Humble said his grandfather, Carl Maute, who farmed at Wolford, bought the Model T new in 1918.

“The best I can come up with is my uncle told me that it came in five or six crates (on the Great Northern Railroad) and they put it together on site. I don’t know if that meant at the railroad station or I would imagine they loaded it onto a wagon and they hauled it to his home in Wolford, which was only a half mile away from the station,” Humble said.

Humble said his grandfather migrated from Germany to the United States to Wisconsin and then homesteaded at Wolford in 1901.

“He and his brother, Jacob, both settled in Wolford,” Humble said. “My folks bought the farm from him and then he moved into town and became a carpenter and a handyman.”

Submitted Photo This is the Ford Model T before Leon Humble started to restore it.

Of his grandfather buying a Model T touring car, Humble said, “He was one of the first ones in Wolford to have a car.”

He said the Model T had a functional use.

“He was on a farm and he made a pickup out of it later. Then he hauled I suppose lumber and stuff in it,” Humble said.

Humble left Wolford in November 1956. After he got out of high school, he joined the Army for three years. He went to electronics school in the Army and was assigned to a guided missile battery in downtown Chicago. When he got out of the Army he hitchhiked to Arizona and took a number of math courses before Arizona State University would consider him, then was accepted and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and master’s degrees in business. His career over the years was in the electrical engineering/semiconductor fields. He started up other businesses and retired three different times. Now he said, “I’m 83 and enjoying life.”

Humble said his grandpa’s Model T stayed in Wolford until at least the late ’50s.

“That’s when my uncle gave it to the Dale Hawk Museum (at Wolford),” Humble said. “That’s where it stayed for quite some time. I have a bill of sale that my uncle sold it to Slaubaughs. I think he sold it out of the museum.”

Because he restores cars Humble said he started getting interested in the Model T and if he could find it.

“I have eight old cars that I’ve restored. My last addition was a 1942 World War II Jeep,” he said.

He started calling around to some high school friends.

“One of the Slaubaugh boys said, ‘I think Richard has that in his grain Quonset,'” Humble said. He said a vehicle was there and it was mostly covered with grain. Rodents had demolished the horsehair seats.

“They took a picture of it and sent to me,” he said. He remembered riding in his grandpa’s Model T pickup and knew the one in the Quonset was his grandpa’s vehicle.

The Model T had remained within a 10-mile radius of Wolford throughout the years.

“I bought it and then I went up to North Dakota and trailered it back to Arizona,” he said.

The Model T sat at the Humble cabin in the Flagstaff, Arizona, area for a number of years. “In 2009 or so I said I’m going to start to restore it. It took three years,” Humble said.

“It was a frame up restoration. I took every nut and bolt off — rebuilt the engine. It’s probably as good as or better than new actually,” he said.

He said it doesn’t have automatic driving features. “There is no gear shift, three pedals on the floor and the accelerator and the spark are all controlled by hand off the steering wheel,” Humble said.

He said it runs well.

“The engine would probably go 50 miles an hour but the problem is the wheels are big and they are wooden spoke. The trouble is the bouncing of the front wheels is very tricky so it starts to shimmy a lot if it goes over 30,” he said. He said 30 and under is a safe speed to drive it.

He said getting the parts wasn’t a problem but it is expensive.

“It cost me about $28,000 to rebuild it because my grandpa had put a bunch of different year parts on it. Anything that broke he would just go find a Model T part whether it was a 1916 or a 1925. If it fit, he would use it,” Humble said, adding, “Fit is a relative word. Sometimes it fit, sometimes not so good. I took all those off and restored it with all 1918 parts.”

“The seat was horsehair and that was all eaten up. I don’t do paint or I don’t do upholstery so I found people in the Phoenix area that did both,” he said.

“It took three years and I worked a lot on weekends. I was still working most of that time,” he said. “I wanted to get done with it so I hired a guy to do a lot of ordering the parts. He was an expert on Model T’s so I would go to his place on weekends and help him,” he said.

When the Model T was ready, Humble entered it in a Fourth of July Parade in Munds Park, about 130 miles north of Phoenix.

“The special story is I had a sign made that this was my grandfather’s. That makes it special,” Humble said.

“I’ve taken it to several car shows. It does really well. I’ve won first prizes for it at major car shows,” he said.

“It’s one of those priceless things,” Humble said of having his grandfather’s Ford Model T.