Ionia-Eaton County MI Archives Biographies.....DOWNING, Thomas 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
LaVonne Bennett lib@dogsbark.com February 5, 2007, 3:24 pm

Author: THE SEBEWA RECOLLECTOR February 1971, Volume 6, Number 4;  written permission from Editor Grayden D. Slowins

THE 1909 ONE-CYLINDER REO
By Thomas Downing
I am going to tell you a little story about my first car that I got along back 
in 1916.  It was originally bought by Harry York.  It was a 1909 Reo.  It had a 
one-cylinder motor and the motor shaft was crosswise of the frame.  You had to 
crank it on the side.  Someone had put on a top and a windshield.  It was a 
right hand drive.

One of the owners who had the car before I got it was Clarence Sayer, who had 
taken it on a trade from Harry York when Harry bought the larger Everett.  
Harry Heintzelman bought it from Mr. Sayer and later Mr. Heintzelman sold it to 
a man who peddled meat and fresh fish.  It got over in this neighborhood when 
my brother-in-law, Tom Gibbs, bought it from the fish peddler.  I bought it 
from Tom.

I had the car about two years.  I had to buy a new drive chain.  It had the 
same size of tires all around.  It was cheap to operate because it had a 10 
horse motor and you couldn't get only about 25 miles to the gallon of fuel.  
Also it would do only 25 miles per hour at the most.

I asked Mr. Gibbs one day what he'd take for that car---he wasn't using it 
any.  He told me he would take $25.00 for it so that is what it cost me.  I had 
to buy another tire and a few little things for it that didn't amount to much 
and I got it so that it worked all right.

I had a sister who lived up at Barryton, about 80 miles from here.  I wanted to 
go up there so I took the car and we started out one morning and we got pretty 
well up there when it got dark on us.  The drive chain came off and I had to 
crawl down under the machine there and get the chain unwound from around the 
shaft.  We got it straightened out after a while and went on and we got to our 
destination about nine o'clock that night.  It did the same thing on the way 
home.  It took all day long to get home with the work we done on it along the 
road.  But we made it.



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