Great History Lessons. (Read 551 times)

We took a two mile ride in this USMC WWII jeep with a 30 Caliber mounted machine gun. In the field on top of the ridge was a WWII military camp with over 20 WWII vehicles. Great day for my grandsons and I.

Gary, thanks for the WW2 vehicle pictures.

In 1951 my cousin bought a garage/gas station at McDoel, California, on U.S. 97 between Weed, CA and Klamath Falls, OR.

That is high desert, north of Mount Shasta.

I moved there with my cousin to help operate the Richfield station.

We brought along a WW2 Half-track. I'm not sure what company built it, but probably White. It was a recovery vehicle and had a frame and winch system to reel out the cable and run it back in. That ran off the drive system , but had to be in neutral.

It took two days to drive it up to McDoel from Napa.

I didn't know how to drive yet, so had to learn.

So, my cousin put me in the drivers seat of the half-track and showed me how to drive it.

We had five acres of sand and sage brush, before I got to the SP tracks, or on to other desert property.

As I recall, it had a mammoth flat head six, and a high/low 4 speed.

It was a blast to drive. Never got stuck in the sand.

However, I spent a lot of time with a hose, washing the tracks , driving wheels and bogies off. Then it was the grease gun to make sure the thing was ready to go.

Jim Too

:god_bless_usa