Old-time Road Trip Adventures Going and Coming to the Springfield Route 66 Festival

Sep 23

Member Article by T. Lindsay Baker. All photos courtesy of the author.

For two years Covid-19 effectively kept me at home. We live on a beautiful farm in North Central Texas about midway between Fort Worth and Waco. My great grandparents’ place, it consists half of cultivated fields and half of unimproved pastures and woods. If we were to be stuck cut off anyplace, this would be it, but cabin fever really set in strong.

T. Lindsay Baker on the farm in Texas setting out Springfield, Missouri, in the 1931 Ford roadster on Tuesday morning, August 9, 2022.

Having enjoyed myself there before, I decided to break the isolation by signing up for an author’s table in the exhibits building for the August 2022 Birthplace of Route 66 Festival in Springfield, Missouri. Just going there should be enough to satisfy anyone, but I wanted more. After all, this trip was to mark the end of spending months at home. Having been a life-long owner and driver of Model A Ford automobiles made in 1928-31, I decided this event presented the ideal opportunity to test out a 1931 Ford roadster purchased about a year and a half earlier.

The Model A Ford roadster is a rudimentary automobile just one step beyond the primitive 1908-27 Model T cars. It is a single-seated convertible with a canvas top, buggy-spring-style suspension, narrow tires, snap-on curtains rather than glass windows on the sides, and an inefficient and sometimes temperamental four-cylinder, forty-horsepower engine. Everything is hand- or foot-operated by human muscle power except the motor, meaning brakes, steering, choke, and even adjusting the rate at which spark plugs fire. There is very little leg room. Driving the car is a completely immersive experience. Obviously there is no air conditioning and effectively no heater except for the warmth coming up through the wooden floor board from the exhaust system. Because they represented the most stripped-down vehicle the Ford Motor Company offered, roadsters like mine sold at the lowest price, just $430.

Advertisement for new 1931 Ford roadsters for sale at $430 apiece from The Calumet Chieftain (Okarche, Okla.), May 21, 1931, p. 6.

Since acquiring the car several months before, my goal had been to identify the mechanical “gremlins” that I knew had to be hiding inside its running gear. No one can purchase a ninety-year-old car without expecting to come across at least a few surprises that need attention. The greatest mechanical difficulty discovered at this stage was learning that during in its most recent restoration about 1990, the transmission had not received the care that it had deserved. Gear-slipping symptoms showed up within the first six months, and fortunately a nationally-known Model A Ford transmission specialist in nearby Fort Worth completely rebuilt its guts. In mid-July 2022 I decided that the time had come for a real road trip, and 1,100 miles to and from Springfield would make a fair trial for an aged vehicle.

A sharp curve ahead in crossing the Arbuckle Mountains in Oklahoma on U.S. Highway 66, Tuesday, August 9, 2022.

The drive to the Ozarks started comparatively smoothly. I set out from the farm on the morning of Tuesday, August 9, 2022, heading up Interstate 35 through Fort Worth to the Red River. Just north of this riverine boundary with Oklahoma, I turned onto the historic U.S. 77 and followed the old two-lane on up to Purcell. This first two hundred miles went smoothly, and I rested that evening at the vintage Ruby’s Inn motel.

The 1931 Ford parked in front of the Rock Café in Stroud, Oklahoma, Tuesday, August 9, 2022.

After Ruby’s sausage-and-eggs breakfast, I set off on Wednesday’s two hundred miles to Vinita, in extreme northeastern Oklahoma. I looked forward to a nice dinner at the popular historic Clantons Café, but I didn’t make it. The ninety-one-year car purred along between thirty- five and forty miles an hour through Oklahoma City and onto old Highway 66, but as I reached the far side of Tulsa the needle on the temperature gauge started rising. The radiator then erupted in boiling water and the motor started clattering just as I entered Catoosa. The water pump had given way. I asked at a nearby convenience store where I might find a mechanic at 4:15 in the afternoon, and one of the customers directed me to Kwik Lube just down Highway 66 a little farther. Refilling the radiator from the water bag, I slowly made my way there, dribbling a trail of coolant and water all the way.

Through the open overhead door I pulled in a car older than anything that had ever rolled into the shop, and the kindly serviceman asked if I wanted an oil change? I explained that my water pump had just failed and that I needed help replacing it with a spare that I had under the seat. (No one goes over a hundred miles in a Model A without bringing along an extra water pump.) He scratched his head, the manager came over and phoned the shop owner, and after the consultation they asked me to drive around to another service bay. Yes, they would make the switch.

A crew of four mechanics working as a team at Kwik Lube in Catoosa, Oklahoma, replacing a worn-out water pump on Tuesday, August 9, 2022.

For the next hour, now after closing time, four men as a team removed the hood, loosened the radiator, and replaced the ruined pump. None of them had ever worked on a car this old, and they marveled over its simplicity and ease of access. By five-thirty they had put everything back together and refilled the radiator. After all was said and done, the owner refused to accept any payment because he and his crew had had so much fun working on the ancient vehicle. I was back on the road and able keep my overnight lodging reservation in Vinita, even though I missed the coveted supper at Clanton’s.

The next morning, now Thursday, August 11, 2022, I made it to Clanton’s Café for its “best deal” breakfast of two eggs, hash browns, biscuits, and gravy for $4.99. What a meal and what a price! Then I proceeded up old Highway 66 toward Springfield, crossing through the corner of Kansas to pick up one of Scott Nelson’s noted baloney and cheese sandwiches at the Old Riverton Store. Progressing northeastward through Carthage, I paused at the side of old ’66 at Kellogg Lake for a picnic lunch of Scott’s delicious sandwich, and continued toward Springfield.

Along the way a portent of future problems started showing up. The engine intermittently began fits of “missing” and “backfiring.” This is usually a sign that the ignition condenser is going bad, so I replaced it myself and that seemed to remedy the symptoms the rest of the way into the Rail Haven Best Western in Springfield. At last I was amid other festival participants from Missouri and the rest of the country; I was in good company.

A front-seat view of the parade of vehicles during the Birthplace of Route 66 Festival in Springfield, Missouri, Friday, August 12, 2022. Ahead in the procession are a Model T and a tan 1930 Cord.

On Friday and Saturday, August 12 and 13, I “hung out” at my table in the exhibit building visiting with friends and cronies and enjoying time with festival participants. Both days my little Ford roadster was included in the magnificent car show that attracts many people to the festival. Friday evening I got to drive the old car in the parade along College and St. Louis streets, the earliest alignment of the Mother Road through the city. Conveniently the procession officially ended at St. Louis Street and National Avenue, the very site of the remarkably preserved 1962 Steak ‘n Shake. The staff there makes some of the best hamburgers and milkshakes between Chicago and Los Angeles, so there was no way to resist the lure. Weather was hot and sunny for the festival, we avoided the rain of past events, and everyone seemed to have a great time.

After the pleasure of a Route 66 Association of Missouri post-festival bus tour of Mother Road locations in Springfield on Sunday morning, I motored in afternoon light the short sixty miles to Carthage to spend the night quietly at the 1939 Boots Court. This lovingly restored Streamline Moderne motel, where Clark Gable also slept, is one of my favorites. Following breakfast at the nearby Pancake Hut, on Monday, August 15, 2022, I headed out bound for Oklahoma City, where I intended to stop off for the night with my step-grandson and his wife. I never made it to OKC at all.

A mechanic at Old 66 Auto in Stroud, Oklahoma, on the morning of Tuesday, August 16, 2022, the first of two garage “visits” in the return trip home.

A few miles beyond Tulsa, the little car began overheating and spasmodically went into fits of loudly “backfiring” out the carburetor and losing power. Since these were still the typical symptoms that the condenser in the ignition system had gone bad, at the side of the road I installed two more replacements in succession. The problems continued though the motor continued to operate. Finally the car was running so poorly I pulled into the parking lot at the Hampton Inn at Stroud, Oklahoma, checked in to a room, and spent the rest of the evening in the lot with the toolbox and hood open as I “trouble shot” the poor performance in the summer evening light.

That same Monday evening I met a local hot rod enthusiast/evangelical preacher in Stroud. He suggested a local garage, and on Tuesday morning the 16th he kindly towed me there. A helpful mechanic “piddled” with the ignition, doing some of the same things that I had tried earlier in the motel parking lot. He got the engine running somewhat better, but not at peak efficiency. I decided that I would be able to limp on down the road the last 250 miles and headed out again, bypassing Oklahoma City since I had missed my family visit. I turned south on U.S. 177 toward Ardmore, from which I intended to take Interstate 35 on southward through Fort Worth before angling off on two-lane on to the Baker Farm.

I only made it about seventy miles to the crest of a low hill midway between Shawnee and Sulphur. There the engine began overheating again, the radiator boiled over several times, and the ignition problems worsened. The car ground to a halt in a hot summer afternoon on the Oklahoma prairie. I had to call AAA for tow-truck service this time, and a most helpful driver hauled the aged car to a garage back into Shawnee. I had already spoken by phone with the staff at a garage there, and they said they would stay after hours so that I could park the vehicle inside overnight.

The driver of an AAA tow truck using a power winch to pull the 1931 Ford onto its deck to be hauled into Shawnee for more expert attention on Tuesday afternoon, August 16, 2022.

The next morning, now Wednesday, August 17, a very capable mechanic in Shawnee systematically “went through” the ignition system and discovered a major reason for my miles of poor running. I had never unscrewed and measured the gap on the spark plugs in the engine since I purchased the car. This was the very problem that he discovered; the spark gap was too tight. After resetting the gap at the correct 35 thousandths inch, the little Ford ran as smoothly as if it were being driven off the 1931 showroom floor. Because the engine had been running inefficiently due to the improper sparkplug gap, making that correction eliminated the cause of the overheating. If I had only been thinking the way that a mechanic does, I would have checked the plug gap while I was puzzling over things in the motel parking lot two evenings before in Stroud.

Now it was past midday Wednesday in Shawnee, Oklahoma, but I headed southward determined to cover the 240 miles home that day if I could. I proceeded at the car’s normal driving speed between 35 and 40 mph, drove through Ardmore to U.S. 77, and made my way to the Red River. From this point southward I followed Interstate 35 for lack of a parallel two-lane secondary highway. About every 75 to 90 miles or so, I stopped for more fuel and a potty break. By dusk I reached a fuel/food center about thirty miles north of Fort Worth, refilled the ten-gallon gasoline tank, and downed a chopped barbecue sandwich, fortifying myself with an icy fountain soda. In the darkening skies lightning bolts were silhouetted above Fort Worth.

The 1931 Ford outside S&S Auto in Shawnee, Oklahoma, fully repaired and running like a new car. Twelve hours later the little car returned home through a lightning storm to its own garage on the Baker Farm in Texas.

In the dusk I put a newly purchased magnetic yellow flashing warning light next to the slow-speed triangle on the rear of the vehicle. Thus bedecked I joined the southward rush of trucks and cars whizzing past on the freeway through the metropolis to my exit on the south side, where light rain started. The drizzle gradually turned into a steady rain, so I pulled under the awning of a service station to snap on the side curtains. (Remember that cheaply built roadsters have no roll-up glass windows.) Without any further incident I proceeded to the Baker Farm, thanking the Almighty for a safe return as I bounced along the gravel way and through the old fields to the waiting space in the garage.

What an old-time motorist’s travel experience I got to share!