The Green Hornet

Can you use your imagination a little?  Along about 1944 or so, when I was maybe six years old, my father owned one of these, sort of.  At this point you might recall no automotive products were being manufactured for civilian use as a World War was going on.  Somewhere between its manufacture in or near 1931, or maybe 1932, but somewhere about that time and about 1944, a former owner had needed a truck more than he needed a car, so he converted his Studebaker from one to the other.  My father found it in a junkyard, but thought he could get some more use from it so for the princely sum of $25 he salvaged it.  After some tender loving care, by my very mechanical father, it was rendered fit for road usage again.  He managed to get a special registration for it that allowed him to get license plates, but he could never sell it to anyone else for road usage.  When he was through with it, its fate was to be returned to the junk yard.  The one my father owned was more of an apple green than this one.  I merely have this photo here for reference.  It is not the one my father owned.

As well as a different color, the body of my dad’s had been chopped off just back of the front doors.  A flat metal panel had been installed to keep out the rain mostly, and then the original rear window had been mounted in that.  Behind that a wooden stake rack had been built, and presto it was a truck, kind of.  My father named it The Green Hornet, kind of after the comic book character of that time.  It was a fitting name as the old truck was sort of comical too.

It was my dad’s only transportation for a year or more.  Every day it took him from our dairy farm to his job at the paper mill in town, and returned him to us each evening just in time to help with the evening milking.  It was also used on the farm as a sort of utility vehicle, hauling anything that needed hauling, and a few things that didn’t.  Several of my brothers learned how to drive a vehicle with the use, or misuse, of the old Green Hornet.  I was too little.  They wouldn’t let me have a go at it.

On one particular Sunday my father’s brother, Floyd and his wife Beatrice, came to our home for a visit.  While there my dad mentioned to him that a local farm was for sale at a reasonable price so dad and mom piled into the back seat of Floyd’s car, and off they went to look at the possible purchase.  While they were gone my brother Ron thought it would be a good idea to take the Green Hornet for a spin around and through the meadows.  Ron who was about ten at the time, my brother Dell about eight, and myself climbed into the cab and set out on an excursion.  All was going real well and we were having a nice sight-seeing tour when Ron, who had to stand up to see out the front windshield, shifted gears from first to second.  While in the process of that, he somehow broke the shifting lever completely off.  We made it back to the farmyard and shut it off as closely as possible to its original parking place.  Ron stuck the shifting lever back in the hole in the floor so it appeared normal again and we left it.

The next morning my father had to drive the Green Hornet to work.  He got in, started it, and lo and behold, when he went to shift it, the lever fell right out of the transmission.  With no way to shift it out of first gear which it seemed somehow to be in even though he thought he left it in neutral, he had to shut the engine back off.  He took the day off from work, tore the transmission apart, repaired it in some manner, and drove it for several more months after that.  As far as I know he never found out that we had went for a ride on that beautiful Sunday afternoon, or at least if he did he never said so.