This page will give a report of for the 2004 E-M-F Company Outing Tour held from July 25th to July 30, 2004 in Western Pennsylvania. A great time was had by all of the participants. If you were not able to attend, please try to make one of our future activities. If you would like to plan or help plan such an event, please contact me. And please seriously consider bringing your E-M-F, Flanders or Everitt to the Detroit area in 2008 for our celebration of the 100th Birthday of the E-M-F.

Some details that my wife left out of her report: Cars on tour: 1909 E-M-F Touring owned by Gil Fitzhugh, 1909 E-M-F Roadster owned by Gordon Langeneger, 1910 E-M-F Touring owned by Walt Grove, 1910 E-M-F Roadster owned by Art Morra, 1911 E-M-F Standard (Open) Touring owned by Jack Free, 1912 E-M-F Demi Tonneau owned by Ken Campbell, 1912 E-M-F Touring owned by William Spencer, 1912 E-M-F Touring owned by Floyd Jaehnert, 1912 Flanders Roadster owned by Daryl Kemerer, 1912 Flanders Touring owned by Pete Davies, 1912 Cadillac owned by Ed Gocek, 1913 Buick owned by Lee Turner, 1934 Studebaker Roadster owned by Steve Dillon, 1920 Ford Model T Centerdoor Sedan owned by John M. Daly. E-M-F/Flanders owners were present from Ontario Canada, Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, Florida, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Ohio.

Enjoy the report written by my wife.

This is a line-up of E-M-F taken by John Free while visiting the Dave Berg car collection. From left to right: Art Morra's 1910 E-M-F Roadster, Walt Grove's 1910 E-M-F Touring, Gordon Langeneger's 1909 E-M-F Roadster, Ken Campbell's 1912 E-M-F Demi Tonneau and Jack Free's 1911 E-M-F Standard Touring. Click on the picture to see the full size.

Here are the Demi Tonneau and 5 Passenger touring Model's for 1912. The Demi in front belongs to Ken Campbell and the Touring in back belongs to Floyd Jaehnert. Click on the picture to see the full size.

We arrived in Pennsylvania on Friday afternoon, parked the trailer, unhooked the Excursion, and got settled in our room. Several other people had already arrived and a few E-M-F's were tooling around the parking lot, much to John's delight! He was far too excited to stop for dinner as he did the old "meet and greet" in the parking lot. Even though it was pretty chilly and a light, misty rain was falling, we still enjoyed an ice cream social outside that evening. We learned that fifteen cars would be on the tour and were relieved to learn that our Model-T would not be the only non-E-M-F trailing along; three other vehicles, besides our own, were attending for the same reason as ours – their E-M-F's just weren't ready to tour yet! We talked about the somewhat ominous weather forecast for the week and hoped that the meteorologists were off in their predictions.... Unfortunately, they weren't.

Monday dawned with a steady, solid, cold rain falling without any indication of letting up. After some discussion in the lobby over our continental breakfast, it was decided to "go modern" on this day and to just drive our regular vehicles. We headed out and our first stop, after winding through the marvelously hilly, remote, and rural countryside, passing Amish buggies and farms on the road, was the Wendell August Forge. I knew I was in trouble when I walked into this expansive and beautiful gift shop, and it was only the first day! The forge was really interesting and it was neat to get so close to the artisans and the kids even got to try their hand at forging a design onto a thin sheet of aluminum for a souvenir. The kids enjoyed the Kids Quiz almost as much as we did! We toured the Amish countryside some more and ended with catered picnic in a nearby park and a somewhat impromptu meeting about ideas for upcoming group events ensued. Mr. Kemerer graded the quizzes and all the kids won a prize for their hard work.

Here are some of the cars lined up in front of Engine No 604. From left to right: John Daly's 1920 Ford Sedan, Ed Gocek's 1912 Cadillac, Ken Campbell's 1912 E-M-F Demi Tonneau, Walt Groves 1910 E-M-F Touring (mostly hidden), Art Morra's 1910 E-M-F Roadster, and Gil Fitzhugh's 1909 E-M-F Touring. Click on the picture to see the full size.

Tuesday was still gray and drizzly, but the forecast was not as threatening so most of us decided to get our cars out of the trailers and give it a go. A bit of rain fell throughout the day, but not enough to ruin the day by any means. Once again, the countryside was beautiful. We stopped in Greenville, PA, at a railroad museum and then headed out to a place called Pymatuning. Oh my goodness, if you have never been to the spillway at Pymatuning, you have missed an amazing freak of nature (I think). We were all given bread in the morning and told we would be "casting our bread on the water," but told nothing else. We assumed it would be to feed ducks or some other water fowl. As we drove past the spillway to the parking area, we saw hundreds of people gathered along the banks of the reservoir tossing in bread. I looked to see what they were feeding and had to do a double take when I saw what appeared to be very large fish heads protruding from the water en mass. After parking the T, we walked to the rail and looked down to see hundreds and hundreds (thousands?) of large lake carp practically crawling over eachother to get to the bread being tossed to them by the onlookers. I have never seen anything like it in my life. Actually, it was pretty creepy and I feared I'd have nightmares over it! We left the scary, mutant, fish and went onto visit the Baldwin-Reynolds House Museum. After returning to the hotel and having dinner on our own, the group caravanned over to Daryl and Kathy's house in Butler to see Daryl's "Taj Garage" (gorgeous) and then onto their church to see the beautiful pipe organ Daryl had designed himself and hear Daryl and Kathy play! Having an overly-tired 4-year-old, I'd opted to stay back at the hotel for this event and, boy, was I sorry I had after hearing about it!

Here are some of the cars lined up at the wenesday lunch stop at the Drake Oil Well museum. From left to right: Gordaon Laneneger's 1909 E-M-F Roadster, William Spencers 1912 E-M-F Touring, Jack Free's 1911 Touring and Lee Turner's 1913 Buick Touring. Click on the picture to see the full size.

Wednesday's tour was to Titusville and Oil City, the birthplace of the oil industry. We then headed to Drake Well Park and museum where we had a catered lunch and tour of the interesting museum. I shouldn't really say "we" because John and I missed lunch due to our Model T breaking down as we climbed one of the incredible Pennsylvania "hills." As we descended one particularly steeply-graded hill, we learned that our newly-installed bands, the topic of much controversy and conversation amongst Model-T owners, had indeed, shredded pretty badly. We felt that we'd have to be very careful the rest of the way and that would be it for touring with the T on this trip. Still, John felt we could continue for this day if we were careful. As we left the town of Plumer, PA, we were climbing a steep, long, hill with a nice curve in it, just for fun, when the T began to choke and sputter. We thought we might have run out of gas and as she choked and sputtered, we pulled off onto what looked like a grassy shoulder but, surprise! there was a hidden drainage ditch under the tall grass and we suddenly found ourselves stuck and having to give the "thumbs down" symbol to Gordon Langeneger and Bill Spencer as they climbed easily up the hill in their E-M-F's. Gordon felt it important to commemorate the moment with a photo before helping to push us out of the ditch so we could get back down the nasty hill (could we have picked a worse spot to break down?!). John and I spent at least an hour at the bottom of this hill troubleshooting the problem. Against all odds, there was a small garage here and the gentleman that came out of the shop happened to be a Model-T guy who was of great, great help to us! After we realized the problem was not that we were out of gas (thank God, we never would have lived that one down), we thought it was the timer, yes, there definitely was a problem but it still wasn't right. Finally, John realized the problem was that some of the cotton from the shredding brake band had shorted the magneto and we were off to the races. Thank you, Kathy, for saving us lunch in the pavilion!

Floyd and Carol Jaehnert and their 1912 E-M-F 5-Passenger touring on it's first tour. This is one of the nicest E-M-F you will see. Click on the picture to see the full size.

Thursday was the first really nice weather day and John was excited to be invited to ride along with the Turner family in their 1912 Buick touring car. I followed in the 2003 Excursion. We stopped at a state park and another original oil well and John took over driving the Excursion while my son Michael (13), my daughter McKenna (4), and I got the exciting invitation to ride with Floyd and Carol Jaehnert in their 1912 E-M-F touring. This was quite a treat as this tour was this car's debut after Floyd's amazing restoration and having been strictly shown for two years prior. Floyd, Carol, and I had a bit of a rough time, however, missing a few turns and then being scared out of our minds (at least Carol and I were) as we descended the most amazingly intense, treacherous, non-guard-railed, road heading towards Hells Hollow waterfall. As we descended, we heard a clunk and heard something metallic bounce away down the road. I looked back and was able to see where the item had landed and trotted back to pick it up. As I was doing so, John caught up to us in the Excursion (he was riding "sweeper," thankfully) and he said "That's a wheel lug." We were only about 5 miles away from the next scheduled stop (and already quite a bit late) so the kids and I hopped into the Excursion with John and sped on ahead to get the appropriate tools for fixing the wheel. After lunch, the Jaehnert's E-M-F decided she did not want to continue with this trip at all and had to be towed to "pop the clutch" and get running. I was relieved, at this point, to be riding in a modern car again, complete with air conditioning, leather seats, and DVD player for the kids! It had been a long morning! We stopped at a private garage and saw an amazing collection of antique cars, pedal cars, toys, etc. The cars in this collection were remarkable – Rolls Royces, Bentleys, Dusenbergs, etc... to name a few! After leaving there and heading back towards the hotel, we found poor Daryl and Kathy pulled off with a sickly Flanders acting up. She had been having some problems with a gas valve sticking for a couple of days, but the problem became bad enough that they could no longer continue. The spot that Daryl and Kathy picked to break down was quite lovely and I enjoyed the view as John, Daryl, and Kathy worked to get the Flanders back on the road successfully.

This is all but 4 of the cars on tour lined up at the Drake Oil Well Museum. Click on the picture to see the full size.

Friday's tour included our tour luncheon (as opposed to a dinner banquet to end things that night) at The Franklin House in Franklin, PA. We left the hotel and had only traveled about 15 miles when the skies opened up and the rains began to fall. Because we were not that far into the tour, it was decided by most to head back to the hotel and continue on with modern cars again. A few (Steve and Sally Dillon in their Studebaker, Bill Spencer in his E-M-F, and Gorden Langeneger in his E-M-F) decided to brave the weather. Whew, did they get WET! The luncheon was very nice, even if they somehow had the numbers mixed up and there was a delay getting started as they re-set. The group presented Daryl and Kathy with a lovely framed print of an E-M-F, signed by all those on the tour, and Daryl was quite emotional giving his acceptance speech. More discussion about proposed upcoming events for the E-M-F Registry as well as whether or not we want to continue being called the E-M-F Registry followed. Then it was time to disperse and there were hugs and handshakes all around. Some of us continued on to St. John's Episcopalian church to see the breathtaking complete collection of Tiffany stained glass windows (wow!) before heading back.

Daryl and Kathy Kemerer recieved a framed E-M-F Picutre signed by all of the tour participants and an arrangement of flowers. Click on the picture to see the full size.

John, the kids, and I arrived back home in Illinois late on Saturday night after stopping in Cleveland overnight on Friday to rest and let the kids swim their hearts out. Saturday morning we visited the Crawford Antique Auto Museum in University Circle in Cleveland. If any of you have a chance to visit this museum, we highly recommend it - it is a wonderful collection with many very old and interesting autos. Oh, and the rest of the museum was nice too (wink-wink). It's now Tuesday evening and John is in the garage hard at work repairing the road-weary Model T after her grueling ordeal with the Western Pennsylvania terrain! Suffice it to say that The Centerdoor did not like PA! I, however, thoroughly enjoyed it - even the white-knuckler that I got to take with Floyd and Carol into Hell's Hollow (where we will never venture again, right Daryl?!) with their pristine 12 touring. Glad we noticed the wheel lug fly off before the wheel followed suit!

Daryl and Kathy Kemerer's 1912 Flanders Roadster, which I was allowed to drive a bit (a highlight of the week for me). Click on the picture to see the full size.

Plans are in the works for another tour in 2006 (hopefully a bit less hilly this time), and a larger event in the Detroit area in 2008 or 2009 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the E-M-F. We hope that more E-M-F owners will be able to make these events as it really was a wonderful site to see these beautiful brass babies cruise the Pennsylvania countryside.

Thanks to Amy for putting her thoughts and memories down for all to read. I am sure I would have noticed a different set of things from my wife, like the "Taj-Garage", driving the Kemerer's 1912 Flanders Roadster, meeting relatives of Walter Flanders.... and the list would go on. Thanks to all on the tour for helping to make our family vacation a memorable one. I look forward to the next get together, and hope to meet even more E-M-F/Flanders/Everitt owners. Happy Motoring!!!

How to contact me...
John M. Daly
Phone:	(815) 786-4824
Email: