I was born (1931) and raised in Malvern, Arkansas and except for a few years of residence in Dallas County I lived in Malvern until September of 1957 when we moved to Alabama. These are some of the memories I have of the vehicles I owned while living there in Malvern.
I list below the ones that I recall and in the general order that they were owned. Sometimes I would own two or three at a time. Also, when I call some of them cars I use the term very loosely! I always liked to work on cars and would buy them, work on them and try to make a dollar on them when I sold them. Note that you could buy five gallons of gas for a dollar then!
All were used and most were abused! Some were real clunkers. None had turn signals, side mirrors or an air conditioner. Most had side window vents and/or a front center vent to let outside air in (also rain water!). Most had no heater. Some few had a South Wind gasoline heater. (A very small gas line was run from a drilled opening in the top of the carburetor down to the heater and this actually fueled the unit.) It would literally burn the shoes off of your feet! They had no seat belts or air bags. They had either hand operated windshield wipers or vacuum operated units. With the vacuum operated units you had to let up on the gas pedal so the engine would have enough vacuum to operate the wipers! None had a windshield defroster. On my 1934 Ford I would put small candles on the dashboard to heat the windshield. The dashboard in cars were all metal back then! All had manual transmissions. Some after-market items added to the cars were sealed beam headlights, turn signals, steering wheel spinner, blue beaded tail lights, squirrel tail, special horns, false wide white walls added to the tires, larger cross section tires with smaller diameter wheels, seat covers, radio and aerial.
Here are some cars that I owned while living with my parents (Evans and Gladys (Ennis) Taylor) on the rocky hill near the intersection of the Butterfield Road and the Old Military Road:
My first vehicle ever owned was a 1931 Chevrolet truck. I purchased it from my brother-in-law Roy Huckelby. After serving as an MP in WW2 he took courses in auto body repair and this was one of his project vehicles. It was a good old truck for it�s time, it was about sixteen years old. It had a six cylinder engine with the valves in the head. It would start most of the time with the starter but at home I always let it roll down the hill then I would let the clutch out to start it. It�s color was black.
It had a nasty habit of stripping a rear axle key. The rear hubs were held onto the axles with a hex nut and cotter key and the engine torque was transmitted through the key that was fitted into the hub and axle. When that key stripped I could not move the truck so, wherever I was I would jack up the wheel and make repairs there. I always carried spare axle keys, axle nuts and cotter keys. Some times the nut would come off and be lost.
It had another nasty habit of losing a front wheel and hub. The hubs used ball bearings and tended, when a rough place in the road was crossed, to push the hex spindle nut completely off. One time this happened as I was crossing a creek and I had to work while my shoes were full of water! Yes, I always carried spare nuts and cotter keys for this also! Later I found I could buy a special nut that could be tightened as the regular nut but it also had the capability of being tightened on the spindle like a chuck in a drill motor. That solved the front problem! I considered this one of my main cars.
Another main car was a blue 1936 Chevrolet two door sedan.
It was a good car �as cars went� in those days. It would always start going down the hill and would sometimes even start with the starter! When in Malvern I would always park on the hill just South of the train depot, boy it sure would start there on that big hill! After work at the Van Veneer Plant I always had my work buddies push me to get it started. This car had good hydraulic brakes (most of the time). I carried my mom to Hot Springs in this car once. I parked there on a hill kinda behind Bath House Row so I could let it roll in order to start it. When we were leaving I popped the clutch but it would not start. I stopped immediately so I would have enough hill left to try to start it again after I did some checking. Being a pretty good troubleshooter I quickly determined that the fuel pump had stopped working. Now in those days there were no cell phones, no auto parts store on every corner, no road service to call and no money to pay for them even if they existed! In our old cars we always carried tools, a jack, a water bucket, a siphoning hose, hay wire and other quality items! Well I had to get mama home so I innovated again! When you raise the hood (engine side covers) on those old Chevys you see two horizontal rods connected from the firewall to the radiator. Well I siphoned some gas from my gas tank into my water bucket. I then, using hay wire, hung the bucket of gas from those rods so it would be higher then the carburetor. Next I put one end of the hose into the bucket of gas, tied it in place with another piece of wire, sucked on the hose to get gas flowing and then connected the lower end of the hose to the carburetor input tube and fastened it with yet another piece of hay wire. Now I relied on gravity to do it�s thing! I let the car roll a few feet, popped the clutch and she started! I drove toward home and when I got to the top of the mountain between Hot Springs and Malvern I stopped and put more gas into the bucket and this got us home. Looking back I know I did a very stupid thing that could have killed both of us but I had to get mama home. God protected us, I am sure mama was praying all the way home.
Another vehicle was a 1929 Model A Ford strip-down. No, I can�t call it a car. All of the body from the dash backward was removed. I sat on a wood box seat to drive it, needless to say the rides were sometimes �thrilling�. It really got exciting when I would drive over the hills that were between our house and the Cooper Church! I nearly lost my then girlfriend Betty from beside me on that box when we went over one of those hills! Brakes? No, you could not keep brakes working on these old Fords.
Now I had seen those old flat head V8 Fords around town that would start before you could get your finger off of the dash mounted start button. Man I just had to have something that would start that easy!
Yep, I bought a nice black 1934 Ford two door with that little factory installed trunk on the back. NICE! This car had those so called suicide doors, the ones that opened at the front. I dolled it up with seat covers, home made fender skirts, an old Model A Ford horn, extra tail lights with blue buttons in the center, small red parking lights on the front (yep, got caught by Patrolman Scott and had to remove them), outside mirrors and a steering knob. Sometimes I had a squirrel tail hanging on a mirror. I rigged up a Model T Ford coil to shock people I didn�t want in the car, but that is a story in itself! This car would start in any kind of weather anywhere and sold me on the old flat head Fords. This car was so nice (noticeable?) that I caught me a girlfriend and married her a year later. Yes, she is still with me, she is Betty Sue (Tillery) Taylor, daughter of Walter Scott and Mamie Lee Tillery of Malvern. We drove that old Ford for a year or two after marriage. I considered this one of my main cars. Yep, it would go but it was hard to stop with those old mechanical brakes. These old Fords had a steering wheel lock that was years ahead of their time! Of course most people broke the ignition key off while using them. They then just used the ignition toggle switch, anyone could have driven off with the car. During those days no one ever locked the doors of their house even if they were gone. Back then I never owned a car that I could lock the doors on!
Cars we owned while living in our little house on the Old Military Road (Rt. 3):
I bought a 1936 Packard convertible with a V-12 engine from Charles Fletcher. As I recall he bought it and drove it home then couldn�t use it. I, with his help, towed it to my home. I messed with it some then sold it for scrap. That thing used 17� truck tires! The transmission weighed about as much as the engine! I could visualize it�s first owner driving, or being driven, to the city on important occasions. Boy what I would give for that old car now.
I worked part time for Ray Hobbs in his Wrecking Yard and could buy �fixer up� cars at scrap cost. I bought a 1936 4 door Ford from him. It did not take much to get it running good. I kept it for a year or two. Wife Betty drove it to work at the local Textile Mill for a while. Winter came on not long after I started using the car and one morning it would not start. I determined that the gas line was frozen. In order to get it going I removed the gas cap and inserted a long hose (from an old welding rig). I ran the hose along the outside of the car and connected the other end to the fuel pump inlet tube. Using hay wire I tied the hose to the door handles. It ran fine and I used it like this for a day or two (until the line thawed out) then I drained the gas tank to get the water out. Innovation is a good thing!
I bought a 1939 Internatiomal flat bed truck from my brother-in-law Roy Huckelby. This truck was used by Keisler�s Grocery in Glenrose for years and had many miles on it. It was a good truck and I used it quite a while. About the only problem I had with it was that the camshaft lobe that operated the mechanical fuel pump wore down to the point that it would not pump. I installed an electric fuel pump and it was OK. I considered this one of my main vehicles.
I bought a little blue 1939 Willys truck from my dad. It was a small truck, my dad had worn it out truck farming (or maybe it was worn out when he bought it!). It had the bad habit of smoking out the tail pipe and under the hood! As I recall I sold it for scrap.
I traded for a blue 1946 Hudson, a very nice car. It had a six cylinder, flathead engine. This was one of those funny looking cars in that the top was wider than the bottom! It gave good gas mileage. It had a �wet� clutch that consisted of a clutch plate with many holes through it. In each hole there was a cork that looked just like a bottle cork! The clutch compartment was sealed and contained a half pint of special Hudson clutch fluid. The object of the �wet� clutch was to give a smooth take off. You could pop the clutch and the car would move out very smoothly as long as there was fluid in the clutch compartment. If it was dry then it would grab no matter what you did! The fluid was carefully poured into the clutch compartment through an opening in the flywheel after the threaded plug was removed. This meant that I must �bump� the engine around until I could see the plug through an upper opening in the flywheel housing. The plug had a large thin hex head and it was easily dropped when removing or installing it. To retrieve it the cover over the bottom of the flywheel was removed. I did this several times then decided there must be a better way! There was. Each time I handled the plug I would tie a piece of sewing thread around the plug and if/when I dropped it all I needed to do was retrieve it by pulling on the thread. I considered this one of my main cars.
A blue 1931 Model A Ford coupe was kept for a short period of time. It then went to a scrap dealer.
I bought a 1941 Hudson six cylinder flathead. It was blue and yes it had the same clutch system as described above. I used some parts from this car then sold it for scrap.
I bought 1939 Ford V8 Coupe from the local tax assessor. The car had hand controls because the man that owned it had no legs. It took me a while to remove the controls. We drove it for a while and sold it.
I bought a big white 1946 Chrysler Coupe from Al and Martha (�Betsy� Bowdle) Stuckey. It was a good car and rode very good as did all of the large Chrysler autos. It was a road hog! It had a fluid drive system. It consisted of a conventional clutch in conjunction with a fluid coupling (torque converter) and a three speed manual transmission with two forward positions on the column mounted shift lever. It had a clutch pedal but you did not need to use it when stopping, only when you changed the gear lever. In town you would put the shift lever in the upper position, the car would move out in first gear and then shift into second gear. On the road you would put it in the lower position, it would start out in second gear then shift into third gear. A strange system that never really caught on! I considered this one of my main cars.
I purchased a 1949 Hudson Super Six four door car with a flathead engine. It was green and was a very good car. These cars were called �inverted bathtubs� due to the design of the body. This was one of the best cars I ever owned and we drove it for many years. I had some surgery in the Malvern Hospital and my wife was driving me home when a young boy driving a Model A Ford ran a stop sign and hit our right front fender/wheel/tire with his left front fender/wheel/tire. I remember feeling pain and I remember seeing that little Ford bounce from the Hudson. The boy seemed to be standing on the brake pedal when he hit us but the car seemed to not slow down. So much for brakes on the old Fords. It did not do much damage to either car. Someone called the police and the boy�s dad. They paid to have our car repaired. My wife loved to drive that Hudson! A lady by the name of Mrs. Howard ran the Rock Store at Butterfield. She told my wife that she prayed for her each time she passed the store that she would have a safe trip to Malvern and back! Yes, it had the wet clutch described above. It had an overdrive that operated the same as the one described below for our 1953 Ford. The only thing I did to this car was install a used rear end �chunk� because the one in use had a whine. I considered this one of my main cars.
Cars we bought while living in North Malvern at 905 Lowden Street:
We bought a blue 1937 Chevrolet four door. Now why did I do something like that! It looked nice and drove good and rode good. While out for a Sunday drive one day with wife Betty on the Poyen highway I decided to pass a car, it was a bad decision because as I passed it I heard a big bang and saw some smoke roll out the tail pipe. I was able to continue home with the engine �missing�. When I pulled the head from the engine block I discovered that the top of a piston was broken from the side walls of the piston and that was the problem. I went to the junk yard and bought a piston and installed it then it was OK again. I considered this one of my main cars.
I bought a 1953 Hudson Jet, a small car, nice looking but it had an engine problem. I removed the oil pan and found the crankshaft was �flat� on one of the crankshaft�s rod throws. I towed the car to Hot Springs to a machine shop that could �grind� the rod throw while the engine was still assembled and in place. They also made me an oversize rod bearing. I towed the car back home, put it all together and it ran good. I then sold the car.
I found a 1941 Ford V8 truck in Ray Hobbs� wrecking yard that didn�t look too bad. I bought it at scrap price and got it running OK. Then I painted it, replaced some broken glass and did other work on it. This was a nice truck when I completed it. I used it in my spare-time Radio-TV business there in North Malvern (my full time job was at the local Textile Mill). I considered this one of my main cars. Those old flathead Fords were hard to beat. Even Bonnie and Clyde, the infamous bank robbers, wrote Henry Ford and told him that he very much liked his fast V8 Fords! Yep, they both died in Ford in a barrage of machine gun fire!
I went to Little Rock and traded for a 1953 Ford V8 (the last year of the flatheads). It was two tone green, two door and a nice car. It had about 39,000 miles on it. It had a manual transmission with an overdrive. This overdrive was free-wheeling until about thirty miles per hour when going down hill. When on the road after you reached about thirty miles per hour you would let up on the throttle for a second or so then the overdrive would kick in. When you wanted to pass a car you pushed the throttle to the floor and this actuated a small switch under the gas peddle to kick out of overdrive down to regular third gear! This car was the closest I came to having a new car while living in Malvern. I considered this one of my main cars. When we moved to Alabama in 1957 we pulled a 4�x10� trailer, loaded to the top, with this car. It never gave us any trouble any time except for a broken fan belt! Even then I was able to drive it because those engines had two water pumps. With one pump working and driving at a certain speed I was able to reach my destination with one belt!
I hope this article brought back memories to you about your old cars and that you enjoy just thinking about them.
Enjoy the memories of the past that God has given you, we shall not pass that way again.
Written May 27th, 2002 by:
George Evans Taylor, Jr.
209 Lakeshore drive
Muscle Shoals, Alabama 35661-1029
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