“Lowell (who died June 1) decided since it was made in Springfield and we’d been to the museum once, that would be the place where it should be kept,” said Mrs. Woods,
Mr. and Mrs. Woods visited the museum with her sister, Springfielder Verda Hollingsworth. Mrs. Woods, 85, traveled from her 360-acre farm in Greenfield, Ohio, Thursday to see the truck pushed off the bed of a Dan’s Towing truck and into the museum annex.
Had she sold it on Ebay, Mrs. Woods said, “who knows what shape it would be in in a few years.”
“He took care of his machinery and kept it painted up,” she said of her husband. “He was a farmer his whole life.”
The 1928 IH joins 1922 and 1926 models in the annex.
Mrs. Woods said her father-in-law bought it May 19, 1948, from Chenoweth Motor Co. in Xenia. The truck has dual rear wheels, four-wheel brakes, a vacuum wiper, a two-speed rear end and a grain bin.
Clarence Woods, whose name still appears on the title, paid $283.49 plus $8.51 in tax.
It is painted red with a black bin and trimmed with a couple of white pinstripes of the sort Lowell Woods favored.
Roger Sherrock, the museum’s chief executive officer, said that having the details of the truck’s history “makes it a much more interesting piece.”
Adding slightly to that value is the story told by Lowell and Velma Woods’ daughter Phyllis Rae, on hand Thursday with sisters Tricia Shepherd and Nanci Sexten.
“Daddy used to put hay in it,” Rae said. “Then he would put it in low gear, get up in the back of the truck and put the hay out for the cows” — with no one at the wheel.
In recent years, “it was mostly used for parades and festivals,” her mother said.
That its future is in the museum, Mrs. Woods said, “just relieves my mind.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368 or tstafford@coxohio.com.
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