In the 1940's Trumbull was a much more rural town than today and there wasn't all that much to do. A group of young fellas in Long Hill got together and formed a club we called the Gas House Gang. We'd meet at the Esso station on the corner of Gisella and Main, which was owned by George Renzulli, a crackerjack Model A and Model T expert. Mostly we just hung out, played pinball and worked on our cars, but in the summer we had Leapin Lizzy.

Leapin Lizzy was a Model T we had rigged up to enable it to rear up and drive on two wheels, which we took around to parades. First, we changed the center of gravity by shortening the driveshaft, moving everything forward including the rear spoke wheels and placing small iron wheels under the back end so the chassis wouldn't drag on the ground in the up position. The Model T was unique in having a planetary transmission, which was governed by three pedals on the floor. The pedal on the left was the drive pedal, push it and the car went forward. The pedal on the right was the brake and the pedal in the middle was reverse. With a modern manual transmission, if you back up, then try to shift into first, all you're going to do is grind the gears. But the way the Model T was constructed, you could back it up, kick the forward pedal and it would immediately change direction. We'd have maybe three people sitting in the back, and the back seat was now past the rear wheels. To make the car stand up as shown in the picture, we'd put it in reverse, back it up, then hit the forward pedal. It would immediately go forward, but the inertia and the weight of the rear passengers would lift the whole front end up off the ground. To make it go back down, we'd hit the reverse pedal and the car would come down. We called the car Leapin Lizzy the Dancing Model T.

 

Leapin Lizzy - The Dancing Model T

This was quite a thing in those days and we used it a lot. What happened is we got invited to a lot of parades and festivals. We'd paint and decorate the car for each event. We'd paint eyebrows and eyelashes on the headlights, paint the wheel spokes all different colors, tie a necktie on the radiator cap, paint "snuff" on the toolbox, put American flags on both sides of the windshield. Then we would paint the name of our sponsor, the "Here It Is Shop" variety store in Stepney, or the name of the parade on the sides of the car. For the Barnum festival parade, we'd dress up as clowns with wigs, makeup and ladies dresses or long lab coats.

The Barnum festival parade was a much bigger deal back then. It was one of the largest parades in the country, attracting marching bands from all over, the Mummers, the Ice King and Queen from Minnesota, local politicians and lots of floats from area companies like GE, Wonderbread (which gave off the smell of baking bread), and floats from local fraternal and ethnic groups. There were a lot of horses in the parade even the Clydesdales with the Budweiser wagon and the palomino riders from California came. The parade route was longer then, and took more than three hours. We'd be in the parade and along the route, we'd periodically rear it up, drive 25 to 30 feet and kick the rear pedal and the car would come down. Everybody would bounce and we were lucky we never blew a tire.

When we got in front of the reviewing stand, we had a little act. We had a hose hooked to the intake manifold and pour in a can of Casite, which was a popular carburetor cleaner in those days. The Casite made the car smoke so much you couldn't see it anymore. Now, under the hood we had wired a bunch of spare parts, like an old fan belt, spark plugs, all sorts of odds and ends. They weren't functional, they were just under there. We'd let the smoke settle, then get out with a bushel basket. We'd open up the hood and start pulling out the extra parts one by one throwing them into the bushel basket. We'd show the basket of parts to the judges, then hop back in and take off. The act would hold up the whole parade for a few minutes, but we won twice in our category!

We were in the Barnum festival each year between 1946 and 1951, but we also went other places. We did the Veteran's Parade in New Haven, the Norwalk Bicentennial Parade in 1951, the Tobacco Festival in Hartford, and once even the 40 & 8^th Veteran's Parade all the way in Philadelphia. The Hartford and Philadelphia parades were too far away to drive Lizzy, so the sponsors would send a truck to trailer her there and we would ride in the back with the car. We also performed at the Rodeo held at the Circle Dot Ranch off Madison Avenue on the Trumbull/Bridgeport border.

By the end of a parade, the engine would be really hot and the number one connecting rod would be really pounding because it got no lubrication when the car was in the upper position. We'd pull over and let the car rest and cool off a bit before driving her very slowly back home to Long Hill. If it was knocking really bad, we'd put a tow bar on it and tow it home with one of our own cars. Soon we'd have to get it ready for the next event. Model T's were scarce even then, so we were always on the lookout to purchase any old ones in the area to get spare parts. The number one connecting rod had to be replaced each time too. The wheels had wooden spokes in those days and would dry out. You could tell when the wheels were starting to go bad because they'd squeak and creak when they started to loosen up. What we would have to do is drive the Model T into a brook and leave it there overnight to soak the wheels.

By 1951, the Korean War had started and fellas our age were in the military or would be soon. My last parade was the Norwalk Bicentennial. I was able to go because I had just finished boot camp and was on leave. Since most of us were in the service, the car wasn't getting used much and the owner, George Renzulli, sold it to my uncle Mickey Sciortino. He kept it a while, then sold it to someone in Danbury.

In the picture John Provenzano is the driver and I'm sitting next to him in the front seat. In the rear is Bud Perkins, lying down next to John Lathrup, who is sitting in the middle wearing the big hat and Kenny Hawks who is sitting directly behind me. Not shown is, George Renzulli, who usually drove the car, Walt Boland and Eliot "Corky" Schelomis, all of whom also participated in the parades.

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