In the mid 50's my driver was a 42 Ford that had a habit of sticking in low gear. One nasty winter night I was out honky tonking and when I headed home about 2 AM it hung up in low again. When that happened you had to get under the car and put the gears in neutral. Now I was dressed for honky tonking, wearing my powder blue, single button roll jacket and in no condition or mood to crawl under the car. I drove the 3 miles home in low gear.
The next day I drove to the neighborhood gas station and put the car on the hoist to unscramble the linkage. While I was there, a guy drove in with a 30 Model A coupe. It was pretty average for the time, it ran good but the top leaked and the seat was kind of soggy. The guy had a nice new Indian blanket he used on the seat when he used the car. Long story short, I traded the 42 for the Model A including the Indian blanket. Probably not the best trade I ever made but I was still a little foggy from the night before.
I soon discovered the generator did not work and the battery would run down. A brush spring was broke so I fished a rubber band from one brush to the other and it would charge for a week or so before needing another rubber band. The tail light was trashed so I soldered a socket in a Skippy peanut butter jar lid, screwed it to the fender, painted the jar red and screwed it on. Years later I wanted to put a Skippy jar taillight on the rattletrap shop truck we were building and had a hard time finding a jar. Everything is plastic now.
With only a part time generator I had to crank start the Model A most of the time. One night I was out on the town and got the crank tangled up in the wire harness when I tried to start the car. Leonard {pickled} Herring offered to push start me with his 37 Pontiac. He pushed me all the way home and all we ever got was an occasional backfire. Can you imagine pushing a backfiring car across town at 2 in the morning today? I guess the cops had a different sense of what was important then.