| Summary: | (7:23) Mr. Crouch describes his father's Model T Ford truck, the modes of transportation around Florence, Alabama in the early 1900s, and the purchase of his first car.This interview is part of an oral history project funded by a grant from the Alabama Historical Records Board, managed by the Alabama Department of Archives and History staff, using funds provided by the National Historical Preservation and Records Commission.Florence- Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Carroll Crouch July 10, 2009 Florence, Alabama Conducted by Juliann Losey and Rhonda Haygood
Clip 8 of 14
Carroll Crouch: Another good story about my Daddy and his car, in 1917, there was a hardware store on Court Street named King Hardware, and they bought a, what was something similar to what is a pick- up truck to make deliveries with. Well, they soon discovered that that was too small to serve them, so they wanted to buy a bigger truck. So, my Daddy bought the one that they bought, it was a manufactured, little bed and everything, you know, truck. So, we, we was raised around that thing. We went to Huntsville in it, and to see my Daddy’s sister, and, and we’d go all around here, you know, go out in the country real often; we’d go out there to hear singing, there was a lot of singers, and we’d go over to somebody’s house and we’d spend a whole weekend out there. And they’d have big dinners, and everything, you know. And back then they didn’t have screens and things, but they had girls in the family and they had a little branch that they would keep the flies from getting around to the food and everything.
But then I could hear the train that went up from East Florence toward Iron City. And I could hear that thing; it was really a lonesome sound, to hear the whistle blowing from Cloverdale over to Chisholm Road, you know, where that went on. But we did a lot of that. And then, and then another thing, it wasn’t too many people had a car; the only transportation was the wagons. And, so the people that’d have someone to die out in the country or someone real ill, they’d come and get my daddy to take them out there in his little Model T Ford truck. And so, he often did, and to my best knowledge, he never charged nobody for taking them out there or anything like that. That was just a service he wanted to do, you know.
Rhonda Haygood: Did you ever drive it?
CC: No, no. I bought two or three later, when I got older. I guess I was a teen. Back then, a lot a farmers would buy cars, but they, they were used to a wagon and horses. And that’s what they used mostly. If they come to town, they brought stuff in their wagons, you know, and if they, well, on Sunday, if they went somewhere, they went in their wagons. And a lot of them would buy these cars and never drive them! They would put them in a shed or a barn or something, and leave them. And it was very few cars. Only doctors had cars back in those days. And our mail was delivered by horse and buggy.
Nobody had refrigeration like we’ve got now. They had ice boxes. And you had a triangular card, it’d have maybe fifty— and different weights on it and you hung your card up out on the front and when the guy come by, he usually had a bell under, he come by horse and wagon, and he had a bell on his, that he would ring that so if you’d failed to get your card out, you had time. But everybody got ice, maybe ten or fifteen cents a day, which would probably be twenty or twenty- five pounds. And he would bring it around and put it in your refrigerator, I mean your icebox. So that was a, that was a, one of the things that I observed.
Nineteen thirty- two, the postman, that had been delivering postage, postage for some time, mail, he bought a 1932 car and that was when the, when they begin to, 1933, cars began to show up around, you know.
Another little story that I’ll tell about this, I was about seventeen or eighteen, there used to be, right down here on Tennessee and, and Wood Avenue there was a big hillside there and a lot where people put cars for sale. This was in the late thirties, somewhere in the thirties you know, so I rode a bicycle around town, there wasn’t but one big dealer in town at that time. That was on the corner of Court Street and Tuscaloosa Street, where Fred’s store is now. That was a big Chevrolet and Buick and, so forth, dealers. I rode up one day on this lot, and just, you know, fascinated by cars and just looking at them. Well somebody it turned out had bought a Model A Ford and it had a cloth top, rumble seat, and was almost perfect in preservation. So this salesman walked up to me and he said, “ Let me sell you the car, son.” And I said, “ I can’t buy no car,” and I didn’t know what they cost, you know. But anyway, he said, “ Well, let me look in my book,” and he had a little book and he took it out and he opened it up, you know and looked at something and he said, “ You can buy that car for seventy- five dollars. Six dollars down and so much a month,” I believe it was. I said, “ Sold.” Cause I was making pretty good money, see I had a paper route 145 customers and I made six and half cents a week, which was nine dollars and something. I was working the grocery store and getting fifty cents a day, and just other chores around when I was a teenager, you know.
So I bought my own car and I was the only one in high school, Coffee High School, that had their car for a couple of years up there, you know. And I did chores for the school, you know. A lot of the school teachers didn’t have cars either, and I’d do chores for them. Had a million dollars worth of fun out of the thing. And I met Maxine in 19—, about 1940 I guess it was. She was visiting somebody and the place where we used to play ball over here on Hermitage now, and Jackson Road, Jackson Highway. And there’s a bunch of girls gathered up out there, that was something that happened a lot of times back then, the girls stayed together and the boys, you know. And I was always a little bashful about asking girls, you know, for a date or getting started with girls and all like that. But I saw her one day in this group of girls, you know, and I told this friend of mine, I said “ Go ask her if, if she’ll go with me to this party that was going on out in North Florence.” And so he did, and she come, the message come back and she said, “ Why can’t he ask?” So I went and asked her and that’s the way we got started in our courtship. We’d have somebody else to drive us around in that little Model A Ford, and we would get in our rumble seat, you know. We had a lot of fun in school, the school annual, they got a picture of me in, in the car, you know, with two boys. Now I fooled around with the boys a lot. I didn’t ask the girls, but some of them, later on, after we got in the upper grades, you know, they said, “ Why didn’t you ever ask me to go riding in the car?” you know and I would have been glad to let them, but I was too bashful. You know, that’s just one of the situations.
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