2008 is the centennial year of the birth of the Ford Model T and nearly a
thousand of them gathered in Richmond, Indiana, to
celebrate. That may
be "the largest gathering of Model Ts since they left the factory"
but it's a tiny percentage of the more than 15 million Ts sold between October
1, 1908 and May 26, 1927. The party is not all that far from me but its
schedule did not encourage attendance by the working man. The event's run does
include a Saturday but many of the cars are heading out of town that morning
for a parade in Hamilton, Ohio. Other than that, it's a weekday affair. I went
up on Thursday afternoon thinking I would cover some displays at the
fairgrounds before the big parade at 3:00. Cars were already lining up when I
got there so I spent my time roaming through the heavy concentration of Ts
before heading downtown.
I did take a few pictures before getting caught up in the parade staging and
that includes one of a 1923 home built camper that traveled to Richmond from
New York in the tow of a 1923 Model T Touring Car. The second row of pictures
were taken in the staging area and the third row is from the parade. As the
sign in the upper right corner of the last picture of the third row shows, the
parade route covered a bit of the Historic National Road. The last row shows
parade participants parked in and around the Historic Depot District. That's
an impressive collection! Among the cars that didn't make it to my
semi-arbitrary layout were a "targa" T, a
two way T, and a beer T. In
the '20s & '30s, the "beer T" delivered my one time brew of
choice in Columbus, Ohio.
