BY DANI TIETZ
dani@sjodaily.com
St. Joseph, Ill. – You may know St. Joseph’s 89-year old Harley Winn as “Tex.”
But you may not know that Model A and Model T Ford owners around the world turn to him when nothing else seems to work.
Winn would not classify himself as a collector, but he will tell you that since the Great Depression, he has been driving both Ford models, working on them and helping others troubleshoot their issues with the antique vehicles.
“I started working on them and the old Dodge cars when I was about six,” Winn said.
“And I drove trucks when I was eight or nine with my dad’s assistance.”
The Winn family hauled hay bales between farms.
By the time he was old enough to buy a car himself, he purchased a Model T coup.
Since then, Winn has owned 20-25 Model T and eight Model A cars in his life.
But it’s not just the look of the car Winn likes. He’s more interested in the inner workings of the vehicles.
“I have diagrams for how to put the wiring in,” he said. “They’re all over the world. Australia, everywhere, uses my diagrams.”
Winn developed his diagrams when a man in Westville wanted to put new wiring in his car.
“The man said, ‘I can’t do it because I’m colorblind,’ ” Winn said.
Winn asked him to have his wife, who could see the colors, get underneath the vehicle and call out what she saw. The man then handed her the wires, and when finished, the car started.
Winn stood nearby and drew in the wiring diagram on a paper sack.
“He spent years trying to find somebody who could do that and the car started right up,” Winn said.
Seeing that he had “valuable information,” Winn decided to get a Model A print as big as a card table and have an artist place the diagram on the print.
“I had 40 of them,” Winn said. “I had them five minutes and I started selling them.”
Winn doesn’t do the direct sales himself. They go to dealers.
With the help of Winn’s diagrams, he said, “I’ll fix cars that they worked on for 16 years and never got them running.
Winn said he’s helped guys in Texas, Kansas, the Grand Cayman Islands and in Canada redo a truck over the telephone.
“I said, ‘Describe what you car is like.’ ” he said.
Even though the vehicles may have switch parts or not an American model, Winn said that if the vehicle owner follows his paper sack diagram, they will get the vehicle to run.
The valuable information is a gift from Winn’s heart. He works on the exchange rate where, “maybe you do something for me someday.”
The man from Canada sent $40 a few months later in an international money order saying, “that car is running for the first time ever.”
Currently, Winn owns a 1929 Model T, a 1927 Model T Touring Car and two 1920 trucks that have been restored.
“I like to play with them,” he said.
Winn’s love for cars started with his dad, who owned an auto repair shop in Georgetown.
He helped his dad in the shop as high school counselors told his mother that she was ruining his life.
“They said he’ll never be nothing but working the mills and things like that,” Winn recalls.
His mother said, “I understand that, but that’s what he wants to do.”
Winn joined the military shortly after he turned 16 during the Korean War. As his peers were being sent to the front lines, officials held him back to drive officers because he knew how to make sure that the cars could run at all times.
Recently, the Library of Congress asked Winn to write about his experiences.
“We came from Japan on a boat that did not have a mess hall in it,” he said. “They gave us a paper sack with two sandwiches and a (piece of fruit).”
When the troops got to Korea, they waited on the dock for a truck while they were freezing. Winn said the truck never came, so by dark, they had to march to the railroad station.
A couple days later, they got boxes with canned food.
“You can’t believe how good frozen pork and beans and sausages were,” he said.
Winn was asked to tell his stories again a few years later.
That time he wrote about how, while there, it was difficult to find bathrooms in Korea. Winn believes that the United States has helped to modernize the country.
“So I say our endeavors were not in vain despite all the criticism, war veterans get,” he said. “They don’t realize how many lives were lost, 45,000 of us dead.”
Winn said that one of the highlights of his time in Korea was getting cigarettes. He didn’t smoke, so he traded the cigarettes to have his laundry cleaned: the troops were issued seven pairs of underwear, which Winn said he wore through to the skin.
“But they couldn’t do that in the wintertime,” he said. “We had to wait until spring.
“My stepbrother was over there, too. He went 97 days without ever taking his clothes off.
“You can’t bathe in the winter.”
Winn drove RMB trucks, half tracks, Jeeps and ambulances in Korea. He was never hit, but did spend time in the infirmary with pneumonia and frozen skin.
As Winn returned to the states, he went back to work. He said he never was out of a job and most jobs hired him at top dollar.
With various jobs as an employee at General Motors and as a machinist, Winn retired 23 years ago.
His adult years weren’t spent just working and coming home, though. When Winn needed to settle in a house for his family, he purchased five acres and built the home himself.
“I said I got a whole lot of training as well as I went to school for this,” he said. “Even a bird can build his own home, but we can’t.”
”That’s what kids should be going to school for now.”
Music fans may also hear Winn’s work on albums. He has seven albums of his own and appears on about 13 others. He plays the steel guitar and harmonica, among other instruments.
“In 1934, I sat on my grandpa’s lap,” Winn said. “I heard him play on the harmonica, and he died later that year.”
This was the same year that their family home burned down, forcing the Winn family to move during the Great Depression.
By 1936, the Winns caught a break and were able to purchase 88 acres for $1,500.
“My dad didn’t have a dime,” he said. “They wanted $4,500 for it, but they couldn’t get a bid from anyone in Danville. No one had any money.
Winn’s father said he could never make that bid, but at the encouragement of a lawyer, they made a bid for a third of the asking price.
Shortly after, Winn’s parents asked the children what they wanted for Christmas. His sisters said they wanted doll buggies and Harley said he wanted a harmonica.
“They looked at each other,” Winn said. “They knew who I was still thinking about.”
That Christmas morning, they got a bag of hard candy, an orange and a harmonica.
“The girls played with the harmonica for 15 minutes,” Winn said. “But I wore out all three.”
Winn still plays three times a week.
Winn was emancipated from his parents when he was 14-years-old.
As a single parent by that time, his mom was working, trying to provide for the family, and Winn felt he could provide for himself.
Seven years apart, Winn fell in love with his wife, Patsy, when she was 15.
Her brothers, who fought in the Golden Gloves, said they were going to go after him.
Her mother told them, that if they laid a hand on Winn, she would go after them.
A week before she was 17, Winn asked for the daughter’s hand in marriage.
“She said, ‘Yes, but I won’t sign until then. My rule is that she has to be 17.’ “
“Kids were getting married at 13 back then,” Winn said. “All you had to do is have your parents signature.”
Winn paid the $5 fee to get married, leaving $30 in his pockets.
Sixty-five year later, the Winns are still dealing with life. But Harley is not slowing down.
Although, at 89, Winn’s family has finally drawn the line, telling him that he can no longer get under cars, although he can still work on them standing upright.
“People hold my age against me everywhere,” he said. “They start telling you that you can’t do this and that. I tell them, ‘I can do whatever I want to.’ ”
