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#51
Hi Jimbo45
That old Ford was something else completely. By the time I got it, the floorboards had long rotted away and the drivers seat was balanced on the rusty cross-member. Thus, applying the brakes meant that the seat shot forward and fell off the member, and one wound up nearly sitting on the road with the steering wheel above one's head
I well remember getting a puncture in the nearside front wheel one day. I managed to get as far as the lower yard and got a load of tools but, with no jack I couldn't figure out how to change the wheel. Into the yard lumbered old Johnny Hardin who had been working on the farm all his life since been taken on by my grandfather when he was but a young lad to help with the cart horses. Farm work had made him big, very big indeed. He wandered over and asked if I would like some help. I explained the problem, whereupon he leaned down, grasped the front of the car and then lifted it clear of the ground, holding it while I changed the wheel. The expression "a gentle giant" suited old Johnny like a glove.
He lived to the ripe old age of 98 and I have always felt privileged to have known him.
Not only did that old car serve me well, it started my life long love of engineering. I have now completed 48 years servicing military strike aircraft and the company I currently work for have asked me to stay on for another year. But that will be the last. At almost 70 I feel I've done enough.
Time to buy another old car and start playing again