The Cars

This one is from Grandma Sobotka about the cars she remembers from when she was a kid, I can't even imagine cars like this!


Our first car was a used Model T.  Pres Wilson from the Ford garage came to our house and stayed all day, even for dinner.  We bought the car for $100.00 (a new one probably would have cost 3 times that much).  It had a top that you could raise or lower (manually, of course).  It didn't have windows, so it got really cold, but it didn't take as long to get where you were going as it did on a horse.  If you were going downhill where you didn't need to accelerate the lights would dim and almost go out.  Roads weren't good and sometimes you really needed to see those ruts or bridges at the bottom of the hill.  One time we were coming home from Bethany it started to rain really hard.  We got really wet, even when we were scrunched up in the middle of the seat.  We stopped at a house on the highway and waited inside until the rain ended.  The cars in those days would run on kerosene, not as well as gasoline, but kerosene was always available.  Everyone had some at home to use for light and other things.  We would put a can of kerosene in the car to use when we ran out (which was a lot).

The next car we had had side curtains.  Side curtains were made of isinglass, a type of plastic that could be sewn on a machine.  It was probably about 10"x6".  Didn't completely cover the window, but you could sew it to a piece of fabric to cover the rest of the window.