Horns

In mid-September Dotty and I spent ten magnificent days exploring Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. We flew to Halifax and rented a Ford (did you expect anything else?) Windstar van for the loop around the island and then the ferry trip to P.E.I., as the natives call Canada’s smallest province. For the most part the roads were good. The express routes were largely three-lane. Gasoline cost three dollars and change per gallon but was readily available. It was strange pumping Esso gas again!

We saw few luxury cars. I’m not sure we spotted a single BMW, Mercedes, or a block-long Lincoln. Outside metropolitan Halifax, much of the coastline resembles our Outer Banks, dotted with coves and picture postcard fishing villages. Prince Edward Island is very rural. Most of the tourists had gone, leaving the delicate red sand beaches deserted. These Maritime folks make their money catching delicious fresh fish and lobsters, digging potatoes, and graciously entertaining their visitors.

After driving a day or so, Dotty remarked about the quietness. Even in Halifax the horns were silent. I can’t remember a single blaring horn in ten days! A real different kind of motoring! This got me thinking about horns.

Early automobiles were not welcome in many communities. The night Henry Ford took his first ride, a friend rode a bicycle ahead of him to warn the horses. In England, early motorists required a flagman to run ahead of the car! Soon he was replaced with a horn.

In 1899, France became the first country to pass a law requiring automobile horns. Soon the curled brass horn with a rubber bulb became stereotypical of the early cars. Some of the original horns used the exhaust to blow whistles. As batteries became common, the electric horn was added. The Lowell-McConnell Company of Newark, NJ purchased the rights to an electrical signal in 1908 and named it the Klaxon. It lived up to its Greek meaning, klaxo – to shriek! The name became so ingrained that some of the road signs read, “Sound Your Klaxon!”

The noise arose when a ratchet wheel scraped its teeth on a riveted diaphragm. The sound was then amplified. Remember the UH UGGGGGA sound of the submarine movies? That was it!

Another early horn was the “Sparton.” The name came from inventors Sparks and Withington who claim their 1911 invention was the first electrical horn developed in the United States. To publicize their invention, their sons traveled major highways and erected signs that read, “Safety First, Sound your Sparton.”

As more cars hit the road, the noise got louder. Some cities, such as New York, became notorious horn-blowing cities. Frankly, I think it remains that way! Occasionally I travel to Haiti for missionary work and the streets are deafening. In Port-Au-Prince there are thousands of garishly painted trucks, called “Top-Tops”… going nowhere. Despite being knotted like spaghetti, each driver keeps blowing at the other. Sometimes a rhythm develops between three or more drivers. But nobody moves!

Automobile horns have had a role in music. George Gershwin brought back some real Parisian taxi horns to use in the New York premiere of “An American In Paris.” Early sheet music captured such silly titles as Gasoline Gus and his Jitney Bus, BEEP-BEEP and simply Automobile Horns. It’s obvious why these songs went nowhere! Today, most automobile horns sound in the key of F.

In our quest for a quiet ride, automakers have blanketed cars with layers of sound proofing. Together with eight-speaker sound systems and climate controlled air conditioning, it has become difficult to hear sirens and horns. A device the size of a radar detector is under development that scans for emergency signals and emits both a warning sound and a light. So far, this SilentHorn ™ hasn’t hit the market.

In 1929, the scenic magazine Arizona Highways wrote an editorial titled, “Are Horns Necessary?” It advocated a car-to-car buzzer system to alert drivers. It concluded by saying, “Sounds silly - but no more silly than sending your photograph by telephone."

They really saw the future! See you next time.

Bob

Trailers and Tow Vehicles  

By John L. Walker
VP National Activities

When a car owner decides to either purchase or restore a vehicle on a National Level, many times they choose to trailer their show cars to preserve the expensive restorations. The person who has just become involved with show cars can be very naive about trailers and tow vehicles. I know this because I was one of these people who learned a costly and valuable lesson.  

I have been a lover of antique cars from my childhood and when I was in my beloved teenage years I was able to purchase my first Packard. Of course this was a driver and far from a show car, that is all I could afford. After a few years, I came across a 1949 Packard convertible, which I still have. It was all apart in the first stage of a restoration. I had heard of a National Meet, but never attended one. I spoke with some of my local region member friends about these meets and I decided to restore this car to a National Level.  

After I completed the restoration, it was time to purchase a trailer. I decided to buy an open trailer, because of course, it was much less expensive. If I only knew the advantages of a closed trailer at that time I may have gone the extra mile. At the time I already had a half ton conversion van with a 305 CI engine. This also had a three speed automatic transmission with no overdrive.  

This served the purpose for a year until I realized the tremendous advantages of a closed trailer. I then went and purchased a new 24' enclosed trailer. I was real happy with this and we proceeded to an Annual Grand National Meet in New York. The trip was not too long from Scranton, my hometown. I did notice the poor 305 motor was chugging away and I knew it wouldn't last too long with all the weight. I was now placing an extreme burden on on my vehicle. I then decided the following year that I must replace the tow vehicle. I was also concerned because my growing family traveled to every meet with me and safety was a large concern of mine.  

Well off I go to get a new conversion van with a larger motor. I finally did make a purchase of a new van with a fuel injected 350 motor. I felt I was in heaven when I drove this new vehicle with so much more power. So off I go to Massachusetts in an empty trailer to pick up a car that was being restored. After about one hour into the trip I started to notice a burning smell, similar to a brake smell. I thought it must have been a truck with some air brake problems. A few more miles and then I lost power, which made me pull off the side of the road. When I stopped smoke started to billow out from under the vehicle. The transmission was burned up. It was a long tow home and my pride was devastated.  

After many conversations with the dealer and the manufacturer I learned that the van had a 3.42 ratio rear end installed. This rear was not rated to tow a utility trailer. The dealer had no idea or hadn't informed me of this. It turned into a mess with the dealer because they put the tow package on the van that couldn't tow. I ended up going to a different dealer that was more knowledgeable about tow vehicles.  

In closing, I recommend if you are going to purchase a trailer and tow vehicle, be very cogniant in tow weights. Make sure that the gear ratio is correct. I feel this is just as important, if not more important than horsepower. As you see, the little 305 motor with a three speed non-overdrive transmission haules a 24' trailer with a car when a 350 motor with the wrong rear couldn't.

As editor of our Hornets Nest Region, AACA Members’ Parade I find my self with too little time some months to put everything together by my self-imposed deadline. It seems my money paying job as a self employed architectural designer must come first if I intend to eat well, so on weekends is when I do the Members’ Parade. And some help I have received compiling all the material that goes in to the average monthly publication has greatly reduced the time on my end to assemble the final work to take to the printers.

Our newsletter has a different color front and rear cover each month and it has anywhere between 20 to 40+ interior pages, so getting a workable game plan is vital. A lot of the monthly material is standard such as a director’s dialog each month by one of the 12 directors, board minutes, etc. The remainder are monthly columns by our “regulars” and news on trips and events, humor page, etc.

All contributed material is requested to come to me on a CD, by e-mail or clean typed text that I can scan and convert to workable text in my MS Publisher software. I simply do not have the time to receive and enter hand written text anymore. And it is really great when one of our members actually puts his data into MS Publisher and I simply click the “copy and paste” function to insert his material in the newsletter.

As for the cover and the related interior “Cover Story” there are three of us who share this duty and we are currently scheduled for covers through July. Put all these helping hands together and it is amazing how quickly the process from start to finish can be.

My approach is to gather all the material for a given month and put it in my computer in the desktop icon “Newsletters” and when I start on the next issue everything is there to place into the newsletter. I also story humor and other material for use when appropriate under as sub-file I call “Filler Stuff” so that when I need to fill out a page or for any other reason, the material is simply a click away from being in the newsletter. There is very little material that I actually have on paper.

This is similar to how I do the Rummage Box each quarter in that Dave Berg e-mails me the articles to use and then I see how I can fit all of them into the issue at hand. Some times it’s like trying to fit two Dolly Partons into one tee-shirt — it won’t all fit!

If you would like to see one of our Members’ Parade newsletters, please e-mail me and I’ll send you one, or add you to our share program to send you one each month.