Five
people share their memories of life on the road in the twentieth
century.
Playing
in the Road ListenRead
Winifred
Barber remembers a time when the motor car was not a dominant
force in peoples lives. At ninety-two she recalls with vivid
detail the bustle of life on the roads in the early part of
this century when the horse and cart were the main form of transport
and where children played freely in the streets.
Putting
the World On Wheels ListenRead
For
Dorman Ford the Model-T Ford has played a central part in his
life. He has collected numerous models over the past forty years.
Dorman describes the impact this first mass-produced car had
on American life and talks about his own fascination with the
Model-T, which he says, put the world on wheels.
The
People's Car ListenRead
Ivan Hirst tells the little known story of how the Volkswagen
Beetle was rediscovered in the ruins of a munitions factory
in Germany at the end of the Second World War. Major Hirst,
who was serving with the Allied Military government in Germany
at the time, was put in charge of the factory that had originally
been built to manufacture Hitler's dream car, the Volks Wagen
-- the People's Car. Realising the potential of the little car
as a means of transport for the allied forces occupying Germany,
Hirst and a group of officers set about getting it back into
production.
Vespa Days ListenRead
Ermanno Spadoni is a self-confessed Vespa fanatic and has been
one since the mid 1940s. He has owned fifteen Vespas during
his career and still has one today. He talks with fondness of
the days when as a young man he and two others raced around
the countryside like the 'Three Muskateers' on their Vespa bikes.
More than forty years later he still has those friends and the
Vespa motorbike is just as popular.
Preacher
Man Listen
Read
Stan Herrold is known as the Preacher Man when talking on
his CB radio to his truck-driving colleagues during his long
journeys across the United States. Stan has been a truck driver
for forty years and has seen America transformed by a new
road system. New superhighways have sprung up bringing with
them self-service shopping, fast foods restaurants and motels
-- all of which have changed Stan's profession and changed
the world.
Listen
