I love these old Model A’s! When growing up I recall seeing a few of them still in use. An old-timer in Sheldon, Pete Schroeder, drove this pick-up version around town, smoothly purring back and forth on the streets. A classmate puttered for years on one that he had acquired someplace, but I don’t remember if he ever got it going. My favorite memories of Model A’s though were associated with a local character, Bill Dunell, who always found one to drive; when one quit running he rounded up another. Bill seemed to support himself with a variety of odd-jobs: water-witching, animal vet jobs, trapping fish in the Sheyenne River, and shining deer in the sand hills. This story quickly leaves the Model A scene when it recalls his bringing a poached deer into bed with him one night because the local game warden breathed hot on his tracks and was shining a flashlight in
Bill’s window.
How can one forget how the famous poet from Sheldon, Tom McGrath, immortalized Bill in verse:
Bill Dee: last of the old bronc-stompers
From the gone days of Montana mustangs we used on the farms
For light work and for riding and the pure hell of having
Outlaws around…
The same Bill Dee of the famous removable
Eye: which he’d slip in your shot glass sometimes - O blinding and sobering
Sight!”
Well, anyway, that’s what comes to mind when I start reminiscing about Model A Ford’s.
