Kickass and Model T Coils by Bill Stokes

Attribution: dave_7 from Lethbridge, Canada, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Bill Stokes

Kickass, the doorstop dog, notes with the keeper and Phyllis that occasionally there will be a Facebook post that sends one or the other of them hurtling back through the decades.

Such was the case for the keeper when the Model T club posted a photo of the Model T engine compartment showing the lineup of the four wood-encased coils, each of which produced its own unique buzz as the engine was cranked in the starting procedure. Or “not starting” in the keeper’s attempts with an abandoned Model T he had rescued from behind a neighbor’s machine shed.

As a skinny farm kid, the keeper cranked on the Model T through the winter and on into spring and he can still hear the buzzing sequence of those wooden coils.

It is likely his younger brother Orville can hear the buzzes too as he was bribed and drafted to sit for hours in the freezing cold behind the wheel to advance the spark in case the engine so much as fired one cylinder, which it did once in the middle of March.

The keeper thinks that Orv’s claim that the experience stunted his growth is an overstatement.