Good By S-10

Good by S-10

It was right around Christmas of 2010. I was finishing up some shopping in Bryan, Texas and getting ready to head home. I pulled the Chevy S-10 out of Sam’s Club and was and was just building speed to enter Hwy. Six when the damn thing died. Being a standard I tried a rolling restart but no go. As speed bled off I timed my entrance to the Cinemark parking lot (thank you dead stick landing drills from another lifetime). If it weren’t for the other vehicles on the road and lights in the parking lot I would have been looking for the UFO.

By eleven that night we determined the truck was not going to be an easy fix and our son came with a trailer to pick the two of us up. That night was the last time the S-10 moved under its own power in almost a year. 2011 was the year of transportation hell. I will spare you details, mostly.

We have always considered our isolation here at HomePlace a great asset. Lack of mobility went a long way toward wreaking our finances. Having to depend on other people for transportation is a losing battle.

Suddenly getting to jobs, getting to meetings, Helene’s substitute teaching assignments, even selling young rabbits at Easter was either difficult or impossible. Few things are more heart breaking than turning down a job because I can’t get to it. Our isolation had become a huge impediment.

Finances got harder and we cut corners, made partial payments and delayed what could be delayed. We made a point of staying up to date on property payments. I will be the first to say getting behind on property taxes is stupid, but went faced with groceries and utilities the delay didn’t seem that bad. We had already worked out a schedule with the taxing entities to get caught up. With only a few years left on the note the bank is latching onto the tax situation for a land grab.

We are beating bushes, already black and blue, to raise the needed funds. Not that a new complication was needed but my prostate cancer (under control) has made it necessary to travel back and forth to the doctor frequently. Our son has lent us a truck until our ford’s engine is rebuilt, but the S-10 has resisted all attempts at repair. The two times we got it running it lasted less than twenty four hours before going down again.

So the treacherous Chevy is being sacrificed for the cause. We pulled the fuel tank, hauled it up on the trailer, and then removed the tires. The battery wasn’t powering the windows so in order to exit the vehicle once it was on the trailer the driver’s window was broken out.

Yesterday I took it to the crusher and added the funds received to the tax kitty. This is just one of many paths taken to save the property. Another was a difficult choice, requesting assistance through a fund raising site called Indiegogo. I have been surprised and humbled by the response and generosity of both friends, and people we have never met. I am posting a link to that site here;

http://www.indiegogo.com/SaveSeniorsFarm?a=1007680

Followers of this Blog have come to know me after a fashion. Other come here from Face Book and are learning who I am. If you have ever listened to anything I have said, please pay attention now.

I do not want ANYONE to feel obligated to do this.

If this fund raiser strikes a cord with anyone, we would be grateful for whatever you felt like sending. If you would rather not, please don’t.

We will keep you posted.

This is the DUKW

A couple of days ago James at hellinahandbasket talked about always wanting an amphibious vehicle. He had photos of several military and civilian examples, including some from comics and movies. I was surprised to see he had left out my all time favorite, the DUKW.

This is not an example of my lousy spelling. In military nomenclature of World War Two the letters stand for;

D - 1942, the first year of manufacture

U - Amphibious

K - Drive to all wheels

W- Dual rear axles

Today, the picture above is the DUKW most folks know. A number of companies around the country operate "Duck Rides" for tourist. A 31 foot, street legal party barge!

This is the DUKW of World War Two, a versatile workhorse that made a lasting impression on everyone who encountered it.

The DUKW had its roots in the much more common GMC CCKW, the "duce and a half" that saw service all over the world.

The CCKW drive train was fitted with a water tight hull and an extra drive shaft for a propeller. So, you might ask, what was the point of a truck that could run on water?

The DUKW had a generous cargo bay that allowed for twenty armed troops or a couple of tons of whatever the military might think to load on board. Dangerous ground that.

Folks who have taken "Duck Rides" might think they were used a landing craft. Indeed they were used to ferry troops to shore, but usually after a beach head had been established. The DUKW had other jobs.

The beastie was able to pull up next to a ship and have cargo nets of goods dropped directly into her cargo bay. Once loaded she could head to shore.

Unlike a boat DUKW's didn't need a dock, but could drive out of the water and take it cargo strait to where it was needed. This eliminated two steps of the cargo process, unloading at the dock and transfering to a truck for transport. Unloading the ducks by hand slowed things down, but when there was a crane on shore to unload the nets, turn around was pretty quick.
The drivers compartment of the DUKW was familur to anyone who had ever driven a truck.
There were some additional bells and whistles, but once the driver learned their functions the beast became much more versatile.
One feature well known to military personal today is the ability to control the airpressure of the tires from the drivers compartment. This way the pressure could be reduced for operating in sand and incressed for roads. The crew didn't have to leave the vehicle and expose themselves to hostile fire to do so.

The read deck of the DUKW held a 10,000 or 12,000 pound winch depending on what was available that day. In addition to towing the DUKW off sand bars, and assisting other vehicles it acted as a light duty crane.

It can be argued that the DUKW was neither truck or boat, half doing two jobs. I am already on record as liking the beast, but there is some truth to that. For one, it had only one propeller which limited it's maneuverability on water. As my boating experience is with canoe's I can't really address that.
One problem the DUKWs had was the narrow streets in European towns and villages. They would take up the whole thing; there was no two way traffic.

DUKWs had to be loaded and unloaded over the side rather than with a tailgate. With light weight items its not a problem. Something that took a crane to get it there was going to need a crane to get it off.

Take this one this one transporting a field piece. I have seen a number of photos showing DUKWs carrying field pieces like this. I have no knowledge of anyone firing a field piece while mounted on a DUKW. Then again, it would only take one fresh new lieutenant no knowledge of artillery and visions of glory to try it. It's the sort of thing that leads to never ending, sometimes posthumous, fame.

I know this looks like the sort of project a couple of drunks would undertake on a bet, but the platform between the DUKWs was worked out by a couple of engineers. It allows the DUKWs to ferry heavier loads to shore than one could handle.

This last photo combines two of my favorite things, DUKWs and a P-38 lighting. I can't help but think, if they had mounted it pointed the other way, they could have gotten to shore much faster.

Car Tags

UPDATE!

It seems I took the bait on this one. I had heard about the problem from a Re-enactor friend and thought it worth passing along. When I logged in today there was an E-mail from the gentleman telling me the warning was a Hox.

I wish also to thank Texasgungeek for kindly leaving a comment with the same information. If Texasgungeek reads this, please know the reason I have not posted comments lately is beacuse your system won't let me for what ever reason.

This one struck home because I have had my vehicle targeted by people who followed me from a gun shop in the past.

I will make more effort to check stories in the future.

X X X X X

Take a good look at the picture of the tire. Do you see the spot? It took me some looking to see it. Now I check my vehicles at least once a day. Look at the license plate and bumpers too.

A re-enactor buddy of mine sent this heads-up to the shooting community.

Gangs have started doing this on cars parked at shootings ranges, gun shows and shooting events. There is a good chance cars parked at such places have firearms inside, or will later on. The problem is such parking lots are watched to keep folks from breaking into the cars. So what's a thief to do?

Mark the interesting vehicles with some sort of spot, something that won't attract attention. Later their associates can cruise parking lots of restaurants, hotels or other locations where security is only tight enough to keep theft and break-ins within acceptable limits for their insurance company. The spots tell them which veichles are worth breaking into.

I would love to say this sort of thing was restricted to places like Los Angles, but it has started happening in Texas. A shooting event in San Antonio had cars tagged for later harvesting last summer.

So, look over your car, truck or motor home for markings you didn't put there. It could be a painted dot, mark, check or some sort of symbol. It could be paint, a sticker, magic marker or even scratched into the paint. They are thieves, remember? They couldn't care less about your stuff.

Spotting this early can save you from a nasty surprise later on.

Machine Gun Packing John Deere’s

I've always loved old vehicles, but the 'green machines' are my favorites. That causes some confusion among classic tractor enthusiast. By green machines I mean military vehicles. There is a stark utilitarianism about old military vehicles that appeals to me.

When I left home in the 70's, if anyone told me I would ever buy a tractor I don't know if I would have laughed in their face or decked them. Today I am the proud owner of a 1945 Farmall H. The older tractors have their appeal as well, but I never realized John Deere built an armored combat vehicle durring World War Two. While watching Classic Tractors on the RFD channel the other night I saw a segment on the John Deere Armored A vehicles. I had never heard of these.

There were only two prototypes made, both based on the John Deere A. These tractors are common at tractor shows and parades, but a large number of them still do farm work even today.

The Armored A's were the brain child of a great grandson of John Deere, C.D. Wiman, in 1940. He felt that these small armored tractors cold be produced in mass quickly to provide cover fire for troops in the field.

The Armored A1 had the narrow tricycle front wheels of it's civilian conterpart. Anyone who has driven a tractor with this front wheel arangement (like our Farmall H) knows they can be unstable on uneven ground. They also tend to bog down in sand and mud. If this is true with the civilian tractors imagine the 9,500 Lb. Armored A. These had a top speed of 13 MPH on a hard surface road.

In addition to armor plate the Armored A had two machine gun turrets, one on each side of the vehicle. These were cramped boxes intended to house one gunner and a .30 caliber M1919 machine gun. Unfortunly John Deere's engineers had no experience with the M1919 and the turret didn't have room to mount it's ammo box. This lead to feed problems.

The turrets were manually rotated and had very poor visiblity. At first at least the guns had no travel stops, which allowed to gunners to shoot their own vehicle on occasion. Both the turrets and the drivers compartment were ice boxes in the winter and ovens in the summer, but that was in not uncommon in armored vehicles.

After the first test in January of 1941 the Army asked for a second test vehicle, the Armored A2. The most noticable were wide front wheels. Even with these improvements the Armored A's were slow moving, high profile beast any enemy gunner would have considered a birthday present. The Army also requested a third prototype without the machine gun turrets to act as a front line prime mover, but it too was rejected.

The orginal Armored A's were scraped years ago and no effort was made to preserve documentation. What remained were a handful of old photographs. The armored John Deere's were doomed to be a footnote in history until some Iowa Antique Tractor collectors got on their trail. Since nothing was left the beasties had to be replicated.

Brian Anderson tackled the job of recreating the Armored A1. Les Milleman and Curt Clark took on the A2, The result are working examples of the two 'Gun Tractors' as faithful as they can be made to the nine photos that have been located to date.

Today these two odd beasties are popular crowd pleasers in parades and vehicle shows. Since they don't belong completly to the Classic Tractor hobby or Military Vehicle hobby, they are welcomed by both.

New Project

Got a call from our friend Tom a couple of days ago, asking if we still had our Motorcycle / Sidecar rig. We do, but it hasn't run for a while.

We have been chasing parts, and recently discovered a fule leak, so I thought I was sunk. It turns out the job is a photo shoot with models posing on and around the vehicles, so as long as it looks good, that's all that matters. He asked for pictures, this is one of the photos we sent.

Tom will be taking a Willys Jeep. When he was asked about a Motorcycle with Sidecar he thought of ours. Tom is a pro, and a good friend I have worked for in the past. His vehicles work on a regular basis, so I have a good feeling about this.

This is a still photo shot so the bike not running isn't a problem. If the photographer likes the photos of the bike I sent him, I may have an interested project to report on in the near future.