The car

An earlier post (here) spotted the vehicle pictured below in a collection of photographs taken during a 1961 sale at the farm south of Lushton.

The early report was that the car in question is a Model A, which Ford manufactured from late 1927 through early 1932, selling 4,858,644 Model A vehicles in that five-year period. By 1932 there were nine different body styles available; the one pictured above is a Tudor Sedan (either a standard of a deluxe model).

Family memory is able to place this car with one of two of Grandpa and Grandma’s children; I hope that a reader of this blog may be able to narrow it down further. But first a little story and a teaser for a future post.

About a month ago I was looking for accounts of the 1949 blizzard, perhaps the worst in Nebraska history. In my online scrounging I happened upon a story that the York News Times published a few years back that interviewed several York County people who had gone through that blizzard. One of the interviewees is well known to us all: Matilda Klippenstein. Buller Time will come back to that story in a future post; for now we focus on what I learned about Matilda that I had never known: she used to teach school.

Why is that important for this photo? I am told that both Matilda and Esther taught school in the late 1940s (news to me) and that Grandpa and Grandma bought two Model A cars to  to enable them to commute back and forth to their schools. Family memory is that those cars were a Model A coupe and a Model A two-door sedan. The latter is the car in the photo above. What type of coupe is less clear, since Ford produced at least six diferent models: Coupe, Deluxe Coupe, Special Coupe, Sport Coupe, Standard Coupe, and Business Coupe (pictured below).

What we know for certain is that the sedan pictured at the top of this post was driven by Matilda or Esther. What we do not know is which one drove the sedan and and which one the coupe. If any of Matilda’s children happens to read this post, perhaps you can ask your mom if she recalls who drove which car.

One final request: I know where Matilda taught in 1949 from the blizzard story, but I do not know where Esther taught and when. Any information about Esther’s teaching is welcome and will be shared on the blog.