GOING HOME

I drove the old Model T home from Graceland. Patty Jones, one of the students and a brother of Professor Alonza Jones, decided he wanted to go to California because he had a brother in Van Nuys. Patty was short for Patagonia and that was a nickname. I don't remember what his real name was. He couldn't afford to pay anything towards his fare, but he said he sure would appreciate it if he could ride along. I said I needed company so he could come along.

Several people who lived in Independence found out I was going home through Independence. By the time I got away from Graceland, I think there were six people, besides all their luggage, who piled into the old car. We got to Independence and got them unloaded without any trouble.

Patty and I then started home. Over in the western edge of Kansas, we were driving late one night. We ran out of gas out in the middle of the sticks. It happened that there was a little gas station right ahead of us. It was a farm house and everything was dark. We walked up and rattled the door and the fellow opened up and let us have some gas.

Then over further west somewhere, we were driving along on dusty roads and we dropped into a chuckhole with the front end of the car. The car had one of those fold-up tops on it. The top came down on us and the front wheels bent the wishbone out of shape. We finally pried the car up and got it out of the hole. We took the front wheels and wishbone off. We didn't have any tools to amount to anything, but we found some old broken fence posts along the side of the road. With them, we managed to beat the car back into shape until it was drivable. We drove on toward California with it. It was hard to steer because the wheels didn't track right.

Patty and I got into Needles, Arizona at about midnight. We stopped to get some gasoline and it was one hundred degrees at the station at midnight. We decided we were going to continue driving on towards home.

We got over into California to a little place named Amboy around three o'clock in the morning. We decided we'd better gas up again. We stopped and the fellow at the station wanted to know where we were going. We told him we were going to Redlands. We were going by the highway which went through Victorville. He said, "Oh, you can save a hundred miles if you'll take this cut-off across the desert."

We didn't know what to do, but he said, "You just pull out here beside the station and sleep a couple of hours. At daybreak I'll point out the road so you can save a hundred miles.

At daylight he started us out across the desert. The road was nothing but two-wheel track through the sage brush. We got out quite a ways and pretty soon the con rod burned out--just bang, bang, BANG! It was really gone; we could tell by the noise it was making. So we pulled up and got out and looked. Under the Model T, down on the bottom of the pan, were two pet-cocks that you opened to check the oil level. Well, one of these pet-cocks had hit a piece of sagebrush or a rock and had opened up and let all the oil run out. That's the reason the con rod had burned out.

We didn't have any oil. We did have an old oil can that I'd put some water in for the radiator.

We had seen a little sign that somebody had stuck up along beside the road that said sixteen miles to Twenty-nine Palms. We were sixteen miles from there and it was six o'clock in the morning. We decided we'd just walk.

We just left the Model T sitting where it was, with all our books, luggage and everything. The top wasn't any good because it had already fallen off. We started walking down the road. Well, it got hot. Patty had insisted on taking the can of water along even though it had some crank case oil in it.

He said, "I'm going to have some water to drink."

So he took it along. Every half hour or so he'd take a swig of that water. By ten thirty he was beginning to wobble a little.

We kept on going. Pretty soon we saw a tent beside the road with an old car beside it. We thought we must be getting about to Twenty-nine Palms; we'd come a long ways. We walk over and found an old prospector. He had an old Dodge car and we had hoped we could get him to take us on in but he had it all torn to pieces. His thermometer read one hundred twenty degrees. We did get a drink of water. He said, "It's only a mile on down to Twenty-nine Palms."

We walk on down to Twenty-nine Palms. It was just an oasis in the desert where there was a nice fresh water spring that flowed out of the side of a gully, with twenty-nine palm trees growing around it. There was a little service station and hotel and that was all. We were told the gas station and hotel were run by a couple of old maids but everything was closed up when we were there and we didn't find them.

There was a family eating a picnic lunch in the shade, near the spring. I never did find out where they were from, but they were inquisitive. They wanted to know where we were from and where we were going. We told them.

They asked, "Wouldn't you like something to eat?"

We didn't turn them down. They gave us some sandwiches.

We didn't know what we were going to do. Pretty soon, there came a fellow up from a side road in a Model T ton truck. He stopped at the spring to get a drink. So we asked him, "Where are you going?"

He replied, "Well, I'm going to Los Angeles."

We replied, "We'd like to go to Redlands."

"I'm going through Redlands," he said.

"Our folks live just off Brookside Drive."

"Well, I go right down Brookside Drive," he said.

He agreed to haul us. We got in his truck. He was going to town after a load of roofing. He had an empty truck. He took us to Redlands, right to San Mateo Street. My folks by this time had moved to a house on San Mateo Street. We just walked up the street a block and a half to their house.

Patty was just plum tuckered out and he went to bed. He was one of the prize football stars.

I got hold of Hiel and Claire and told them my troubles. They didn't either one have a car. Dad's car was busy. I don't remember where Dad was, but he was working. We called Fergie on the phone and made arrangements to borrow Fergie's car. They got a new con rod and some oil. It was late evening by then.

We turned right around and started back to Twenty-nine Palms. Patty didn't go. He stayed in bed. Just Claire, Hiel and I went. By the time we got back to the car, it was just about daylight. The car was still there and so were our foot prints. Nobody had been by. It was getting pretty hot, but we stretched a tarpaulin up over the side of the car to make some shade.

We got down under the car and took the con rod out. In order to do that, we had to take the engine head off. We did that and got the new con rod in and drove both cars home. I drove the old Model T. I could barely keep it between two fences (if there had been fences).

And that was the end of my Graceland experience.