tell he missed you Fran."