Ruthie had a reading assignment, A Ride to Remember by Lizzie Jumper which told the story of a Tin Lizzie and the local men’s teasing that a horse would not roll backward, have a flat tire or get stuck in the mud. In the end, they indeed did get a horse to pull them home.

It was a cute story and reminded me of our own family story of Uncle Ernest Hall coming to Key Town (from his home in Roslin) to visit his grandmother, Mahala Key. He drove his A Model Ford and made it just fine until the trip home when he tried to ford the just west of Millard Stepp’s house. Just like in Ruthie’s reading lesson, the Ford was stuck fast. Ernest walked up to the house and asked for help.

Millard gladly brought his pair of mules down, stretched a chain from the double tree to the bumper and began talking to the animals that listened to his voice day after day. The horses leaned into their collars and slowly the wheels began to turn. As Millard continued to encourage them, they pulled the big car up the hill till it safely rested near the house.

Ernest looked at the old man and said, “Millard, I didn’t think they were goin’ to pull it out.”

Millard was proud of the mules and answered, “Oh, they’d have pulled it in two if I’d asked ‘em to.”

Just to pass along a word of trivia - Do you know what the Tin Lizzies were? It was a nickname for the Model T - which of course pre-dated Uncle Ernest’s Model A by 2 decades.