Man finishes driving 1935 Ford to Grand Mound
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By Steven Martens | Wednesday, September 12, 2007 |
Paul O’Brien talks about driving his father’s 1935 Ford from Seal Beach, Calif., to Grand Mound, Iowa, after arriving Tuesday morning at the home of his uncle, Dale Rathje. (Kevin E. Schmidt/Quad-City Times) Buy this Photo
GRAND MOUND, Iowa — While driving his 1935 Ford Tudor from Seal Beach, Calif., to Iowa, Paul O’Brien had to stop every hour-and-a-half to keep the car from overheating, used a toothpick as an improvised cruise control and went through half of a generous supply of spare parts.
And he loved every minute of it.
O’Brien, 60, grew up in Clinton County near Grand Mound before his father, Donald, decided in 1950 to sell the family farm and move his family to Salem, Ore.
“He had had just about as much farming as he could handle,” O’Brien said, “and I think the bank agreed with him.”
Although he visits his family in Grand Mound regularly, O’Brien, who works designing packaging primarily for the entertainment industry, said he was eager to see the country the way people of his father’s generation saw it. He decided to drive his antique car back to the Grand Mound home of his uncle, Dale Rathje. He set out at 5 a.m. Sept. 3 and arrived Tuesday morning after eight days of travel.
“I was planning about 430 miles a day, and this old car had a different plan,” he said.
Rathje said his nephew’s trip did not faze him.
“Nothing surprises me with him,” he said. “He’s done everything.”
O’Brien followed Route 66 and met an interesting variety of people along the way.
“You meet a lot of people when you stop 12 times a day,” he said. “The smaller the road, the better the stories.”
He met one man in his 90s who was pleased to see that the car had its original engine and explained, in rather profane terms, his dislike of “hot rods.”
Another couple originally from Texas described their first sight of air conditioning in cars in Needles, Calif., where they saw people driving around with socks dipped in cold water hanging in their car windows to create a cool breeze.
“When I got to Needles, I understood that real well,” he said.
Two former hot-rodders in Kansas with knowledge of flathead Ford engines helped him make some repairs.
“You don’t find those folks in Los Angeles,” he said.
O’Brien drove by himself with only a barely functioning AM radio for entertainment, which was just as well considering the effort involved in driving the car.
The headlights are controlled by a dial on the steering wheel, causing the lights to turn off when the driver turns the wheel. The accelerator is controlled by a knob on the dashboard that must be pulled out to accelerate, but the knob slowly creeps back in, causing the car to slow down. That’s why O’Brien used a toothpick shoved in next to the knob to try to keep it in place and maintain a constant speed.
The car’s tendency to overheat forced him to make frequent stops, when he would set up a chair and read a book while waiting for the car to cool down.
“Henry Ford built these for Michigan winters, not California summers, that’s for damn sure,” he said.
The car got 11 to 12 miles per gallon on an 11-gallon tank.
“There’s strategy involved in getting from A to B,” he said. “You have to listen to the car. You don’t have a chance unless you listen.”
O’Brien plans to spend the week visiting family and fishing with his cousin, Mark Rathje, before turning the Tudor back onto the Lincoln Highway and heading west for California and home on Monday, taking a new route and meeting a new cast of American characters.
“It’s just a treat,” he said.
Steven Martens can be contacted at (563) 659-2595 or smartens@qctimes.com.
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