For many years Rockland has hosted a number of celebratory events during the summer. They include the Maine Lobster Festival, the Maine Boats, Homes and Harbors Show, the Maine Windjammer Parade and the North Atlantic Blues Festival. This year add to the list The Mainely T Tour, which will be arriving the week after Labor Day, September 7-11.
This will be the 25th year of the Mainely Model T Tour hosted by the Down East Chapter of the Model T Club of America. Last year the Tour took place in Northeast Harbor. A sampling of towns it has been to in previous years includes Blue Hill, Bridgeton, Rangely, Boothbay Harbor, Islesboro and Greenville.
I recently spoke with John Ware, President of Maritime Energy in Rockland who is one of the directors of the Down East Chapter. John, who lives in Owls Head, told me, “We like to have the Tour early in the fall since most of the vintage cars are not closed in and don’t have heaters. Also the highways are less crowded because the tourists are leaving and it is before the leaf peepers show up”.
The idea of the Mainely T Tour was begun in 1985 by John Anderson from Farmington, Maine. Today the Down East Chapter has 200 members who represent an interesting mix of society. There is a college professor, a dentist, a doctor, a railroad engineer, an accountant, a retired military man, a historian, a musician, a lumber dealer and a financial planner. There are also businessmen, mechanics and a schooner captain.
Ware stressed that the common denominator for the participants is their love of the Model T. He told me, “The Tour brings everyone together. There is lots of camaraderie and sharing of information about old cars. Many folks bring their spouses, or significant others, although some prefer to come alone”.
Because this is the 25th anniversary of the tour, Ware says they are anticipating as many as 60 cars. Participants are coming from as far away as Alabama, Tennessee, Indiana and Maryland and from all over New England. Normally the tour lasts 2 or 3 days, but since this is a special year the schedule begins on a Tuesday and runs through Saturday. Other states have similar clubs, but Ware emphasized that the Maine tour is particularly popular because people have such a good time and enjoy sightseeing in Maine.
The program of events includes:
On a typical day drivers will take their vintage cars on back roads to reach their destination. They may pause on a village green for a running board lunch or stop at a church for a hymn-sing. John Ware stressed, “The by word is ‘laid back’. If you are in a hurry you shouldn’t be in a Model T.”
Henry Ford made 15 million Model T’s between 1908-1927 and there are still a lot around worldwide. There are touring cars, roadsters and pickups. The Scots especially are big collectors, and there are also Model T Clubs in Australia, England and Europe. John Ware owns a “pie wagon” with a brass radiator, a 1925 oil truck and a 1927 touring car.
Ware told me the serial number on the engine block tells what year the car was made. The Model T engine was used in lots of different ways during its time. There were marine conversion engines put in boats and engines especially built for racing cars.
Ware gave me two examples of Henry Ford’s mechanical genius. Ford used flat fan belts in all his cars. Then for years the auto industry switched to V fan belts, but in the 1990’s the industry went back to flat fan belts. In 1908 Ford introduced the principle of the planetary transmission, which is the same principle used today in the more sophisticated automatic transmissions.
The Down East Chapter has very few rules for the Tour but one of them is that if your Model T breaks down, you can drive your modern car, but you can’t drive a Model A. The Model A was introduced in 1928 and present-day owners have their own tour.
A final story: Ware told me that in early Model Ts the gas tank was located under the front seat. The problem was that when the car went up a hill, the gas, which was gravity fed, couldn’t run forward into engine and the car would stall. When this occurred on hilly roads, the solution was to turn car around to get the gas flowing again. John Ware told me that this happened once on the Tour when they were going up a hill behind Searsport. In the spirit of camaraderie everyone had pulled to the side of the road to help. The stalled car was turned around and began backing up the hill. “At that moment”, Ware told me, “a cop came by, took in the scene, and drove past, shaking his head in disbelief”.