Tour to La Porte County Historical Society Museum

By Tom O’Donnell

Roger Hunz set up the tour for July 31 and then had personal reasons that prevented him from enjoying the tour and asked me to lead the tour for him.

Saturday July 31 promised to be a very hot day and my 40 Mercury had not been tested after the latest repair, so Madeleine and I suffered the humility of riding in an air conditioned car.  We met Dan Pudelek, 53 Crestline Victoria, Joe Serritella, 41 Coupe, John and Este Scheve with their 37 60 hp standard in the trailer and Stan and Joanne Stack in their 53 Tudor at the Lincoln Oasis and started out on I-94 to Rt-49 where we moved onto local roads for the last half of the tour.

We arrived at the museum and Stan Stack and John Scheve registered for the show, while the others just put their cars on display.  John had a prime spot right in front of the museum.  We looked around the show field to see the local cars.  There was an original 1942 Mercury Fordor, an unrestored 1917 Model T Touring car, a 1936 Ford 3 window coupe with the pines front trim as well as many cars from the 60’s and 70’s.  After looking over the show field, we went into the museum where they had a special display of historic quilts from 1812 to 1920, artifacts that were germane to the history of La Porte County, a very large collection of weapons and over 30 cars.

There was also a replica of a log cabin, a large N-gauge train layout and an early 20th century dentist office.  Looking at the drill made my teeth hurt from remembering the treatments when I was a youngster.

The weapons collection had over 800 items on display. Some of the firearms are over 200 years old and a couple of them were over 6 feet long.

One of the cars is a replica of the 1929 Auburn Cabin Speedster designed by Gordon Buehrig.  The original was destroyed in a fire.  This car has ostrich skin leather trim on the dash and door panels and T-Tops.  Another unusual car was the 1948 Playboy.  There was an interesting video of the life history of the Kessling family and how Dr. Kessling amassed his collection.  The 41 Buick 4 door convertible was their main vacation car for many years.

After touring the museum, some of us went to lunch at a local restaurant and then traveled home.  John and Este stayed for the trophy awards.