Category Archives: Event

Big Heads on Parade

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This is one of those embarrassing moments when I experience something for the first time that has been going on for years right under my nose and is so cool I should have been attending regularly.  It’s the Mainstrasse Mardi Gras Parade in Covington, Kentucky. I’ve heard of Mardi Gras in Covington and possibly even heard there was a parade but I don’t remember. What I do remember is news reports about inebriated revelers trashing yards and peeing in bushes. It didn’t sound like a place I wanted to be. But this year I read about the parade with participants wearing gigantic papier-mâché heads and that very much sounded like something I wanted to see.

I reached the staging area with enough time to snap pictures of some of the big heads before they covered smaller heads.

Then got pictures of a few of those heads in place but not yet marching. I really don’t know just when this first began. One person I asked said, “At least ten years.” Another thought it started “around 2000”. I overheard someone telling a friend, “The last time I came down for this was twenty years ago”. I imagine I’ll eventually find something online that tells me, but not yet.

There were plenty of normal-sized heads in the parade and everybody was clearly having a lot of fun.

But it was the big heads that had gotten my attention and set the parade apart.

Most of the Mainstrasse restaurants and bars were fairly full before the parade started and became downright packed when it ended. Many had doormen posted to keep occupancy to legal levels. I moved away from the center of the festivities until I found a bar that was busy but not overcrowded and had one beer before heading home. I’ve absolutely nothing against partying in the streets for Mardi Gras but I’m too old and the street’s too cold.   

Loveland Hearts Afire

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Loveland didn’t start out as a land of love and romance. A store owner named James Loveland supplied its name. But it has worked hard to justify its “Sweetheart of Ohio” nickname with things like its Valentine Re-mailing Program. This year it cranked things up a notch with Hearts Afire Weekend. Activities like a date auction, speed dating, and pet adoption filled the pre-Valentine’s Day weekend but for me, the attraction was the ice carving display.

I photographed nearly all of the twenty-some carvings but am including just a few of my favorites. With the local pro footballers playing in the big game on Valentine’s Day Eve, you knew that there would be a tiger or two in the mix.

Maybe the carving of a frog was inspired by the legend of the Loveland Frog. Maybe not.

There was dancing in the street with Premier Tumbling and Dance instigating, and inside City Hall, the King and Queen of Hearts greeted shoppers headed to Heartland Market.

I grabbed photos of the raw materials and tools waiting in front of city hall for the ice carving demonstrations.

Then returned a little later to watch some of those demos.

I didn’t stick around for the fireworks but did take advantage of a wonderful opportunity to look at love from both sides.

On With the Snow/Show

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I did something pretty stupid this week and this is my confession. Some of the nasty weather running around the country came to my neighborhood. On Wednesday, the National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning for southwest Ohio that would begin at midnight and remain in effect until 7:00 AM Friday. At just about the midpoint of that thirty-one-hour period, I set off on a hundred-mile drive to Dayton and back.

Nearly four months ago, when one February day seemed as good as any other, I purchased a ticket to see Hamilton at the Schuster Center in Dayton, Ohio. On Thursday, as various alerts and other weather-related stories popped up, I thought the show might be canceled and took a look at the theater website where I found this banner displayed. The small print says, “All performances will go on as scheduled unless there is a Level 3 Snow Emergency in Montgomery County, Ohio.” Since purchasing the ticket, I had received a few emails with advice on parking and restaurants and some other details about attending the performance including one that arrived at noon on Thursday. Read about Ohio’s three levels of snow emergencies here.

Normal driving time to the theater would be under an hour but I knew that would not now be the case. I figured I should leave about 5:00 for the 7:30 show. About 4:20, I called the theater looking for real-time human confirmation that the show would go on. After sixteen minutes on hold, a recording asked me to leave a message for a callback. The callback came about fifteen minutes later but I somehow missed it. The caller left voicemail that didn’t show up on my phone until I was in the theater. Cell phones can really act funny and sometimes mine seems funnier than most. Answering the call or learning of the message earlier wouldn’t have actually made a difference since the message just reaffirmed the banner on the website.

So this is where the stupid begins. In spite of seeing roughly four inches of snow at my garage door and knowing that the streets at my condominium hadn’t been touched, I thought the expressways might be better. When I saw that they weren’t, I should have turned around but instead, I turned on a Dayton (actually Yellow Springs) station thinking the expressways at my destination might be better. Hearing that a section of I-75 (which I was headed to) in Dayton was closed was another nudge toward reversing course but I didn’t. The closure had been announced earlier and by the time I actually reached the expressway, there was an announcement that it had reopened through Dayton. However, all exits into downtown were blocked. I did not turn around then, either.

Montgomery County went to a Level 2 Snow Emergency around 5:30. Images of the show being canceled just as I arrived began to form in my head but instead of turning around, I placed another call to the theater. This time I eventually reached a person who told me that the show had not been canceled but that they were now offering refunds to anyone choosing not to attend. Even though I was now past the halfway point, I probably should have headed home but nope.

Some downtown exits, including the one I planned to take, were indeed blocked but there were others open. I passed the theater and pulled into the parking garage. There was to be an $8.00 charge for parking but the attendant waved everybody in from behind a handwritten “FREE PARKING” sign.

This is my view from the front row of the lower balcony. It was a fantastic location for visuals but maybe not so good for audio. I really do wish I had made some effort to familiarize myself with the lyrics beforehand. There were multiple reasons for me not understanding every word including my relatively ancient ears. That my bum hearing played a role was supported by the fact that people near me reacted to some lines I didn’t understand at all. On the other hand, at intermission (after Washington has become President) a person a few seats away asked if the war was over. Nonetheless, I take full responsibility for not following some of the details. I went away quite impressed with the performance and even more impressed with the creativity behind it.

Snow was still falling when the play let out but it was very light. The streets didn’t look much different than when I arrived. Inside the garage, some of the snow that I had picked up on the way had fallen off but I was confident that I could get those wheel wells packed again in almost no time.

There was a line of cars exiting the garage but by the time I was a block or two away, the streets were looking pretty empty. The expressways were fairly empty too. They weren’t entirely deserted but the traffic was sparse and slow and everybody stayed in their own lane — as far as I know.

Although I didn’t actually see it until Friday morning, this message was emailed about a quarter to 6:00 on Thursday. A similar message was posted to Facebook and the website, presumedly about the same time.

Benny’s Back

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The last Saturday of January 2021 came and went without fireworks or other hoopla in Buckeye Lake, Ohio. That’s normally the day of the Buckeye Lake Winterfest but the event, like so many others, fell victim to COVID-19. Interestingly, the previous year’s Winterfest was one of the last pre-pandemic events I attended. The blog entry is here. A December 2020 newspaper article announcing the postponement said organizers were hoping to hold the event in the spring but that seems not to have happened. What attracted me to the event in the first place was its use of Benny the Bass in a Puxsuntawny Phil style role in predicting the timing of warmer weather. Last year, people were not nearly as interested in when winter would end as when the pandemic would. That may actually be true this year as well, but Benny was back on the job in any case.

I was on my way north long before dawn was even thinking about cracking. In 2020, I parked near the brewery and walked to and from the park where Benny makes his prediction. This year, with snow on the ground and near-zero temperatures, I had no desire to do much walking and drove directly to the park. There were a few cars present when I arrived but not many. Before getting out of my car, I decided to drive to the other side of town for coffee.

By the time I returned, Benny and quite a few fans had arrived. I managed to get the closeup of the real Benny at the top of this post before it got too crowded, and I got a shot of the mascot Benny — but not a very good one — a bit later. Removing a glove to take pictures was something I kept to a minimum and taking pictures with both gloves on was something that kept picture quality to a minimum.

In the predawn darkness, the shadow-based method of predicting that groundhogs employ is useless. Instead, a bunch of minnows is dumped into Benny’s tank and a one-minute countdown begins. If the time expires without Benny downing a minnow, six more weeks of winter is to be expected. If a minnow is gone before the time is, we’ll have an early spring. Either way, we get fireworks.

In 2020, the crowd chanted “Eat it, Benny”. This year they seemed too cold to chant much of anything despite the MC leading the more official “Take the Bait. Spring can’t wait.” cheer. That, plus repeated playings of the new Winterfest song, may have done the trick. All the minnows survived until the thirty-second warning and several seconds longer but then…

I took the picture of Benny’s tank and prediction once the area was sufficiently clear of bodies to get a clear view. Once the park was sufficiently clear of cars that I could get out of my parking space, I drove directly to Our Lakeside Diner for the traditional (It is now!) perch and eggs breakfast. Incidentally, this place definitely knows how to serve coffee.

Then it was down the street to the Buckeye Lake Brewery for another tradition. When I was here in 2020, I delayed having a beer until I had walked around the town quite a bit. This year, despite a fourfold increase in temperature since I’d arrived, I had no desire for a stroll of any length. So the perch was quickly followed by a Winterfest Ale and that was quickly followed by my departure for home.

A Cosmic Reason for the Season — Reredux

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The following article first appeared in 2019 then reappeared in 2020 when the Fort Ancient winter solstice sunrise program was canceled. I have seen nothing specifically about the program this year but know that the site will be open between 7 and 10 AM on December 21, the day of the solstice. That’s a Tuesday which is a day that the site is normally closed this time of year. It is clearly being opened for sunrise and a program of some sort seems possible.

The article’s first publication occurred one day after the solstice. The next year, it was one day before. This year it is two days before. That shifting comes from our efforts to make Sol, Luna, and Earth play nice together. Most of this blog’s posts, and all three posts of this article, occur on Sundays. Days of the week usually shift by one each year because seven does not fit evenly into 365. The two day shift between the article’s first and second appearance was because seven is an even worse fit for 366 and 2020 was a leap year. The seven-day week isn’t quite as arbitrary as it might first appear but neither is it an intuitive unit of measure. The moon circles Earth every 29.5 days. The Egyptians divided that into three ten-day periods. Four eight-day Roman weeks or seven-day Babylonian weeks fit less precisely but could be tied, albeit imperfectly,  to the moon’s four phases. The Babylonian seven-day week was spread far and wide by Alexander the Great, and as Rome moved into Alex’s old stomping grounds, it began to think that way too. The western world’s week became pretty much established in 321 CE when Constantine declared that an official Roman week was comprised of seven days. This Sunday post precedes the winter solstice of 2021 by 2 days; 2 days, 4 hours, and 58 minutes to be precise. 

Calendars come and calendars go and Earth just keeps on turning. And it keeps on orbiting, too. The turning bit creates what we call days. The alternating periods of light and dark impact almost all life on the planet and humans adopted the day as a basic unit of measure pretty early on. What we call years comes from Earth orbiting the Sun. There was plenty of time for early humans to stare at the sky and not a whole lot to keep them from doing it. They couldn’t help but notice that things in the sky moved around. In time, some of the more observant among them realized that not all that movement was random and eventually some patterns were noted. I can’t imagine how exciting it was when some smart guy figured out that the sun popped up at the same point about every 365 days. Of course, that “about” would be very important.

The opening photo shows the sun rising yesterday over a “gateway” in the earthen enclosure at Fort Ancient. The photo at left was taken a bit later and includes a small mound inside the enclosure in the foreground. When the mound, gateway, and sunrise align, sunset will follow sooner than on any other day of the year. This is the northern hemisphere’s Winter Solstice. It is the day when the sun is above the horizon for less time than any other day of the year, and yesterday that amounted to 9 hours, 25 minutes, and 9 seconds. Although we talk about Solstice being a day, it is technically just an instant. It is the moment when the Sun is farthest north or south of Earth’s equator. It happens twice each year and happened yesterday at 23:19 EST.

Serpent Mound, another ancient earthen structure containing solar alignments, is a little more than forty miles southeast of Fort Ancient. The serpent’s head is aligned with the Summer Solstice sunset. Body coils align with Summer and Winter Solstice sunrises. For several years, a modern event known as Lighting of the Serpent took place there at Winter Solstice. It was discontinued in 2017. The picture at right is from 2014 which is the only time I attended.

Long before they knew anything about orbits and equators, humans knew the day of Winter Solstice was special. It is the point where each successive day receives more rather than less daylight. It’s the big turnaround that will eventually lead to the warmth of spring and summer. It is clearly a day worth celebrating and it has indeed been celebrated in many different cultures in many different ways.

During their existence, humans have developed a slew of calendar systems. Several actually remain in use today, but the Gregorian calendar is the one most widely accepted. In the late sixteenth century, this started replacing the Julian calendar which had been around for all of those sixteen centuries and then some. The Julian calendar had been created by folks who calculated that a year was 365 and 1/4 days long which was a lot more accurate than an even 365. They came up with the rather clever idea of adding an extra day every four years to balance things out.

We now know that a year is 365.2422 days long. A year is the length of time it takes Earth to orbit the Sun, a day is the length of time it takes Earth to rotate, and neither is adjustable. When the Julian calendar was first adopted, the northern hemisphere’s Winter Solstice fell on December 25 but it slowly drifted away. Someone in authority thought to put an end to this nonsense by declaring December 25 the official solstice. But those non-adjustable orbits and rotations kept doing what they were doing and the official solstice and actual solstice just kept getting farther and farther apart.

The Gregorian calendar, which we have used for roughly 400 years now, put an end to that. Like the Julian calendar, it considers most years to be 365 days long but has a more involved system of “leap years” that add an extra day. The result is that over a long enough period our years will average 365.2422 days in length. Not only did the new calendar eliminate future drift, it tried to correct for some of the previous drift by throwing away ten days. The calendar’s namesake’s full-time job was as Pope of the Catholic Church. Ditching those ten days moved the solstice to December 22 which is where it had been in 325 when the church was founded. Of course, some holidays that had been tied to the official solstice (which hadn’t been anywhere near the actual solstice for some time) would continue to be celebrated on December 25.

Anyone wanting a more complete discussion of calendars, solstices, and holidays will find one here. Additional information on Fort Ancient is available here.

Holly Days Under Glass

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I’d read that Dayton’s Arcade has been the focus of major restoration efforts and that some tenants have moved in and that others were on the way. But I had also read that most of the structure, including the 90-foot rotunda, was not yet open to the general public full time. I had completely missed some opening-related events that had been held in the rotunda but finally got my act together on the second day of Holly Days 2021. It’s an event that the Arcade has hosted in the past. The most recent, however,  was in 1993.

In recent years the Third Street facing side of the building shown in the opening photo is the image assigned to the structure in my mind. Almost all of my memories of the Arcade are, strangely enough, from the outside. My only memory of the inside is of a straight glass-topped walkway that I believe is behind the giant smiling face and was once lined with shops. I vaguely recall stepping into that area in the tow of an aunt on a mission. I have no recollection at all of what she bought but I’m fairly certain that we reversed paths once the purchase was made and I never reached the rotunda. I automatically assumed that access to Holly Days would be through that arch but it was not. My first view of the rotunda was from a normal hallway behind these bland glass doors on Fourth Street.

I had seen plenty of pictures so that first view didn’t shock me but it sure did impress me. I actually think I was more surprised by the bustling crowd than the phenomenal restoration work. I’m pretty sure crowds only bustle during the holidays and possibly only when their focus is gift shopping. About half of the rotunda was filled with potential gifts and this crowd was clearly bustling.

Crowds would have also filled the rotunda in its earliest days and they might have even bustled on occasion. It opened in 1904 as a farmers market which explains the turkeys, ram heads, and fruit decorating the upper walls. Note that cardinal directions, such as east and south, are marked on pillars along with some of the more popular intermediate directions like 159° and 212°.

During Holly Days, a variety of entertainment utilized the rotunda’s north side (i.e., the side opposite the big S). While I was there on Wednesday afternoon, the Miami Valley Dance Company performed selected dances from The Nutcracker.

How something like this could have come as close as it did to vanishing is a question I’ve asked before about other treasures but there is hardly ever an answer. In the end, we just have to be thankful when the wrecking ball is avoided and doubly thankful when something not only dodges the ball but comes back looking like this. If you are unfamiliar with the Arcade’s history, I recommend checking out the information provided here. I also suggest taking a look at Ronny Salerno’s 2016 The Dayton Arcade for a glimpse at what it came back from. Ronny even has a picture of the bit I think I remember.  

Santa Claus Is Climbing to Town

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The title of this post is based on accepting that people climb down as well as up and that rappelling is a member of the climbing family. That’s because rappelling from the top of a twenty-three-story building is how the man in red entered Cincinnati last night. And that’s how he intends to enter the city every Saturday night from now until his other job has him busy all night long on the 25th. The daring drop is part of an event called Downtown Dazzle.

I reached Fountain Square with enough time before Santa’s arrival to walk a half-block one direction for dinner and a half-block in the other direction for a beer. Between the two, I snapped a picture of the city’s 56 foot Christmas tree which was officially lighted in a ceremony just yesterday.

There was a time when the Christmas tree really dominated Fountain Square during the holiday season. It still dominates the view from outside the square but it’s the skating rink that dominates the square itself. There has been a rink on the square since 2006 but it grew in size a few years ago. Last year, bumper cars were added and they’re back again this year. I was hoping to get my first look at the cars but, although they had operated earlier in the day, they were parked for Downtown Dazzle and 100% of the rink was available to skaters.

At a few minutes past 7:00, we were alerted to some “breaking” (but not very shocking) news. Reporters appeared on the square’s giant TV describing a UFO of some sort circling around downtown Cincinnati. When it was thought to have landed, searchlights played over several nearby buildings trying to locate the craft or its occupants. Three figures were soon spotted on top of the Huntington Center, and we all got to watch one reindeer, one Santa, and one elf descend to a much lower rooftop.

The instant that the trio reached the target roof and disappeared from sight, the first volley of fireworks exploded. For roughly twelve minutes, the Genius of Water and the Carew Tower were illuminated by the rockets’ red (and other colors) glare. Pretty cool! Be there at 7:00 PM on each of the next three Saturdays for more breaking news.

Although I had photos in hand, I did not identify my dinner spot when I mentioned it above. That was partly because it did not fit with describing the Dazzle and partly (maybe mostly) because I wanted to finish the post and go to bed. Now that deadlines are past and I’m no longer dozing off, I’m tacking it on.  Hathaway’s Diner has been operating in Cincinnati since 1956 but it wasn’t here. It was semi-deep inside the Carew Tower with no windows. The current owner has described it as a cave and I can’t disagree. It nearly closed in 2019 but a renegotiated lease kept it going. Then, just last month, they moved into a spot vacated by Frisch’s. It’s still in the Carew Tower but it now has windows and an entrance right on the street. There is also an entrance from inside the tower and that’s how I arrived. I exited directly to the street where, despite the chilly temperature, the diner was going hatless. I’d only eaten breakfast at the former location but went for a very good patty melt on my first time at the new, more visible and convenient, spot. I’ll be back. Probably for breakfast.

A Stranger Bought My Breakfast

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Saturday the 13th was the twelfth anniversary of my retirement. On the following Monday, as I did on that first retired Monday a dozen years ago, I went to the nearby Original Pancake House for breakfast. When my boss retired a few years ahead of me, he said he would know he was really retired when he was enjoying a leisurely breakfast on a Monday morning and that worked for me too. Although it isn’t always at this pancake house, I do try to reverify my status on the anniversary of the first day of that first job-free week.

The first time, twelve years ago, I had a brief conversation with a lady at a table near mine. Either her name was Virginia or she was from Virginia. (My memory sometimes thinks it’s retired, too.) Like me, she had a book as a dining companion, and, also like me, she was retired and well aware that the day was the start of a workweek for many. Virginia (or an unnamed lady from Virginia) had started enjoying workless Mondays some years before me. I haven’t seen her since but I hope she’s still doing that somewhere.

This year, I sat at a booth with no other customers nearby and split time between my eggs and my book. When the waitress came by to pick up an empty plate and offer another coffee refill, I expected her to leave a check. Instead, she told me someone had already paid for my meal. I asked her to repeat it and know I stared at her like an idiot.

“Some sort of pay-it-forward I guess,” she offered with a smile. I tried to return the smile but suspect I just continued to look dumb.

I reached the end of a chapter in my book and turned to my phone to check on the world before leaving. At the top of my Facebook feed was a post from Ray Wylie Hubbard who had an anniversary of his own on Saturday. He turned 75 that day. Ray Wylie hasn’t retired — musicians rarely do — and had performed in Austin on his birthday. His post was one of those RWH things that seem kind of rambling but really aren’t. He talked about his birthday and aging and such. In the middle, he tossed out a line that I know I’ll come back to on my own 75th in a few months and probably on some other anniversaries, too. “…but no matter how old I feel or think I am, I come back to being extremely grateful for my time here and try to show each day the respect it deserves while I is cause at some point in the future, well..I ain’t.”

He closed by suggesting folks “find something to be grateful for” if “you got some trouble in mind” or “darkness swooped down on you”. I have neither trouble nor darkness but it sure is easy to find something to be grateful for.

More Smooth As Glass

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About a month ago, a visit to Jack Pine’s Glass Pumpkin Festival yielded a blog post in which I lamented losing an SD card containing “phenomenal photos”. That card has reappeared and, even though my claims of phenomenality will suffer for it, I’m super happy to share some of its contents. For those who missed it or want to refresh their memories, the original post is here.

In my lament, I mentioned ice cream and music, and here is proof of both. The ice cream was quite good. Perhaps because it wasn’t overly pumpkiny. So was the music, but, sadly, I don’t know the name of the fellow entertaining us. If I heard it at the festival, I’ve forgotten, and, while the online schedule is still accessible, it shows a gap between 2:00 and 4:30. The picture was taken about 3:25.

Numerous artists were offering items for sale at the festival and not everything was made of glass and resembled a pumpkin. There were also some vendors selling food at the festival but none that made me want to take a picture.

But, yeah, glass items dominate the festival. It is, after all, hosted by a glass studio. At first glance, things that resemble pumpkins might also seem to dominate the festival, but I’m not so sure. Outside of the Jack Pine Pumpkin Patch, there sure are lots of non-pumpkin pieces.

Several artists were at work inside the studio making glass pumpkins. They would frequently hold out their work as it progressed and explain what they were doing. These non-stop demonstrations alone were easily worth the drive and the price of admission, and the items produced really are phenomenal even if these pictures aren’t.    

Driving Lessons

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During the writing of Tracing A T To Tampa, the fact that I had never driven a Model T Ford began to bother me more and more with every passage that referred to some detail about the car that “put America on wheels”. I had seen plenty of Model Ts and had ridden in a few but every comment that I made about the T’s operation came from observation and “book learning”. I wondered about how accurate I was being.

The T that I traced to Tampa is believed to be the touring car in the first photograph which belonged to my great-grandparents. The coupe is a car they owned many years after the Florida trip. It is currently in the possession of an uncle and I considered bugging him for driving lessons but in the end, I went for the Model T Driving Experience at the AACA museum in Hersey, PA. That gave me access to multiple cars in an environment set up for novice drivers. I combined it with a few other items from my to-do list and made a road trip that is documented here. The driving experience is included in day 4 but not much is said about the actual driving. That’s what prompted me to make this blog post.

This picture is one I used in the trip journal. It shows the four cars that students were to drive. I drove the green, yellow, and red cars but the black car, actually a roadster pickup truck, conked out before my turn came. It was replaced by another black roadster pickup, but the top stayed up on the replacement. That’s it in the b&w photo at the top of the article.

The image at left was taken from the “Ford Model T Instruction Book”. Model Ts were often delivered by train or other means directly to a new owner with nothing resembling today’s dealer prep (and accompanying charge). The 45-page book provided all the information necessary to prepare, operate, and maintain what might be the very first powered vehicle the owner had ever seen.

Our cars had all been prepped, of course, and all were equipped with electric starters. Plus, we would have the advantage of a classroom presentation with visual aids. Against the open doorway, the visual aids weren’t a whole lot easier to see in person than they are in the photograph but we all had copies available in a handout. The use of the spark advance and battery/magneto switch in starting the engine was discussed but today the instructors would take care of those details. Students would be dealing with the hand throttle, the steering wheel, and three pedals.

It seemed everyone was familiar with a hand throttle from a tractor, lawnmower, or something similar. And everyone recognized the steering wheel. It is one of just two controls that have maintained the same function from Model T to Tesla although neither can be operated with modern instincts. Most modern cars have a steering ratio of 12:1 or more; the ratio for Ts is 4:1 or 5:1. It is essentially the only thing on a Model T that can be called quick.

This picture of a Model T’s three pedals appeared in the handout. The bulk of student brain activity would be focused on these. ‘C’, ‘R’, and ‘B’ markings identify them as clutch, reverse, and brake. The brake pedal is the other control that technically retains the same function in modern cars as in the T. However, like the steering wheel, how well it performs that function is dramatically different. Today’s brake pedals are mostly power-assisted and hydraulically connected to large disc brakes at all four wheels that will bring a 3,000-pound 60 MPH vehicle to a halt in forty yards or so. A Model T’s brake pedal is mechanically attached to bands that tighten around a shaft in the transmission that will bring a 1,200-pound 10 MPH vehicle to a halt eventually.

Although there is nothing quite like the reverse pedal in modern cars, its function is simple and easy to understand. With the car stopped and no other pedal pressed, pushing it to the floor causes the car to move backward. The idea of “no other pedal pressed” would really apply to all of the driving we would do on this day. The pedals would be pressed one at a time.

Clutch pedals in modern cars are becoming increasingly rare but they do exist and it’s tempting to think that knowing how to operate a modern manual transmission will help in operating a Model T. Not a chance. Almost every instinct developed by driving manual transmissions will only get in the way when driving a Model T. I will expand on this later but today we would be doing all of our driving in low gear which meant that the clutch was engaged with the pedal pressed and disengaged with the pedal released. Yes, driving in low gear did translate to driving at low speed and I don’t doubt that some readers will think that lame. Pshaw. With 4:1 steering in a fairly primitive car with totally unfamiliar controls, 15 MPH was plenty fast.

A Q&A session followed the presentation then we moved outside where instructors reviewed parts of what we had learned using the real Model Ts as visual aids. Next, an instructor climbed into the driver’s seat of each car and a student joined them for a lap around the course as a passenger. The “course” was an unmarked path around a closed-off portion of the museum grounds with an uphill section on grass and a downhill section on asphalt.

The green roadster was the first car I climbed into but I have no pictures of me as either a passenger or driver. Even though I’d read about it and had ridden with others doing it, the strangeness of holding that clutch pedal down to keep moving didn’t completely register until it was my foot doing the holding. I also was a little surprised at how much the throttle was used. It was positioned for easy fingertip access while holding the wheel and adjustments were required for climbing the small hill and at other points too. I also did a lap as a passenger in the yellow speedster. The instructor thought that prudent because of some play in the steering. I managed to hand off my camera for the speedster drive but only have a picture from that first lap. My drives in both of these cars went well in that I didn’t run into or over anything and I didn’t stall either one. That streak would not continue.

Helpful volunteers did snap pictures of me at the wheel of the other two Ts, both of which I managed to stall. In fact, I stalled the cool-looking furniture van twice. At ages of 94 to 108 years, these vehicles are entitled to some idiosyncrasies and they do indeed have them. For the speedster, it was steering. For the red van, it was a dead spot in the throttle. Twice, when I wanted a little more oomph, I moved the throttle a little when it needed to be moved a lot. I have a different excuse for stalling the black pickup. Model Ts have a parking brake of sorts but using it was not part of the day’s normal procedure. There was no need in the level lot. For some reason, the previous driver had seen fit to set it but that did not keep me from reaching the beginning of the hill before the combination of brakes and incline started to bog things down. The instructor figured that out just as the T’s engine chugged to a halt. With that exception, my drive in the little pickup was understandably the best of the day. Operating that strange clutch and using the hand throttle never became 100% natural but, as it is with most things, the more I did it the better I became.

I said I would expand on clutch operation and I’m going to use a detail from an earlier picture to help with that. I’m also going to take the opportunity to describe briefly what happened when I stalled those cars.

Until it is up and running, a Model T’s engine needs to get its electrical power from a battery. A switch on the dash-mounted wooden box controls that. Following a stall, the instructor would flip that switch to battery and maybe make some adjustments to the throttle and spark advance. They would then tell me to press the starter button. In the picture, it’s on the floor. In other cars, it was on the verticle panel below the seat. Once the engine started, the instructor switched things back to magneto operation and away we’d go.

As I’d recently been thinking of my great-grandfather driving a Model T to Florida and back, at some point I began to think about him with his foot pressed to the floor for the whole trip. That really wasn’t required and that lever that the instructor is holding in the picture above is part of the reason. Pulling it all the way back activates small drum brakes on the read wheels. That’s what was going on when I stalled the pickup. Moving it all the way forward enables high gear. With high gear selected, pressing the clutch pedal to the floor still engages low gear, releasing it partway disengages the transmission, while releasing it all the way engages high gear. So, when driving to Florida, push that lever forward, press and hold the clutch pedal until you’re moving at a decent clip, then slowly release it. Adjust speed with your fingers as necessary and let your feet relax.

The museum does not call what they offer a school. It’s a Model T Driving Experience. The certificate I received simply acknowledges that I “completed” the experience with no indication of how good or bad I did or how badly I frightened the instructors. It does not authorize me to do anything whatsoever and that includes bragging about driving four different Model Ts in low gear without stalling two of them. I’m doing that entirely on my own.