The car was very dependable and versatile and on the farm we used it in ways other than transportation. One of its uses was to pull our two wheel trailer hauling goods like feed, grain, or bringing bags of pickles to the H. J. Heinz receiving station in Borculo.
Another use I remember well is bringing fresh strawberries to the Grand Rapids wholesale market. My dad raised a lot more strawberries than he could sell locally, so he would often bring loads of them to Grand Rapids. We could take out the back seat of the Model A and stack strawberry crates from the floor to the roof of the car. We often had as many as 20 crates each holding 16 quarts of strawberries. This time period was during W.W. II and there was a national speed limit of 35 miles per hour, so it took about one hour to get to the market in Grand Rapids.
We would leave Borculo at 3:30 in the morning so we could get a good spot at the wholesale market on Hall Street when it opened at 5:00 AM. The produce buyers at the market would shine their flashlights into our car and look over the berries and then start dickering over the morning's opening price. The buyers were hucksters, but I often thought they were shysters. After the berries were sold we left for the slow ride back to Borculo and then it was back to picking more strawberries.
Our family also took a few one day trips with the Model A. I remember going to Jackson, MI one summer with the Gerrit Elzinga family to see the Sparks Illuminated waterfalls. We had a great time there when the lights were turned on the cascading waterfalls in the evening. On the way home Dad discovered the brakes on the car were failing, so the cars were driven very slowly to get us home safely. Both families arrived from that trip in the wee hours of the next day.
The Borculo Creamery used a Model A to cut ice on their mill pond by removing a rear wheel and replacing it with a large circular saw blade.
Another person worked in the haymow leveling the loads of hay as they were dropped from above.
The third person needed was the one who drove the car or the team of horses that was used to pull the 1 inch harpoon rope that extended from the barn and out of its doors as it pulled up the load. The job of driving the car fell to my mother . She didn't mind this job. She had driven a Model T or Model A since she was 14 years old. It was very important that the driver pulling the rope stop the car when the load of hay traveled over the haymow and was ready to be tripped. Once that distance as determined, we would place a board across the path so the car would always stop at the same distance each time.
What were the possibilities if the driver went too far? Number one: the car could pull the barn down.. Number two: the cars engine would kill as the load came to the end of the pulley, or number three: the rafter or beam the pulley was attached to might come down. I want to digress a bit and tell the story of the missing rafter in our barn roof.
One day when I was a young boy forking hay out of one of the hay mows, I looked up and noticed that one of the rafters was missing above the haymow. I wondered why and asked my father. He said he wondered the same thing after he had first purchased the farm from the Klanderman family. He said he had contacted James Klanderman, the previous owner, to find out what he knew about it. He said he and his wife didn't have any children to help him wit the farm work, so he and a neighbor would help gather hay into the barn along with some help from his wife. He believed in equal opportunity for women on the farm. One day they were unloading a wagon load of loose hay. The neighbor was working the harpoon fork on the wagon. He was leveling the hay as it was dropped into the hay mow. His wife was driving the team of horses that pulled the harpoon rope, but his wife was not doing that well driving the team that day. One horse had a habit of stopping before going the required distance needed to get the load to the peak of the barn. After this happened a few times, James got out of the hay mow, got a wooden stick, and watched until the horse tried this again. When it did, he whacked the horse across his rump with the stick. The horses took off at high speed. Mrs. Klanderman dropped the lines and the horses failed to stop at the required distance. The load of hay on the harpoon fork rapidly went to the peak of the barn until the pulley wedged against the rafter to which it was attached. Then the rafter was yanked out of the roof and the hay load with the rafter came crashing down into the haymow. So that is the story of the missing rafter.,
When I was eight years old I replaced my mother of her haying duties. I was now pulling the harpoon rope with a tractor instead of the Model A.
Haying was a fun time of the year. We also used the tractor to pull the wagon and hayloads in the field. Later we switched to baling our hay. Lifting the heavy bales was hard work!
The second event was the farm shop class that i took as a freshman at Zeeland High School. One of the skills we learned was using an arc welder. These events gave me a couple of ideas of what could still be another use for Dad's old Model A.
First I had to see if it would still run. It needed a new battery so I purchased one and low and behold the engine started again. Then I purchased a welder which took most of my life savings. With the welder I was able to cut the top off from the car. I told my father I would like to make a pickup from it. He reluctantly agreed, but I was thinking more in the line of a race car. I did build a small box on the back, so it was now a pickup truck.
We had dirt road that ran west of our buildings that separated the farm fields on our farm. That dirt path had a few hills and dips in it and soon I was imagining this was the dirt race track in Marne. The car was very light in the back so it was very easy to spin the car around. The muffler had hole in it and was quite loud. My siblings liked to ride on the back.
So that is the end of the history of Dad's 1929 Model A.
Many Mode A Fords were converted into doodlebugs after they served their purpose as an automobile.