The Daily Post
PHOTO CHALLENGE
Spare
This week, get inspired by the many connotations of the word “spare.”

We have a fairly new model van, the spare tire hangs underneath the back of this van, where all the mud and road grime accumulates. It hangs on some type of an apparatus that is operated by cranking, the crank turns and lowers the spare down to the ground on a piece of cable. This procedure no doubt was a lot of fun and easy to do on the drawing board at the Oldsmobile plant were the first specification were made for this model van. No mud etc. on the drawing boards!

Not too long ago I had a flat tire, being partly disabled, I realized there was no way that I would ever get that spare tire down to the ground, let alone be able to put it back on the vehicle. The vehicle has a little air compressor way in the back compartment so I thought, air it up and drive home. That was a good thought, but the hole in the tire allowed the air to run out a lot faster than I was putting it in.

So anyhow, I called my roadside assistance people. The person on the other end of the phone was in some country that I don’t think I ever heard of. The person could not speak English very well. I was in a town of 16,000 people at 8 PM, this person on the other end of the telephone line told me there’s no place in that town that could fix my tire for me. So what he did was called the local police station and a policeman and his female assistant came to my rescue. That female assistant made short work out of putting on my spare tire and getting me back underway. She might have been the toughest one on the force.

All of this brings me to the daily prompt word ‘spare’ and to the entrepreneur, gentleman Henry Ford and his early Model T. The car he invented, designed and put together with so much passion. It was a versatile car, you could jack it up, slide a couple pulleys under the rear wheels and put it to work doing various jobs. In this picture the T Model is making ice cream.

He made a man’s car, a low-priced car and a very economical car, but most of all the spare tire was out right on the side of the car by the drivers door. On one version the spare was right on the back of the car. If you had a skunk in one of your traps you could bring it home hanging on the spare tire, not that it would make a lot of difference. Now, how could you get any better engineering than that?. He even made a Ford wrench that could be used on most of the bolts. God bless the memory of Henry Ford!

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