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Cars I Have Loved
THE STORY OF MY LIFE
My Love Affair With Cars-
By Dale Fritz
Part 1
I really do not know when my love affair with cars started. The first car I remember was a Model T Ford that belonged to my uncle Jesse. I am not sure what year it was but probably mid '20s. It was a single-seater, black (of course) and like new all the years he had it. He used to drive down from Cheyenne, Wyoming to visit us on the farm, which was 7 miles south of Pine Bluffs. I guess he came several times a month probably as far back as 1923 or '24 when we moved from a farm near Durham, WY, close to Cheyenne. Uncle Jesse always brought goodies and sometimes presents for my 3 sisters and me. He really was Santa Claus during those depression days when farming was a low-income business. One of his gifts to me was to teach me to drive his Model T.
After we moved into Pine Bluffs we still farmed about 30 acres right on the edge of town. In fact, we lived in town. This was dry-land farming in the early years but later a well was dug and we were able to irrigate part of the land. I became involved in farm work early in my life, even driving the workhorses. I can still recall having to harrow 40 acres of corn several times a year walking behind a team of horses. I often declare that I got enough exercise from that to last me all of my life.
The first family car I can remember was a 1934 Ford V8. I even remember that Dad bought it from Earl Mathewson, probably in about 1937. It was a nice car. I remember we took a trip to Sundance, Wyoming, to visit my oldest sister, Norma and her husband, Chet. On the way home we visited Devil's Tower, Yellowstone Park and Jackson Hole. Dad even let me drive part of the way, which was the most exciting part of the whole trip for me.
I got my first car about 1938 when I was 16 years old. It was a non-descript Model T Ford which Dad got in a trade from Mr. Minnik for five and a half sacks of seed potatoes. I say it was non-descript because it has been "converted" into a pickup of sorts. It still had the hood over the engine and the front fenders, but that was all. They left the front fenders on because the front wheel would throw mud all over the driver without them. The rest of the body had been removed and a wooden box built on the back. We sat on the gas tank. In one corner of the box was an old car battery with a nail driven into the top of each post. A wire was wrapped around each nail and then run to the ignition system to supply the spark. Someone had removed the "V" shaped magnets from the flywheel; these had originally provided the electricity. Without them, no spark. It did not have a self-starter and it could kick like a mule if the spark lever wasn’t set just right. It had '34 Ford spoke wheels on the front and 28 Chevy disk wheels on the back, which were held to the hub with 3 bolts. We did not often have flat tires, but now and then one of the wheels would break off. When they did, we would block up the appropriate corner of the car and bolt it back on. We carried spare bolts. The engine did not have a motor number. Mr. Minnik said it had come out of a combine and did not have one. Without it I could not get a license, but, as it turned out, the family car was in the workshop a good part of the time, and I used the plates from it. After that, we had no plates, but it did not matter as the local authorities considered it a farm implement. One of the "farm" chores we did with it was to haul the food garbage from the local restaurant to the farm where Dad used it to feed the pigs.
I guess I had better introduce the other half of the "we" mentioned above. His name was George Sisson--Stinky for short. His dad ran Sisson's Shoe and Harness Repair Shop. In the scheme of things, farmers and shoe repairmen ranked pretty close together and very near the bottom of the social scale. Stinky and I were best friends from the time we started school together. He died about 5 years ago, but you are going to hear a lot about him, as he was my partner in this love affair with cars.
I used to pick Stinky up as I went to town to get the garbage and he would ride "shot gun" on the trip home. Several big dogs delighted in trying to bite the tires as we rode along. Stinky would pepper them with whatever he could use as ammunition from the garbage cans. Tomatoes were his favorite.
Those were some of the good old days that we think back on now and then. We did have a lot of fun in the old thing. And a part of that fun was in working on it. We used to go to the local dump called "land fills" those days and "shop" for parts, and anything else of interest we could find. That was the equivalent to going to the mall these days--at least for us. In fact, even today I would much rather go to a "junk yard" than any mall or museum.
About this time Stinky got his first car. It was a l929 something-or-other, and for the life of me I cannot remember the name of it. It was a model that no longer exists, but it was a nice car. By this time we were going to dances and often went to other towns close by.
In the fall of 1939 I went away to college in Laramie, which was 90 miles from Pine Bluffs. Stinky did not go to college. I am not sure what happened to the Model T, but I am sure it wound up in our favorite shopping place and became a part of the merchandise.
I did not have a car at the University but I had a good friend, Rex Ireland, who had a '31 Model A Ford pickup. Several times we double-dated a couple of sisters from Sheridan, and it was a little crowded the four of us in that pickup.
Rex married one of the sisters, and they are still on our Christmas card list today. When I would go home on weekends, which I often did, it would be like old times with Stinky and his car. I remember I used to sell one of my schoolbooks to get the 90 cents for the bus fare from Laramie to Pine Bluffs. My folks would come up with the 90 cents to get me back.
Going to college in those days was done on a shoestring. Uncle Jesse gave me $25 a month, and I worked on the National Youth Assistance (NYA) program and made probably about $13 more a week. I lived in the basement of the home of "Ma" Gibbs along with 4 other guys. We paid $6 per room and I bunked in with Ivan Berryman from Deaver, Wyoming. We batched and took turns doing the cooking. Everyone did their own dishes, and whoever cooked washed the pots and pans. It cost us about $15 a month for food. When I would go home on weekends, I would bring back veggies, like potatoes, sometimes. Davey Samuelson, who lived at Chugwater, would bring back half a deer whenever it was cold enough to hang it in the garage. Davey was the best cook. His mother had died when he was 11 and, being the oldest child, he had to learn to cook. He could make the best cherry pie. This was in l939 and Laramie was not a big town. A taxi would take you anywhere in town for 10 cents. Movies cost 25 cents and on Tuesday you could bring a friend for a total of 27 cents. We used to order a half gallon of ice cream from Garlette's Drug store, and they would send it out in a taxi for no extra charge. As was to be expected, there was a nail over every door on which to hang a bucket of water that would spill down onto whoever opened the door.
When I went home at the end of the first school year, I got my second car, a l927 Model T. Don Hudson, my new brother-in-law and Edna's new husband, helped my buy it for $10. I guess Don liked selling cars because that is what he did for 22 years of his working life. My new car was a single-seater, still black, in good shape. It had been reupholstered with army blankets, and had a distributor instead of the old coils. Very modern! I have a picture of it in my wallet right now and I show it to anyone who mentions the word "car". By this time Stinky has moved up in the world too and was driving a 1931 Chevy, which he named "Shasta". She hasta have gas, she hasta have oil, etc. He kept that car for 45 years. At one time, about 15 years ago, he said he had only owned 4 cars in his life and he still had three of them. His love affair with cars was more binding than mine. I have owned more than 20.
The summer of 1940 was the time of our lives and cars played a big part in it. And so did Saturday night dances. In the scheme of things, the boys from one town would go to the dance in another town. We went to Kimball, Nebraska which was 22 miles east of Pine Bluffs. Stinky and I took turns taking his car or Dad's 34 Ford. The "T" was not up to the trip; as it turned out she had a flat crankshaft and threw rods at will.
One Saturday night I was on my way to pick up Stinky and had an accident. I flipped a cigarette butt out the window and I thought it went into the back seat. When I turned around to check it, I ran into a telephone pole. I called Stinky, and he came and got me, and we went on to the dance. You will notice that one thing I learned at college was how to smoke. Dad's comment when he found out I had wrecked the car was, "I'm glad you are working so you can pay for the repairs." I did.
Sometime earlier, I had reached a point where Dad would let me take the car out on dates. We were still on the farm, and there were always 4 or 5 cows that I had to milk night and morning. When I started dating, sometimes I would get in so late after the dances that I had to milk the cows on Sunday morning before I could go to bed on Saturday night. Those late hours had to do with flat tires more than anything else.
On another occasion I took a girl up to the bluffs that overlooked the town. It was a favorite place to go because of the view. On the way home we got stuck. We walked the 2 miles to her house in the dark. It must have been a moonlight night because it was rough country and would have been very difficult in the dark. After I got her home I had to go hitch up the team of horses, drive them up the hill, pull the car out of the ditch, drive the horses back to the barn and put them to bed, call Stinky and get him to drive me back up on the hill to get the car. I am not sure, but I don't think that girl ever went out with me again.
In our spare time Stinky and I put a new rod in the "T," and I wanted to take her to the dance in Kimball. Stinky did not trust her so he took his car as well. That new rod lasted 20 miles. We limped into Kimbal, and I managed to park her in the yard of Stinky's sister, Pearl. We went on to the dance and had a good time. Afterward Stinky had a girl to take home, so he dropped me at Pearl's, and I started removing the pan and head from the "T" so we could put in another rod. By the time he got back I had the job about done. We went to bed and got a little sleep and finished the job by noon the next day. So we called up a couple girl friends and spent the afternoon on a picnic in the park. That night the "T" and I crept home at "break-in" speed.
THE STORY OF MY LIFE
My Love Affair With Cars-
By Dale Fritz
Part 2
It was now in the fall of l940 and I was back in Laramie beginning my second year at the University. Stinky was also in Laramie as he had enrolled in a vocational school to learn to be an auto mechanic. My mother had also moved to Laramie and our house turned into a boarding house with Stinky as one of the boarders. Nice for me as I was without wheels and Stinky still had Shasta. We were living it up, not letting the studies interfere with our education, especially on the weekends. We attended every University good time function and often went to dances on the weekends at the Triangle, Jack's Place and Woods Landing, outside of the city. Life was good and we were having the time of our lives. About the only change was that Stinky now had a steady girl and that cramped my style. Sometimes they wanted to be alone. But not always as theirs was a modified "steady" because they both went out on dates with others as well. Flash back. There was always a big dance at the University celebrating Sadie Hawkin's Day--when the girls invited the boys to the big dance, in the best Lil Abner tradition. Virginia M. (HS classmate) invited me and Dottie Logan (also HS classmate) arranged a blind date for Stinky with a girl named Muriel Herold, from Baggs, Wyoming. She was a cutie and pretty soon they were going steady.
At the end of the school year I got a job working for the University at the Agronomy Farm a couple of miles west of Laramie. Enter my third car. I bought a 32 Chevy roadster with a fold down top, a rumble seat and two spare tires in fender wells in the front fenders. I bought it from Byron Nelson, a classmate of Stinky's at the trade school, for $50. It had a name: Mayflower.
It was the dream car of every college student in those days. I was one step above heaven. Of course, it was 9 years old and did have some mechanical problems. It used oil. We put in a quart of used oil every week without even checking to see if it needed it. And the two spare tires were not enough. Usually I would have a flat tire on the way to or from the Agronomy Farm. I would call Stinky and he would come out and rescue me. We put his spare tire on my car and I would run on it the rest of the week. On Sat we took his spare off the Mayflower and put it on Shasta, just in case. On Sunday we would fix my tire and put it on my car. The only photo I have of the Mayflower was taken on Sunday because it shows it with one wheel up on the jack.
We were operating on a pretty tight budget then and I don't think we ever completely filled the gas tank on the Mayflower in all that time. Often, when we wanted to go "cruising" we would drive up the steep hill just outside of Laramie. We would go until we ran out of gas and then coast back to town. One day when we were out cruising, the car suddenly just stopped. The engine kept running but we went nowhere. Stinky soon diagnosed the problem as failure of the retainer bushing on the left rear wheel, because the wheel was sticking out more than normal. We jacked up the car and he could push the wheel back in and we were on our way--for about 6 blocks and then it happened again. We soon solved the problem by driving 5 blocks and then going around the block to the right, which would push the wheel back in place. We tired of this and bought the necessary part for 75 cents and fixed it. Somewhere along the line we lost the top for the car and never did find it.
Summer passed and it was the best of summers. My memory of it has become a blur but we did have good times. We were living it up. But all good summers end and it was time to start my third year at the University. It was September of l941. Stinky and Muriel were still going steady and we did occasionally double date.
The next thing I knew, I fell in love, and that really cramped my style. Especially when I fell in love with Stinky's girl. Didn't mean to do it but I did. And the next thing I knew we were going steady. And the next thing we knew - Pearl Harbor. And the next thing I knew --I had joined the Marines and I spent the next 3 years 1 month and 24 days out of circulation. Twenty-seven months were spent in the Pacific theater of war. The only cars in my life were Jeeps and those only on rare occasions. And only on even rarer occasions did I get to drive.
One of the few times I recall I did get to drive was when Sgt Allen asked (told) me to come with him to take a replacement radio to a contingent who were providing air raid warning duty for a bunch of CBs who were unloading ships about 50 miles north on Guadalcanal. This was late in the war and the enemy had long since been vanquished, but was still bombing the island. We started out late in the afternoon and made most of the drive after dark.. It was spooky as there were still a few Japanese on the island and they had not given up the fight. Most of the road was just a bulldozed trail through the jungle. When we got to the CB site it was lit up like a city with flood lights everywhere. So the Sgt handed over the radio and we started home because we felt safer driving through the jungle than in the middle of that lit up target for enemy bombers. When the Sgt got tired he let me drive for a while. As we were passing close to Henderson Air Field we heard bombs dropping close by. The Sgt shouted, "Get this thing off the road" so I turned off and found I was driving down the middle of a great wide paved road--which turned out to be a runway of the air field. We stopped the jeep and got in the ditch beside the runway until the bombing stopped. When we went on the Sgt did the driving. Bit I did get to sit in the back seat of a jeep a lot. I was a radio operator in Headquarters of the 3rd Marine Division. That meant that we stayed back with the General and were never very close to the fighting. When we first went overseas we went to Guadalcanal--after the island had been secured. The first night in our new camp I was on the air raid warning net, which means I sat in the back of a jeep which was where the radio was located. All of a sudden I got the warning and I stuck my head out the side of the jeep and blew a whistle 3 times. We had not found the siren yet. Then I got back in the jeep and put the ear phone back on to listen for the all clear signal. About then a string of 6 bombs hit about 300 yards from our camp. Before the second one hit the ground I was under the jeep--earphones and all. That was our initiation to the real war.
The 3rd Division took part in the campaigns at Bougainvillea, Guam and Iwo Jima returning to the States on May 2nd l945.
THE STORY OF MY LIFE
My Love Affair With Cars-
By Dale Fritz
Part 3
Muriel and I were married in Richmond Calif. on May 26, l945 while I was still on furlough having just returned from overseas. Muriel was not feeling very well, at the time, but we all thought it was just the excitement of the event. On the 3rd day after the wedding she finally went to a doctor. After checking her over, he asked, "Is this your first pregnancy, Mrs Fritz?" She said, "Oh, I can't be pregnant! I just got married 3 days ago." He smiled a knowing little smile and said, "We'll check". He did and his diagnosis was yellow jaundice. He gave her some pills and said it was all right to travel across the US as it was just a symptom and she could not give it to anyone. It wasn't until a month later when I was in the Philadelphia Naval Hospital that we found out it was really infectious hepatitis and it CAN be given to someone else. We found out the truth when there was an article in the newspaper saying that infectious hepatitis had been brought back from the Mediterranean theater of war by returning servicemen. I was in the hospital 3 weeks and 2 days; I went AWOL twice a week to be with my sweetie. I was a "bed patient" so I was not allowed to go on liberty Wednesdays and weekends as were ambulatory patients. But some of the other fellows took pity on me and loaned me their liberty cards and slept in my bed so there would be a body there when they made the 3 o'clock bed check. I wonder how many of them came down with infectious hepatitis?
We found out later that Muriel's sister, two brothers and the dog all had infectious hepatitis as a result of our visit at her home on our way east. They said the dog's eyes were yellow, and he just lay around all day, so it could be.
Three months later the war ended and I was discharged. We decided to buy a car and drive back to Richmond so we became the owners of a l941/46 Ford four door sedan. During the war they did not change car models but just continued making the l941 model and called it the l946 Ford when the war ended. The one we had was black with gray fender "skirts"--over the rear wheels. It did have one feature, in l945 that has come around again in recent years. The radio had a scanner that was operated by a button on the floor. It was a nice car and a great leap from a '32 Chevy to a '46 Ford.
One weekend before we left Philadelphia, we took it on a shake-down run to Washington DC which it and we survived. Later in my life I heard the saying: "Survival Is Success". Looking back I can see that it applied at that time in my life. Surviving the war was certainly success. And what glorious success it was. Surviving the trip to DC was both glorious and a success.
Hook and Chubby Allen, a Marine buddy from Denver and his wife made the trip west with us. We started out in late September planning to go via Niagara Falls. The first leg of the journey was to New York City and then north along the Hudson river to Albany. It is interesting that shortly after leaving Albany, headed for Buffalo, we drove through Schenectady where we later lived for 25 years. Niagara Falls were lovely and all of us enjoyed them in the traditional way. We had to have some work done on the car in Detroit which delayed us a bit. Hook and Chubby took the train on to Denver and we swung a bit south and spent time with some of Muriel's relatives in southern Illinois.
Our next stop was in Cheyenne to see folks there and then on to Baggs to spend time with Muriel's family. Muriel's Dad and I did some more work on the car there, too. I remember we found that one of the piston rings was broken and needed to be replaced, and there was no place to buy new rings. However, in the shop we found that one of the old rings, which had been removed during the overhaul of the Farmall tractor, fit nicely, so we used it.
By now winter was setting in and it was getting cold. Since we were headed for California we did not want to put antifreeze in the car so we drained the radiator every night. However, we found out that the small radiator in the heater did not drain. When we started out to drive north to Powell, Wyoming, it took a long time for the heater to thaw out and begin to put out some heat.
We stopped in Powell to visit with Ivan and Faith Berryman and also with Frank and "Shorty" Killiam. Frank and I were in the Marines together in radio school and for the 27 months we were overseas. (Frank and his best friend whose last name was Ketchum were always known as Ketchum 'n Killum.) When we drained the car that night we took the heater out of the car and took it into the house so it would not freeze up again.
The next day Frank soldered a drain petcock in the bottom of the heater radiator so we could drain it and not have to remove it again. This was the first time we had ever been to Powell and little did we know, at that time, that Powell would be our home for four years, later in our lives. We left Powell and had to go north to Billings, Montana, because the Yellowstone Park road was snowed in. West of Billings the roads were snow-covered, and we went into a spin and slid off into the ditch. Not a car passed us by, in either direction. Everyone stopped to help us get back on the road and on our way. Our next stop was to visit Muriel's sister, Eloise in Nyssa, Oregon.
By this time the trip was getting long so we decided to try to make it all the way from Nyssa to Richmond, California in one day. The best laid plans--and all that. We had to travel through southeast Oregon, and that is about the most desolate area I had ever seen. We had not been underway very long when we had a flat tire. I put on the spare, and we kept looking for a filling station along the way where we could get the spare tire fixed. It was 80 anxious miles before we came to a station, but their electricity was off so they could repair the tire but not pump it up. After many more anxious miles we found a station that could pump up the tire. To make a long story short, we had 5 flat tires on that trip. It got down to where we had 4 tires and 5 tubes and no tire pump. We carried the extra tube as a spare and when we had a flat I had to put the good tube in the tire and then hitch a ride to the closest town to have it pumped up and hitch a ride back to the car. I'm not sure I thought much about guardian angels in those days but, looking back, I am sure they were with us and busy. When we got to my folks' house in Richmond we had only 75 cents left--just enough to repair one more inner tube. Tire rationing was still on and we did not have the option, or the money, to buy new tires.
THE STORY OF MY LIFE
My Love Affair With Cars-
By Dale Fritz
Part 4
In March of l946 we moved to Laramie where I could attend the University under the GI bill. Muriel also enrolled to continue her education. We were provided an 8-by-20 foot house-trailer in the Veterans’ Trailer Park in what used to be the parking lot for the boys' dorm. Everything about our new "home" was running. We had to run outside to get our water out of a faucet, run outside to the bathroom, run outside to take a shower. It was a rough life but we were in the midst of a lot of veterans’ families doing the same thing. We were still living in the luxury of surviving the war. It couldn't have been any better than that. had to look for easy classes in which I could get good grades to balance the 13 hours of "unbalanced 4s", which is an indication of how much fun I had had before. I took welding, auto mechanics, machine shop and carpentry, all of which were available under the Vo-Ed program. I had to take some other required courses as well and I made the honor roll for the first time in my life.
And we had to have a car. We bought a '37 Willy’s from Russell Oberg, who later became our brother-in-law when he married Muriel's older sister, Elsie. We paid him $200; the price was so high because it had 4 new tires. The '37 Willy’s was one of the first small cars to hit the market and it was not all that popular. However, it was the basis of the army jeep, which I had already gotten to know so well.
It was not long before we found out that there was water in the oil, which meant a cracked block or a cracked head. Major problems. Byron Nelson was still around and was my mechanical advisor on such matters. One day I was driving down a street and I saw a '37 Willy’s coupe up on blocks near a small grocery store. I stopped and asked the lady if it was for sale. She said she had just had a letter from her son saying to go ahead and sell it. I asked what she wanted for it and she said $25. I snapped it up. We put the four tires and wheels from the other '37 Willy’s on this one and we had our "new" car. It had a couple of super features - a gasoline heater and a push button radio. It had a few dents and tears in the body, but I was able to repair them in the welding class and paint the whole car in the auto mechanics class. We painted it blue. It was not a fast car. Our cruising speed became 45 MPH which seemed to be a comfortable speed. Any faster and it used a lot of oil. We drove it to Powell and back once and made a number of trips to Muriel's home in Baggs.
After graduation I got a job as Superintendent of the University Agricultural Substation at Worland in central Wyoming. We traded up to a '36 Ford sedan, which was bigger and faster and more dependable than the Willy’s. It was a sort of a gray-rust color, as I recall. After a short time it did not smell very good. I used the car to pull a trailer hauling dry sugar beet pulp from the local sugar factory; it was used to feed the sheep in one of the research programs. There are not many folk around today who know what sugar beet pulp smells like, but those who do are holding their noses and making an awful face just thinking about it!
The Ag Substation was at the State Boys' School (reform school, it was called in those days). The state legislature had given 100 acres of the School's land to the University to be used for a Research Station, which did not please the Superintendent of the Boys' School. It took him a year to prove that it would not work, due to his lack of cooperation and outright hindrance. That station was closed and we were transferred to Powell to run the Station there. We were delighted because we were among friends and happy to be there. It was in Powell that our third child was born. Our first, Roger was born in Laramie, Karen in Worland and now Sandy in Powell.
And it was in Powell that we bought our next car and first new car--a 1948 Kaiser. A red Kaiser. At that time, there was a long wait to buy a known-brand car, but there was no line of people wanting to buy Kaisers. We traded in the Ford, but I am sure we did not get much for it. No matter, we had a new car. There is always something special about a new car but extra special when it is your first one. The smell is special, too. The Kaiser was a big car, smooth riding and fast. I had to be on my toes to keep it from creeping up to 80 or 90 MPH.
After a couple years in Powell we were transferred to the Station at Cheyenne. That was sort of coming home for me, to my birthplace. This was great. It was a dry land research station with no irrigation to be checked at night, a lovely big house to live in, and with family and friends all around. We thought we might just follow in the footsteps of the man we replaced when he retired. He had been on that job from 1913 until l950. But it did not happen.
The Research Station was a dry land station in a dry land. The average rainfall was only about 20 inches, and the main “crop” was livestock. Cattle and sheep which ate the native grasses for their food. This station experimented with sheep. As the Superintendent of the station I was not involved in the planning of the experiments. The professors from the University in Laramie (50 miles west) did the planning and often came and did the planting. We who worked at the station just watched the plants grow and sometimes did some weeding and spraying as required. In the fall we harvested the crops (being very careful to not mix the harvested plants), and then threshed and weighed the results. The results were sent to the Professors, and they determined the yield of the various crops.
With the sheep we did much the same as we did with the grain. It was more a test of the grass and not the sheep. In this case small plots of grass land were fenced and seeded to the grasses to be tested. To get the results we had to weigh the sheep and we had to cut the grass, by hand, and weigh it as well. I was actually using my experience of having grown up on a farm more than what I had learned in school. Since we were not too busy I spent my time designing and making equipment for use at the Station. This turned out to be good practice for what I was going to do next.
Early in year of 1953 while at the University office, my boss said to me, “Hey, I just turned down a $7000 job for you today.” It seems the University had just bid for a project from the Federal Government to send four Agricultural Teachers to some country called Afghanistan, and they asked my boss if he thought I would be interested. He told them no, not because he did not want to lose me but because he would have to hire someone else. When I got home that day Muriel and I looked up the country to find out where it was. We talked about it and decided that might be fun for a couple years. Our 3 children were 3, 4 and 5 years old and I can’t recall how that entered into our decision now. So we were selected as one of the four. Muriel's brother, Alan and his brand new wife also signed up, and it was a comfort to have them along, as we did not know just what we were getting into. The other two chosen were Dr. Winters, from Idaho (as leader), and Merril Asay, also from the University of Wyoming. As it turned out we stayed in Afghanistan for 11 years under 3 different organizations.
But that is getting ahead of the story. From here on in I am not writing just from memory. My mother trained me to write home every week whenever I was not close enough to talk to her. And I did. She kept the letters and we have them. Muriel has gone through them and “culled” out the insignificant parts, and I have before me the type-written copies of those letters. I have one of them before me now so I can put my memory in neutral and type away. But I am not going to do all of it because we are talking about cars.
At this time we were driving the 1946 Kaiser, built by Henry J. Kaiser after he quit making ships for the war effort. To buy a standard American car required going on a waiting list, and the lines were long. A Kaiser could be bought immediately, and that is what we did. It was a great car. Big. Streamlined. Powerful. It was hard to keep it below 90 MPH if you did not pay attention. We could take it to Afghanistan, at Government expense, if we wanted to, but we didn’t, so we left it with my Dad.
Our departure date was set for mid February and we started our great adventure. We flew to Denver on a DC3. I had flown in one before when I was in the Marines, to spend 22 hours with my folks before going overseas. And we didn't know it, but we would fly in many of them in Afghanistan in later years. We made a stop in Washington DC to check in with the offices there, and to get our last two medical shots. We flew on to NYC where we boarded a plane that looked very familiar to me. It was the post war model of the bombers I watched fly over us while I was on Iwo Jima on their way to Japan and back. They made pretty good passenger planes. They had sleepers, like those on the train, and a bar in the basement. That was back in the days when flights took long enough that you had time for a nap between meals and the Stewardess had time to play with the children. We flew First Class back then which is not true today. We flew to London, then to Istanbul, Beirut and on to Karachi, Pakistan, where we had to stay 2 nights waiting for our flight to take us north to Peshawar, which was the end of the flying for us.
From there we went on to Kabul by taxis. We had two American cars, driven by two men that we could not communicate with at all. Muriel and with the girls and the kids rode in the first car because the second one drove in the dust of the first one. Alan and I rode in it. We couldn't communicate with the drivers at all to make “rest stops”. We had go over a high mountain pass and near the top of it a wheel broke off of one of the cars. They did get it fixed, and we arrived at the Kabul American Guest house at about midnight. We were so glad to see people we could talk to, water we could drink and beds. The next morning Muriel and the kids were all sick with stomach trouble, which we soon learned, was called KTs, which stood for "Kabul Trots." ("Kabul Tummy" for the kids.) We got to know it very well.
It was 6 weeks before we were able to get started teaching, and by the time we did we had learned a lot of things. The students did not speak English, and they did not take notes in class. It turned their way of learning was by memorizing the material, and they could do it very well if they did not understand it. The man in charge of the storeroom was responsible for the materials in the condition in which he received it. So wee couldn'tt get our supplies out of it at all.
The house we moved into was made out of sun-dried bricks made out of the soil in the yard. The walls were 2 feet thick and the flat mud roof leaked when it rained- or snowed. Early on we found out that we had made a big mistake by not bringing a car. Several rides in busses over rough roads and we sent off a letter to Dad to send us a car. Eight months later it arrived. It was a l949 Plymouth stationwagon woody. Just right for us as it would carry a lot of passengers. It had been shipped in a “box” and when it arrived in Peshawar we had to go down and get it. It was just between Christmas and New Years, and I got Marrel to go with me to pick it up. When we got there and managed to “unwrap” it, we found that the tires were missing. The wheels had been removed and were wired to the board inside the box. Robbers had jumped onto the flat-car of the train and pried off some of the boards to get inside. Replacing the tires and wheels was like a plot from a cheap movie. We could not find wheels that were the right size, so had to take two sets of two wheel that did not match, but they did fit. Tires were rationed, but somehow the driver managed to get them for $600. That sounded like it was much more than it was, because our money was worth twice a much as what we paid.
We got the car up and running about noon of the 5th day and decided to start home. But we did not know how to find the road that would take us to Kabul. We asked 4 people for directions, and they all gave us the wrong information. But finally we did run onto it and started home. All went well over the Khyber Pass and through the Port of Entry in Afghanistan. A little farther along the way, we started up the road to a high steep pass. This was the same one where the wheel had broken off the taxi coming in the first time. But this was winter and it was snowing, The farther we went the more it snowed until suddenly we could not go at all. We were stuck. And we would have stayed stuck, and who knows what else, if my father had not put a set of car chains in the car. We put them on and were able to make it over the hill passing a number of trucks which were stuck. By the time we got to Kabul the snow was about 2 feet deep. Even so we managed to get the car into the compound of the house where we lived. And it stayed right there for two week before we could get it out and go for a ride.
That ride was almost the end of our stay in Afghanistan. While driving down the snow-packed street with the whole family in the car we hit a man and knocked him down. We had been told that if you hit a person, you do not stop but you head straight for the American Embassy and get inside of the walls. The least that could happen to you would be that you would be sent home. If you were in the Embassy compound. And we were not. The man we hit was not hurt, because he was actually sitting on the street and being pushed along by the front bumper. And just a short distance in front of us was a policeman, and he came running our way, and he was taking off his heavy belt as he came. The man we had hit saw him too, and he picked up his stuff and began running the other way. We learned later that the police were trying to get the people to walk on the new sidewalks and not in the street. Their teaching tool was the belt. That was a close call.
Our car did play a large part in the lives of many of the 10 or 12 other families that were living in the same area. We the only ones with a car. It served as a taxi almost any place we would go. Especially to the weekly movie at the American library at the Embassy which was about 3 miles away. It served to deliver wives to the hospital where they could deliver their babies. We did have another close call when we went to Peshawar some time later. As usual we had as many people in it as we could pack in and this time there were 9 of us. We were going through a somewhat narrow part of the road, with the river on one side of us and a high bank on the other, when suddenly there was a log across the road so that we had to stop. Beside the rock was a man with a gun. He was talking to a man who was behind the rock at the side of the road that we couldn't see. All we could do was site and wait. In a little while he moved the tree and let us go on our way. As we got to where we could see who was behind the rock it was a man who was much better dressed than we one we could see. He was their leader and he had a rifle and a bandoleer of bullet on his shoulder. We realized that we had once again been saved from deep trouble. Robbing cars was something that was not uncommon in that area. In fact I think the men who stopped us were remembering that four men who stopped and robbed the British courier car a few week earlier had been hung not far from there.
When we reached the end of our two years we had to sell our car, but we coudln't sell it to an Afghan. We had to sell it to a foreigner who had the same exemption from duty that we had. For some months I had been haggling with a Pakistani shop keeper for an old cap-and-ball over-and-under double-barrel pistol with a little bit of gold inlay on it. He wanted 2000 afs for it and I would only give him 1500 afs. Every time I went by that shop I would stick my head in and ask him how much. He would say ”2000 afghanis, very old, it is an antigue.” I would just say, "Too much," and pass on. When it came time to sell the car I went to his shop and asked him if wanted to by it. He said, how much. I said 20,000 afghanis. He would say, "Too much," and I would say, "It is very old. It is an antique." But I did pay his price for the gun before I left and gave it to my friend, Ivan Barryman, who had a collection of about 100 guns. The gun I gave him was no longer cap-and-ball. He had searched out its history and knew all about it. It had been a Flint-Lock in the beginning and he had restored it that way again.
THE STORY OF MY LIFE
My Love Affair With Cars-
By Dale Fritz
Part 5
We returned to the Cheyenne Research Station and my old job. Once settled, it was time to buy a car. We were in that enviable position of being able to pay cash and had no car to trade in. I went to Denver to a dealer called Johnny Harper Motors because he had won a trip to Paris the year before for selling more Ford cars than any dealer in a five state area. When I told the salesman I wanted a red and white station wagon with radio, heater and overdrive, he did a little figuring on his note pad and said, "That car lists at $3275 but with cash and no trade in I can let you have it for $2575 I almost flipped because it was so low but, in my best Afghan haggling mode, I got him to take off another $50. This was our second new car. It was a great car. My pride and joy.
It did have one flaw and that was the Firestone tires. Three of them threw the tread off of the tire in the next year and a half.
In l955 we were transferred back to Powell and lived there for a couple years. But I never really left Afghanistan. I kept trying to come up with ways to improve their lot. I did come up with an idea for a hand pump and an animal powered irrigation pump. When the Dean of the Ag school visited the station and I showed him what I was doing he suggested I consider going back to Afghanistan, as there was an opening for an Irrigation Specialist at the Research Station the University was starting there. So in l957 we returned to Afghanistan and the red and white Ford went with us. It arrived whole and healthy this time.
Car-wise, it was a pretty routine tour. One story has to do with the time I bought 2 new tires and tubes to replace those Firestone "throw-offs". I had them mounted at a garage, just like back home. The next morning I noticed that one of them was a little low. When I attached the hand pump to the valve stem I noticed that it was the same tubeless valve stem that had been in the wheel before I had the new tires and tubes installed. The guy had not installed the tubes. I went back to the garage. I walked up the dealer and just held out my hand without saying a word. He went into the storeroom and when he came out he placed the inner tubes in my hand without saying a word. I ran on those tubeless non tubeless tires for the rest of the time we were there. I sold the car with a spare tire and two spare tubes.
However things did not work out as hoped. The development of irrigation pumps were not in the work plan at the Research Station so I was not able to do what I had hoped. I had to do the development on the side. The hand pump developed into what we called an "Inertia Pump". We built it there and it was widely used to lift water from shallow wells in compound yards to water the gardens. I felt pretty good about that until I found out that they did not grow vegetables in their gardens, but flowers. Even so, it met their need and gladdened their hearts. Usually it is very difficult to introduce new ideas and devices in developing countries. However the pump introduced itself in this case. After we got to the point where the pump was actually working my counterpart and I would decided what changes we wanted to make in the pump and then take it to a tinsmith and he would do the work. The pump was being made from sheet metal because PCV had not yet appeared in the world. Before we had reached the point where we considered the development to be complete we began to see people walking down the street carrying one of the pumps over their shoulder. The tinsmith was making them and selling them. It was estimated at one time that there were 400 of them in use in the country.
The other pump was what we called a "Slow Speed Centrifugal Pump" which I invented. When I first developed the idea I tested it by starting a garden hose siphoning water out of the 55 gallon barrel. I then grabbed the hose about 8 feet from the end and started whirling it around over my head. It worked. The water was pumped from the barrel even when I climbed a stepladder. We developed it to the point of having bicycle-powered, tractor-powered and bullock-powered models of it in Kabul. This work was all done "on the side" and outside of the secure research area. One morning we found that someone had destroyed the pump during the night and that was the end of that. I have since learned that this pump was invented in the 10th century and was the first pump that pumped water by centrifugal force. Not long after its development it was found to be too inefficient for practical use. Even so it was efficient enough to be an improvement over methods used in Afghanistan then - and now. I am still working on that pump and the use of PCV pipe instead of iron pipe improves the efficiently considerably. The Inertia Pump was later developed into an engine-powered pump that would self prime from 29 feet and pump 70 pounds of pressure of either air or water. The man who developed it lives in England and he started with plans sent by VITA --plans which I had sent to him. The engine powered pump is called a Spate pump and was on sale in the US at one time.
My relationship with the Wyoming Team did not allow me to do the work that I had been sent to do and I resigned shortly before our tour was up. That made Muriel the breadwinner because was teaching school in the Kabul Christian School. That gave me plenty of time on development projects. At one point a friend arranged for the American Ambassador to view the work I was doing and that resulted in our being hired by the Asia Foundation to work in Kabul for another 2 years.
When I resigned from the Wyoming Team I was no longer a contract employee so I no longer had the right to have a car unless I paid the import duty on it, so, we had to sell that beautiful red and white Ford. We sold it to another American, so we did see it around.
Neither were we entitled to continue living in the house provided by the Wyoming team so we moved into the building that was being used as the school where Muriel was teaching. We had 3 children and we moved in with Maynard and Shirley Eyestone, who also had 3 children. It did make a "full house" but it worked out very well. Also, they did have an old car that I was able to borrow from time to time. It was what I would call a "clunker" and it did have a bad habit of getting stuck in low gear now and then. When it did it on me the first time I had to drive back to the school in low gear. When I ask Maynard what to do about it he said, "See Shirley. She knows about such things''. She did. She lifted the hood and reached down in the innards and pulled or wiggled the guilty part and it was fixed.
Once while going to Peshawar we hit a rock and punctured a hole in the pan, so oil was leaking out. It was just a small leak and we managed to get on into Peshawar before running out of oil. I remember I had it fixed at a local garage, which required removing the pan, welding the hole shut and reinstalling the pan. The whole job only cost me about $20. A friend had a similar experience. He not only knocked a hole in the pan but also in his gas tank. He was able to temporarily patch both holes with the black gunk that comes with tubeless tire repair kits--even with the oil and gas running out at the time. Good stuff to have along.
The best car story is one about George Terry. He was on a trip in northern Pakistan when something caused the motor fan to go into the radiator and all the water ran out. He was stranded a long way from anywhere and no way to fix it. A local fellow came along and said he could fix it. He had some raisins and cotton that he put in his mouth and chewed on them for awhile. He used it to plug up all the holes in the radiator. It worked well enough to hold water so George could get back to the closest place where he could have it repaired.
One more. An American was traveling in northern Afghanistan and broke one end off of the leaf spring. He was at a complete loss as to what to do with no garage at hand. A local man, again, said he could fix it. He carved out a piece of wood in an "H" shape. The bottom part fit over the end of the broken spring and the upper part fit over the car frame. To hold it in place the man wrapped a lot of cotton rope round. He then threw water on the rope that caused it to shrink and make it tight. It worked. After driving for a while the rope would dry out and be loose enough to cause it to rattle. The American was instructed to throw more water on it and it would tighten up again--which it did.
We have a photo of a tire repairman sewing up a hole in an inner tube with needle and thread to repair a puncture. He sewed up the tear in the tube to keep it in place while he applied a vulcanized patch.
THE STORY OF MY LIFE
My Love Affair With Cars-
By Dale Fritz
Part 6
At the end of our second tour in Afghanistan with the University of Wyoming we came home in the spring--the end of the school year as Muriel was teaching in the school for non-Afghan children. We had sold the red and white Ford to an American who worked for one of the many USAID American contract organizations.
On the way home we did a little traveling in Europe. First we traveled around Switzerland and then into Germany where we met up with Muriel's brother Gary who was in the U.S. Army there. He was able to get leave and came with us as we toured around Germany, Austria and Switzerland in a rented VW Combi. Who remembers the Combi these days? We saw a lot of the farm country and were impressed to see that they farmed right up to the edge of the paved edge of the road, with no barrow pit at all. We saw workhorses pulling wagons and sometimes there would only be one horse pulling a wagon that was rigged for a two horse hitch. We also saw honey wagons spreading liquefied manure on the fields. We stopped in Munich and visited some of Hitler's old hangouts. We stopped in for tea in one of them and my most lasting memory is seeing a tea pot that "sniffed" the last drop back into the spout to keep if from running down onto the tablecloth. We spent the nights in Guesthouses, which would be called Bed and Breakfast places in the US today. The interesting thing was that all the German language we had was the few words that Gary had picked up. The only word he knew for food was Weiner schnitzel and we ate a lot of that. Usually there would be someone at the Guesthouse who could speak a little English, so we were able to have a little variety to our meals. We also went to Austria, but not on purpose. We were heading south through those massive mountains and crossed the boarder into what we thought was Switzerland. We found out it was not when they would not accept our Swiss money. We were we in Austria. A short time later we crossed another border, which did put us in Switzerland. Don't recall just what we did do in Switzerland this time other than drive through it to get Gary back to his base.
We spent a little time in Denmark and at Tivoli I do recall the kids riding around a track in miniature cars and going to a circus that was in a permanent building and not in a tent. We then flew over the North Pole to Anchorage, Alaska to spend 3 weeks with Muriel's sister, Elsie, and her family. She and Russ had drawn a veteran's 80 acre homestead site right after the war and were living on it 21 miles from Anchorage. It was good for them, but I did not fall in love with Alaska.
We flew on to Seattle and made our way on home to Cheyenne. My brother-in-law, Don, was still selling cars and he had a 1955 green four-door Desoto Firedome Eight waiting for us. I am sure it had been owned by a little old lady who never went outside the city limits. It still had that new car smell and was as clean as a pin. And it rode like a dream. This was our first car with an automatic transmission. It ranks high on the list of cars I have loved. Even better than the red and white Ford. We did not have it long enough to take a picture of it except of on 8 mm movie film. The most memorable trip in the Desoto was made by Muriel, when she had to drive over the mountain from Cheyenne to Laramie in a snow storm. It took her two hours to make the one-hour drive - on snow packed roads in blowing snow. The car performed beautifully while many cars, even busses, were sliding off the road. You have to have been over that pass in such weather to appreciate the accomplishment.
Since I was no longer connected with the Univ. of Wyo. I got a job framing houses for a local contractor in Cheyenne. Times had changed. This was the time when 60 Minute Man Missiles were being installed within a 60-mile radius of Cheyenne and the only way to get a house to live in was to buy one, which we did, at 745 Apache Street in Indian Hills.
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