Reply To: Definitive History of Pierce Arrow

[Kenneth Muellner]

It was the stories my grandfather shared with me about his Pierce Arrows that inspired me to eventually buy my own Pierce. My grandfather lived next door to us, and had a nice grape arbor in the back yard. We would sit out in the yard on summer nights, and he would tell me of his old neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago, the local characters, but most of all his trips with his Pierces. One particularly sticks out in my mind is when he drove to Philadelphia in the middle of a blizzard, with what must have been a Dual Valve touring car, and brought my mother home from school there. Bear in mind this is long before interstate highways! Another time he took the family, including his two German Shepherds, out for a picnic in the country. He tied the dogs to the rear doors on the car, again a touring car, and suddenly the dogs spotted some animal, and they ran off with the car doors in trail. Once my great grandmother was visiting from Philadelphia, and my mother took her and my grandmother out for a nice Sunday drive in the country. While out driving, someone rear ended her. Coming home with a dented bumper, she tried to explain to him what had happened. Driving over to the dealership, he was arguing with her that no one would simply run into the back of a car like that. He was arguing so much, he did exactly the same thing, into the back of another car. Another time when he was teaching my mother to drive, he had her pull the Pierce out of the garage, located on a tight alley between streets. Another car started coming down the alley, so he told her to go right, go right. And she did go right, right into the brick wall of another garage. He was nonplussed, just told her to back up and keep going!