Roger and I had many acquaintances in Shoreham in the late 1950s and early 60s. How many of them were friends is difficult for me to estimate now, partly because I tend to be remote and make friends slowly. I think it fair to say that the closest mutual friends were those who we met in the church youth club. To say that it acted as a marriage brokerage in those days when one was warned by parents of the danger of too close an encounter with a member of the opposite gender is hardly an exaggeration. (Remember that we are told that sex was not discovered until the mid sixties.)
It was there that we met Sue Webb whose uncle lived in the same road as Roger and who had a car that he would sell to the right person for a mere three pounds ten shillings. In his eyes Roger was such a one. And it was thus that he bought his first car, a nineteen-thirty-two two seater open top Morris Minor. To those of today's youth that sounds a bargain. Despite the fact that money has lost its value and that the sum represented a good few weeks' earnings at weekends we also deemed it to be so, especially as the package included a spare engine, rear axle and steering column plus both winter and summer windscreens.
It was in that year that the government dealt a terrible blow to us for they introduced the MOT - the Ministry of Transport Test for all cars over ten years old. Essential safety equipment was tested - brakes, steering and lighting. I don't remember a rusty chassis being on the list but think it was. It was therefore necessary to find an extra fifteen shillings to pay for this. In addition the road tax was ten pounds, soon to rise to twelve pounds and ten shillings - just over the national average weekly wage. Insurance was a further ten pounds for young people were then as now considered to be a high risk.
The MOT had become necessary because we were beginning to see more modern cars and their higher performance. This mix of old and new presented a new risk for the older cars could not stop as quickly as the newer and the modern tail end shunt became a serious menace. Up till then few cars stopped efficiently and everybody allowed sufficient room to be warned of the actions of the car in front. In fairness, many of the cars then on the roads were extremely old and neglected. The second World War had ensured that factory output had fallen and post-war economic strategy dictated that nearly all output was exported. Therefore home consumption was seriously restricted.
We had to drive the car to a garage for its MOT along flint farm tracks and then illegally along a hundred yards of the A27 - we were had not applied to hold driving licences for which we were just old enough, neither was the car taxed or insured. Remarkably it passed. After six months or so Roger was lured by motor bikes and I bought the Morris from him for five pounds. This would have given him a profit of fifteen shillings if he had not already paid for four month's road tax of which I inherited one month.
Scrap yards had seldom been busier as the last rusting hulks of old cars were laid to rest while their over-designed, under-stressed mechanical parts could continue to give service provided they received the frequent application and replacement of lubricants that manufacturers demanded. As I hunted for spares to upgrade the Morris I saw some cars that are no longer mentioned in books: the Hillman Aero, Jowett Javelin and others piled one on top of each other, waiting to be cannibalised or sent to the harbour on the first leg of their journey to the smelting plants and factories where they would be resurrected as new Minis or Zephyrs. I say upgrade the car. The main purpose of this was to replace the six-volt electrical system so that it had more reserves; to put two fully dipping head lamps on so that I could see more than the pinpoint of light on the kerb; and to replace the vacuum windscreen wipers that performed slower the faster you drove with electric wipers. I would have liked to add a heater, but only the more upmarket new cars had them then.
Remarkably I drove the car for a year, covering 12000 miles at over thirty miles per gallon of petrol and 1000 miles per pint of oil. At one time I experimented with removing one of the plywood panels on the engine bulkhead to let heat from the engine into the driving compartment. I did not succumb to carbon monoxide poisoning. In order to learn about control we would drive along the Upper Shoreham Road by Southlands Hospital in the middle of freezing winter nights, braking hard and spinning on the ice through spectacular angles on our highly illicit improvised skid pan. We once drove to the beach with seven of us in a car designed for two with an external width just over four feet.
I took my driving test in the Morris. A colleague from work accompanied me to the test centre. When he saw the examiner on whose judgement my future driving depended he confided that it was the same one who had failed him twice and several people he knew. When I saw the man I wondered how I would be able to drive, for to say he had ample proportions would be an understatement. I worried that the clutch would not take the strain of accelerating his mass from rest; for the evening before my brother had taken me for a final practice and had made me reverse up and round the steepest, sharpest corner that his knowledge of Brighton and Hove could find. As he was a civil engineer in the Borough Surveyor's Department you may deduce that its severity was one of the finest tests of clutch, brake and steering co-ordination imaginable. We never completed the manoeuvre for the clutch decided that it had met its match and started to slip and burn - oh how pungently burning cork smells. We limped home and I poured petrol into the clutch housing to remove any oil that may have contributed to the problem. The treatment was obviously efficacious, for not only did the car move the quivering mass of driving examiner, but it never slipped again.
Omens are strange things. As we walked from the driving test centre to begin the test the examiner asked me to read the number plate of a car that he picked from those parked near. Without hesitation I recited 'WP1747 - now pick another - that's mine'. My honesty, I believe, disarmed him. So did my question as we approached the car to begin the test. 'Do you want the hood up or down?' In answer he asked that it should be down, which was a relief on two counts; firstly it gave an overflow area for his bulk and secondly I could then see all four corners without craning my neck. He advised me that he had once had an open-top. It is as well that the rain that had preceded the test now held off until we had completed it or I would have needed to oust him from his seat in order to raise the roof. This could have left him standing on the pavement getting wet and I fear that would have lead to my failing.
I finally sold the car after I had removed the driver's door because the mounting screws for the hinges had pulled out of the wooden ash frame. This had until my positive action led me to lift the door and pull it closed after boarding the car and occasionally banging hard on the outer skin with my fist while driving along because as the chassis twisted the screws would work their way out. Without this running maintenance the door would fall off every twenty miles or so. The trafficators - those precursors of the flashing turn indicators could not overcome the wind resistance they met at speeds over 10 mph without a hefty clout on the panel to which they were affixed. Then they would rise from their housing and on a good day make the correct electrical contact to light the bulb. Once, while driving at the maximum possible speed of 50 mph I had needed to apply the brakes as the road narrowed from dual carriageway to two way with two lanes. As I applied the brakes I heard, one after another, the cables snap. The final problem that laid her off the road was caused by the fabric universal joint tearing so that power could not be transmitted to the wheels. A temporary solution got me home - I slid three bolts though the facing surfaces of prop shaft and final drive unit and loosely bolted the components together with enough slack to allow relative movement.
For farm hands of the old days there is no motive power like the horse. Loved for its beauty and strength or hated for its continual demands seven days a week it symbolises an era that is gone. I have never liked horses, imagining them to be spiteful creatures despite the well-meant writings of their champions. I am sure that, like all animals, the larger the breed, the more powerful the build, the more gentle the manners; but I have encountered no such, only the spiteful ponies and mares owned by town people. For me a tractor fulfils the role of the horse and there is one tractor that above all others recalls days of youth.
There was the brute force of the single cylinder Field Marshall - built in Gaisborough - a single cylinder, two stroke diesel that only ever managed to run at seven hundred revolutions per minute or so. With a specially high road gear it would travel at nine miles per hour, but the normal maximum was six. The piston was nine inches in bore and the stroke was eighteen inches. It moved in a fore and aft position. In fact the whole machine resembled a shortened, squat steam traction engine. The gear lever was of a bolt action and solid as could be. Its exhaust pipe was about four feet high and six to nine inches in diameter, waisted and bosomed like the film stars with their corseted figures that we adolescent boys drooled over.
On the offside was a flywheel the size of a millstone. It weighed nearly as much as the mini car that was to become so popular. On the other side, bolted to the other end of the crankshaft was the clutch housing that held a conical clutch some eighteen inches in diameter. As this took up the strain and connected engine to gear train it would let out a banshee wail that rent the air asunder. Such was the force of the power stroke that as the piston changed its travel from forward to backward stroke and vice versa the whole two tons of metal would take on a life of its own and when stationary with the brake applied would rock to and fro like some mighty cart horse straining at the harness.
To start this mighty monster you used the following technique:
Move a valve-lifting decompressor up to the rim of the flywheel and across its width where it would nestle in a spiral groove cut so that as the wheel rotated the lever would screw itself closer to the edge and on the third rotation fall overboard. This jerked the exhaust valve into action so that full compression would heat the air to ignite the fuel. However when the engine was cold extra heat was needed. This was supplied by a piece of cardboard that had been soaked in saltpetre so that it glowed fiercely. the cardboard was rolled into a tube the diameter of a cigarette and slid into a holder that was then screwed into the cylinder head.
There were two ways to impart the necessary momentum to the mass of metal that made up piston, crank, flywheel and clutch. The technical method used a blank twelve bore shotgun cartridge that was screwed into a housing that had a firing pin projecting through it. the judicial application of a two pound ball pein or similar hammer had the desired effect of triggering the cartridge. the ensuing explosion and expansion of the air trapped between this and the top of the piston forced the latter down with such force that it gained enough momentum to continue its travel through the two and more rotations of the crank necessary to dislodge the decompressor and allow the engine to power up.
The less scientific, and economically preferred technique required human power to be applied. A two and a half foot long bar of solid steel one inch thick was fashioned in the shape of a crank. Lugs an one end engaged with the centre of the flywheel. applying maximum pressure to the other end enabled an average person to swing this latter round with sufficient acceleration so that as the third stroke was approached there was enough energy in the machine for it to continue and start.
On a new tractor this starting handle was fitted with a sleeve that allowed it to rotate without the hands doing so. But with age this was usually absent and hence we needed to wrap our hands in cloth to avoid friction burns to the palms.
The other danger was that, if the handle was not greased where it engaged with the dog on the flywheel, it would not free itself and would continue to rotate with the flywheel, gaining speed. I once saw this happen and the hapless operator ran rather than risk his life trying to stop the engine. Centrifugal force eventually won the day as it threw the half-hundredweight handle some forty feet over a cow stall.
From time to time the carbon that built up in the capacious exhaust would have to be removed. The easiest way to do this was to wait until it had built up and the heat of exhaust gas ignited it. Then it was simply a matter of closing down the throttle and letting the exhaust fan the flames until all trace was burnt away.
I have seen pictures of fires being lit under the engines of similarly designed tractors to assist in the process of ensuring sufficient heat to ignite the fuel and star the engine. Needless to say, once started, we were loath to stop the vehicle so it ticked over while we ate our sandwiches on the crest of the Downs.
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I have dwelled at length on the foibles of the Field Marshall tractor with its unsurpassed forty horsepower engine that pulled as well as any modern monster, while only sipping fuel like a lady at a vicarage tea party; but that is not the tractor that fires my nostalgia.
Nor is it the David Brown Cropmaster, symbol of an empire now faded, pictured so often in far-away Africa or on the runways of Second World War airfields towing trailer loads of bombs, the product of the mind that gave James Bond his Aston Martin.
Nor yet the Turner Diesel, built by a firm of marine engineers in the West country; so finely designed with multiple small nuts, bolts' studs and screws that it vibrated itself to pieces as they unscrewed in harmony and sympathy. Few of these exquisitely engineered Rembrants of the tractor world were built. To start them you pump ether directly into the cylinders from an elegantly proportioned hand pump before applying the self starter button.
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No, the tractor that I see still as if before me is elegant as a thoroughbred; long, sleek and sinewy. Two versions of the Farmall did I encounter - the model 'H' and 'M'. The smaller 'H' has a twenty-five horsepower vapourising oil engine while its larger stablemate the 'M' has an engine of some forty-three horsepower. Some of these were made when the firm was still McCormick-Deering but the majority were, I think of the later McCormick International breed.
It is the McCormick International Farmall M that holds my heart. Under powered though it is, it is as elegant a steed as I could ever ride. With her thirty-six inch diameter rear wheels that stood over five feet high when shod with rubber tyres, and her small, slim fourteen inch diameter front wheels that contrasted and contributed to her proportions she was a dream to view. Long and sleek she rode the hills in majesty and sureness. The origin of the tractor in Chicago, Illinois made her as American as apple pie.
I confess that I am not enamoured of Americana in general, finding much of it brash, but here was a lady who is as at home on the prairies as in East Anglia, the cotton fields as the Downs of Sussex.
To cater for these variations in function her wheels could be adjusted in infinite steps from under four feet to over ten feet apart. Some versions had the two close rowcrop wheels at the front. Spread wide, the wheels gave a security when traversing the steepest of Downland slopes.
When I first encountered the lady, the driving seat mounted on a massive sprung beam was above my head. When I rode her, my head was above the clouds, my mind in the vastness of the prairies described by that now unfashionable epitome of agricultural writers, AG Street; my every being straining to grow corn to feed an England recovering from the hardships of war and Atlantic blockades. Sun and rain, wind and hail all made their impression on me for there was no cab to cocoon me and keep me from the forces of nature that have shaped our very humanity.
Here, if anywhere beyond the cloistered comfort of Holy Communion was my spirituality. In the open air, striving with nature, using the best that engineers could produce from half a world away, giving life to the people with whom I could have no other, no higher, relationship than to fill their bellies. What a fitting power unit for my last journey from this world; if only ...