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MY FATHER’S PARENTS
CORRECTION! See the correction, in red, about my Grandfather’s Mother. Father’s Parents My grandparents, George and Catherine Horlacher, were born in Germantown, Philadelphia, Pa. in the late 1800s. My grandfather was born April 23, 1892 in a house at the corner of Orianna and Lehigh. My grandmother was born June 20, 1894. I don’t have the exact location of her birthplace. My grandfather worked for his father, Harry Horlacher, in the stables where he kept the horses he used in his dairy business. Later, my grandfather delivered milk by horse and wagon and the horse was so familiar with the route that my grandfather would walk the sidewalks while the horse pulled the wagon down the street. When they reached a customer’s home, my grandfather would get the milk from the wagon, put it on the porch, and whistle to let the horse know that he was off to his next customer! Faithfully, the horse was always there, too! My grandmother worked, at this same time, for my grandfather’s uncle who owned an Ice Cream and Butter Shop. She and my grandfather were married in 1912, and they had two children, my father, George William, in 1913, and my Aunt Catherine in 1915. In 1917, the whole family traveled by train to Los Angeles, California. My grandfather worked at many different jobs, oil field worker, survey crew member, street car repairman, and he also ran the kilns that fired ceramic tiles for the Matlock Tile Company. My grandmother […]
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GOOD OL’ DAYS
GOOD OL’ DAYS I remember our neighbor’s 1927 Diana, made by the Moon Motor Car Company. Work or play, it made our days exciting. My Grandmother and the neighbor loaded the Diana with eggs from my Grandparents’ egg ranch in La Sierra, California, and hauled them to the market. I can remember finding a place to sit in among the dozens of eggs, very carefully finding a seat, and then having to make sure I stayed put! One little slide could mean disaster to our cargo, AND to the Diana! And when we weren’t hauling eggs, we used the Diana to pull a two-wheeled box trailer to haul hay. Hauling hay was a lot more fun than hauling eggs! We would put the Diana in low gear, point the car in the direction we needed to go, and it would just idle up and down the field while we walked along side loading the trailer. Every once in awhile, one of us would have to jump on the running board and correct the steering. We used the Diana for fun, too, playing car tag! Something we could never do, today! And actually, our car tag was more like a game of hide-and-seek. Several of my friends and I would drive up one of the small hills in our rural area, or down to the very bottom of a hill, and try to find a place that had a little bend in the road where we could hide a car. We’d […]
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MOON MOTOR CARS 1906 TO 1929
In 1871 Joseph Moon took his horse to St, Louis, Missouri and set up a business building buggies. In 1902,31 years later, he saw the potential in the budding automobile industry, so he began building cars. Within four years, he introduced his first car,the Hercules,but he changed its name to Moon, and in january, 1906 he shipped the first cars under that name to the National Automobile Show in New York City. By 1908, Moon was selling his cars to the Hol- Tan company, located in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. (The Hol- Tan company was owned by E.R. Hollander, and G.P. and H.C. Tangeman. Their combined names formed the name of their company, Hol – Tan.) Hol – Tan had previously been importing and selling Fiats and Lancias from Italy, but either Hol- Tan, or Fiat/ Lancia discontinued dealing with each other. Their relationship with Moon continue. Joseph Moon died in 1919. His son-in-law, Stewart McDonald succeeded him,and remained president of the company until 1928 when he became the chairman of the comany’s board. Carl W. Burst replaced him as president. The Moon company contiued to build cars throughout the transitions,and in 1924, it came out with its first cars with low-pressure tires, and hydraulic brakes.Moon wasn’t the first car to have hydraulic brakes. they were invented in 1918 by Malcolm Lougheed (later changed to Lockheed), and the fist car to come out with four-wheel hydraulic brakes was the Model A Dusenberg, in 1921. The new feature in the Moon’s hydraulic […]