Lone Star Model A Ford Club
How "Sweet Thang" Got Her Name
By Charles Corry
While preparing for a trip, to the national meet in Seven Springs, Pa., I ask Ron Davis if he had any tips for making long trips in a Model A. Ford. He told me that I should talk nice to my 1928 Model A Ford Phaeton if I expected her to make such a long journey. He gave me no advise about how to talk to my wife, Gayle, while undergoing the rigors of a 3000 mile trip in a Model A Ford. However, Ron told me to "say nice things" to my Model A Ford.
On the morning that we were leaving for Pennsylvania a policeman pulled along side us on I-35 as we approached the "canyon" near Reunion Arena and gave me some more advice over his loud speaker. He said "That is a nice looking old car you have. I sure would hate to see you get it torn up in this traffic." We have always wondered what his reaction would have been if he had known that our destination was Seven Springs, Pennsylvania.
We made the tour with Lloyd and Ruby Kerr and their Tudor sedan "Sweet Pea". Since Lloyd and I are both ex-boy scouts, we followed the motto of "be prepared" and compiled exhaustive list of spare parts, tools and supplies to take with us on a long Model A trip. We checked back issues of both national Model A magazines for stories about parts failing on long trips. We added these parts to our list. We consulted club members like Ron Davis, who had made long driving trips in their Model A's. Each person usually had a part or two that definitely should not be left behind. As the list grew longer, we began to worry about the space required to stash all of this inventory in our Model A's. The back seat and floor board of a phaeton look big enough to hold a hockey game when it is empty. It fills up fast when you start putting in everything but the kitchen sink. Lloyd and I decided that it was better to be safe than sorry, so we packed it all into every nook and cranny. Finally we said We have packed everything that we could possibly need. Wrong!
On the tour up to Seven Springs I had one hot radiator episode the first day and then every thing smoothed out. Things stayed smooth until we got to "coal country" where mammoth coal trucks had made washboards out of the roads. Once, I called out to "Mister Clean" on the CB to pull over and stop because it looked like Sweat Pea's front wheels were trying to swap places with each other. We made toe-in adjustments and generally tightened up the front end at a pit stop. Clowns and Keystone Cops were greeters at Seven Springs and we patted ourselves on the back for having earned half of our long distance driving spurs.
The meet was great fun. It was even better than I remembered my first national meet being. Perhaps the reason is because I had trailored Sweet Thang (not yet her name -- I will get to that in a little while) to that tour. You know getting there is half of the fun. It was at this first national tour that something happened to cause me to sell my trailer and drive my Model A to all future meets. It was a question put to me by a TV newsman. He was interviewing me because we had about seven relatives in the phaeton at the car games and were obviously having a ball. In the sound bite that made the evening news in Washington DC, our nation's capital, he asks me if I had driven my Model A all the way up from Texas! Like George, I could not tell a lie and had to admit regretfully that I had not.
It was on the return trip from Seven Springs, Pa., when "Sweet Thang" got her name. I noticed a slight knocking sound as we got to West Virginia and crossed into Ohio on a double super slide (two interstate highways went through the same tunnel). The knocking got a little louder but there were no rooms available and we had to go back through that hole in the mountain with five o'clock traffic pouring into it.
We had to make the plunge in the fast lane. The left lane clover leaf exit on the other side of the tunnel would take us to a little West Virginia town where we had been able to find motel rooms. Sweet Pea went first and my unnamed phaeton limped along behind her. The roar of the traffic in the tunnel was deafening but it was not as loud as the noise that my engine seemed to make as she began to lose power and skip firing. Remembering Ron Davis' advice to be nice to my A and talk gentle to her because she was old, I said Come on you sweet thang please get me out of this tunnel. Somehow she did! I pulled onto the median and called "May Day" to "Mr. Clean" (Lloyd's CB handle) as Sweet Thang coughed to a stop. As I look back on it, I believe Sweet Thang had some help. The cars and 18 wheelers were coming into the tunnel so fast behind us that the air compressed and shot us out the tunnel mouth on the other side like a cork from a bottle. (More likely, it was our guardian angels using one of those "supernatural tow ropes" that they keep handy when they are looking after old car nuts.)
Lloyd circled around the clover leaf and made it back to the fifteen foot median where we were beached. When we saw that the rotator was not moving, we pulled the timing gear cover and saw that the fiber timing gear had about a third of its teeth left. Both of us had a timing gear listed on our list of thing to bring, but guess what. You are right. If we had been in a modern iron on Saturday evening with a broke timing chain between two super slides on the side of a West Virginia mountain we would have been in deep trouble. Fortunately I was driving (or had been) my Model A Ford, "Sweet Thang" one of the world's most loved antique cars.
We both had national rosters on our list (and in our possession) but they were not needed. A tunnel watchman called a friend who drove to Ohio and brought me a timing gear and refused to take any more than the $10 he had paid for it. In less than two hours we were back on the road again. Gayle and Ruby had the hard job while we repaired the car. They waited in the watchman's office while another tunnel employee told them in detail how much he hated the Dallas Cowboys.
"Sweet Thang" has, since that day she got her name, happily carried us many thousands of miles through parades, car washes, thunder storms, and even mud holes. We have driven her to Portland, Minneapolis, Harlingen, Green Bay and Colorado. Her speedometer has never worked since Gayle found out that a high speed differential made it register fewer miles per hour. Someone had previously lead her to believe that it would indicate more miles per hour than actual. "Sweet Thang" is on her fifth set of tires and none were retired because of weather or age cracks. Occasionally someone will hear me talking about my Model A and assume that I am referring to my wife. I get some mighty strange looks when I talk about leaving my "Sweet Thang" out in the rain or washing her or painting her rear end. (May 18, 2000)
Created on May 30, 2000
Last updated on August 25, 2014
