By Mark Wing

The Tin Lizzies of Albuquerque’s display of cars at the New Mexico State Fair is an annual event normally organized by our current club president Vaughn Rockafellow.  Unfortunately, Vaughn had to work on this Sunday, September 10th, so senior club member and most recent club president, Mark Dominguez, took over organizational duties.  We congregated at a parking lot within a block of the fairgrounds to caravan into the fairgrounds.  This large parking area was also adequate to accommodate trailers.  To ensure security this year, the club voted to arrange for an off-duty Albuquerque policeman to guard the parking area while we were on-site at the fairgrounds.

We had a good showing of 19 club cars with the highlight of the State Fair event being a “take-apart car” demonstration by the women members of our club as well as other volunteers primarily from the local Model A Ford club, the Pocos Quatros (Little Fours).  Larry Azevedo had driven his 1925 Model T runabout take-apart car from the parking lot near the fairgrounds.  In preparation, for the 10:30 AM show, the car had to be disassembled first.  This drew quite a crowd of spectators!

At 10:30, the show began!  Larry was seated on a ladder introducing the participants, and gave a blow-by-blow description of the action.  The ladies, with a little help from the guys, managed to assemble the Model T, start, and run it a short distance in 26 minutes.  It was quite a triumph for the ladies and made for a fun and memorable event!

At 3PM, the police cleared a path for us and we exited via the northern end of the fairgrounds.  It was an enjoyable day and special thanks to the Dominguez’s for organizing the event, to Larry and Lorna Azevedo for coordinating and providing the take-apart car, and to the wonderful ladies in the Tin Lizzies and the Pocos Quatros for putting on such an enthusiastic take-apart car demonstration!