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July 1936. "Drought refugees. North Dakota farm family moving to Idaho at port of entry near Miles City, Montana." Medium-format nitrate negative by Arthur Rothstein for the Resettlement Administration. View full size.
I believe that the car started as a 1923 Maxwell Touring Car. The running board apron with the raised border and the step plates along with the headlight shape lean toward a 1923. The 1924-25 Maxwell tourings had a different windshield mounts.
By June of 1925 Chrysler had ceased production of the Maxwell and had transformed this model into a Chrysler B series. Basically a rebadged Maxwell.
What qualifies as a "port of entry" in the middle of Montana? (Side note, I spent the evening in Miles City during a road trip last year. It's the tenth-largest city in the state with a mere 8,400 people.)
I'm trying to figure out the make of the car prior to it becoming a truck, based upon the M on the hubcap; several possibilities from the 1920s are Moon, Marmon, Marquette and Maxwell. In numbers, far more Maxwells were made than of the other choices. It surely never was a Mercedes or Minerva, and Mercury didn't begin production until later in the 1930s.
[It's a circa 1925 Maxwell touring car. - Dave]
A case of Hershey's chocolate, a case of Post Toasties and a copper laundry boiler. What else do you need?
Forget your present day interpretation of the the word, THESE were the true personification of the term.
I hope this family was able to make it in Idaho. They might have descendants living just north of me.
of Henry Fonda in Grapes of Wrath, or vice versa.
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