[VAL] towing with your hair standing up.....

[estatewagons@xxxxxxx]

I think the best way to imagine towing in the 50's and earlier....is 
similar to pondering how the Pioneers made it across the country in 
their wagons on the Oregon Trail....when we all have to have our 
Suburbans or Crew Cabs, dual A/C and Carnegie Hall Sound Systems...two-way 
radios to communicate three ways to Sunday....DVD systems to keep the 
kids occupied and ...well...you know where I'm going.  (and please...I 
know we don't have to have...but let me have my sense of humor....and 
hey... my allergies and I need A/C just like everyone else...!)

It was simply a different world back then - but they only knew what 
they had...because it was new to them...then....."and they liked it."  
(to quote the old geezer telling the classic tale of walking five miles 
through the snow uphill to get to school each day)

One of the best stories of vintage towing I ever read was in Old Cars 
magazine.  A couple wrote of their adventures delivering new trailer 
homes from a factory in the Midwest - over the Rockies and out to the 
West Coast.  They used a business coupe - a 1940's or very early 1950's 
6 cylinder Plymouth or similar.  When creeping up a mountain pass - the 
husband's job was to hold tight onto the wheel and try to keep the car 
from stalling, jumping out of gear or overheating.  The wife's job was 
to sit with one hand on a wheel chock and one hand on the door 
handle...ready to jump out at a moment's notice if the car stalled.  
If it did...she had only a split second to jump out and chock a wheel 
on the coupe before it started to roll backwards....as they knew that 
once the rig started rolling backwards the brakes on their coupe would 
not hold.....and they'd be toast.

Take care and let us know how that Packard tows....RL