Great car. Sweet face.
Rich
Canadian '15.
Interesting car. No cowl lamps. The windshield, Canadian or accessory? Robe rail. Looks like it may have a dash, and is that a speedometer up by the steering column? The black painted radiator always gives a different look. The headlamps, again, may be either Canadian or accessory, but are fork mounted. The car also appears to have some sort of snap on seat covers. Most interesting.
I think the thing that strikes me most, is that the rims are painted a light color, and sort of match the white tires. They appear (at least to me) to be standard T Ford non-demountable wheels. Unusual to see non-demountable wheels with the rim painted a different color than the rest of the wheel except when the rest of the wheel is natural finish wood (which wasn't nearly as common back in the day as it is now). I have seen some where the rim was painted black and the rest of the wheel was either body color, contrasting red, gray, or green from the body color, or just plain cream color wheel. I cannot recall more than a very few painted a light colored rim.
Some things about the car make me wonder if the photo could have been taken decades later and the car is already considered an antique. But the child looks to be about 1915 era. I am not sure of the jumpsuit, however.
Drive carefully, and enjoy, W2
Wayne,
If the photo had been taken several years later, the child would have been an adult and much larger in the picture. (I just couldn't resist)
Dennis,
Laughing! Thank you!
Drive carefully, and enjoy, W2
The glass insulator cross arm on the pole in the upper right of the picture dates the picture to early 20th century. It is probably telephone, using iron wire which meant "party line" telephone service.
Mild drift:
Jack,
I was in the Verizon store recently getting a replacement phone. I don't know what made me do it, but I found myself telling the extremely young person helping me about the party line we had when I was a kid in the 1950's. The neighbor up the road was 1 ring, we were 2 rings and the neighbor down the road was 3 rings. Furthermore, when you wanted to make a call and picked up the receiver you had to check before dialing to see if someone else was already using the line. If they were, you had to hang up and wait a while.
I do not think that kid believed me.
Henry,
If no one minds, I'll drift a bit with you. I too grew up in the 40-50s and we also had a crank phone with a party line. One neighbor lady was a really nice person but a bit of a gossip. Whenever there was a ring on the line she would rubberneck (listen in) to anybody. One afternoon my mother rang another neighbor, Mary; didn't get an answer but heard a click on the line. My mother said: "Wilma, if you're there, please have Mary call me as soon as she gets home". There was a pause and mom got a reply "OK". My dad was reading the newspaper and busted out laughing.
Seemed a like simpler, more gentle time. We knew the neighbors and everybody helped each other out at times. Thanks for jogging my memory about party lines. They really were a "party". (The names in this recollection have been changed to protect the innocent.)
We've talked about this picture many times over the life of this forum. The Apco windshield hinges are the same as the ones on my '15.
I wonder if the picture was actually taken in California. The houses are typical nineteen teens - nineteen thirties Craftsman style bungalows. They could just as easily be in New Zealand, or Cuba, or any number of other places. The car is not new.
We had a party line in the Adirondacks until a couple of years ago. I refused to give it up because the phone company wanted me to pay them to run a new line so I could pay them more for phone service. They finally caved when I wound up being the only one left on the party line and they realized how much it was costing them to keep an operator on hand to place my calls. I kinda miss it but at least now we can have an answering machine and dial our own calls. I bet the operator kinda misses it too because she lost her job to a computer!
We used to pick up the phone and just automatically ask "Mamie, would you mind letting us use the line for a few minutes?" More times than not she'd answer "okay sweetie". While you were on the phone the old gal would pick up the phone and start rubbernecking. So we'd tell her we didn't want her to hear our call and she'd say "okay sweetie." Then later we'd do a little rubbernecking ourselves and we could always catch Mamie telling somebody about the part of our conversation we had told her was private. Their were eight phones on our party line. I don't recall exactly how it all worked but I do remember we were one long ring and Mamie was two short.
When I was a kid in Indiana, back the early 40's, we had a party line. Our number was 5874M. I can remember that, but I can't remember what I was going to do today. Oh, I was going to get a hair cut.
we had a party line in s.w. mo. till the early 90,s I can remember going with dad to fix the lines with a team and wagon and a ladder. that was ice storm of 1954.charley
My dad had the same business phone for nearly 60 years. His 1st number was #72, then they added the prefix numbers 50 and his number was 5072, then they added 2 letters. all central Seattle business numbers were "Main". So his number became Main 5072, then they added the 5th digit, and his number then became Main 3-5072. Finally they dropped the "Main" and just made it all numbers, 623-5072. When he retired he still had dial phones.
When he first started you just picked up the phone, and said hello central give me xx number, she said thank you and then connected you. If that number was busy, she would tell you she would call you back when that number was free.
just sayin'
brasscarguy
What was your father's business ? I might well remember it !
When we moved to the Seattle area, all the exchanges still had names .... Bellevue was "Sherwood" (new) or "Glencourt" (old), Kirkland was "VanDyke", Redmond was "Tucker". Many I have forgotten.
One of my prized possessions is brass letter opener with the handle stamped: BEST FEEDS, SEEDS, HAY, POWDER, / FRUIT BOXES, REMEDIES, FERTILIZERS / TODD FEED CO. PHONE MAIN 2 / KIRKLAND, WASH.
I found it as a kid in the top desk drawer of an abandoned chicken farm in an area now known as "Totem Lake". It was backwater rural then. Today, the place is buried under an avalanche of fast food joints and car dealerships.
Having been born in 1941 and growing up in suburban Chicago, our phone number when I was a very little kid was Gladstone 5-1645, so you'd dial GL-5-1645. My grandmother taught me how to dial a phone on my grandparents "candlestick" phone. It was pretty modern at the time, because while it was a "candlestick" phone, it was equipped with a standard (then) rotary dial that was mounted on a slant on the base of the "candlestick" phone. Sad thing is that it really doesn't seem like so very long ago,.......harold
I know we are getting off topic and discussing telephones instead of the car, but I wanted to say that (at least for some of us) rotary dial is not dead. I will admit that I am far too young to have ever experienced a party line, but I have a phone with party dial in my house. Every phone in my house is a WE 302 or earlier. I have a set of non-dial, local battery phones with magneto’s that connect the kitchen with the basement, far more civilized then yelling that dinner is done.
I know why the phone companies went away from the old exchange names, once they were no longer needed, but it sure makes learning someone’s phone number that much easier. That is two less numbers that I have to commit to memory. My great-grandmother was COlfax and my grandparents were EVergreen.
The item that really gets people the most is my Xlink Bluetooth gateway. This allows me to use just about any phone as my cell phone. I usually have a 1930 WE 102 connected to it. It makes people really look when I am taking on it, and tell them that it is actually my cellphone.
Since we seem to have gone way off topic to "olden days" telephony, I thought I would share one of my favorites from the telephone company of my childhood (we were 57 ring 7).
From the 1929 Gaston Home Telephone Company directory "Rules and Instructions", item 22 reads "The operators are instructed to ring parties called for THREE TIMES ONLY; if then they do not answer their phone it is their fault and not ours. If they are out in the garden, summer kitchen, working or at the barn feeding or milking or out of the house, we could not get them at all, so it is useless to waste ringing power and time beyond three times".
Despite, or perhaps because of that humble beginning to my working world, I ended up spending my corporate career in telephony, retiring as a Vice President, General Manager for GTE(now Verizon). Interesting business.
Judging by the size of the date palms, I would say they are about 5 or 6 years old. The car appears to be about 1915 or 1916. It is about August because the "naked lady" flowers are just about to bloom. Most likely taken in the Los Angeles area.
Norm
Telephone history - particularly outside plant/line construction - is my primary fun time hobby. I began collecting insulators in 1966 and it all went downhill from there !
We had plenty of party lines in my semi-rural area well into the 70's and their demise was more a matter of social pressure (much like driving a Model T in 1957) than anything else. Can't say I miss the party line of old, but I sure wish our roadways were still lined with the openwire leads.
Call me "weird", but I hardly consider this subject off-topic for Model T construction.
...ur, ... "construction" ? That should have read "discussion". :-P
This is how the MTFCA forum operated before the internet....
Erik Johnson, Steve Jelf and Dick Lodge discussing the merits of left-handed cranking: