Crossing the country in a stock Model A: Day 11: Roswell, NM to Andrews, TX

Roswell was a pretty interesting town, it was as I expected, full of alien related gift shops. We spent a little while in town walking around, checked out an antique store and ate some Mexican food, and set out on our way towards Texas. It was surely a hot day, so of course we had to run with the hood open again. You sure get a lot of looks driving a Model A, but can imagine how many looks you get driving a dirty Model A with the hood open and a moped strapped to the back? Well we're not crazy, just driving a car from one place to another, a lot of people do that on a daily basis! Everything was going pretty smooth on our last stretch of New Mexico, until we started hearing a decent little rattle coming from the front of the car. I had heard the rattle before but it was very faint and was hearing it through the floorboard or cowl so I thought it was just some random part of the car doing what a lot of things do on the car: rattle. When Lane went out to check what it was while I had the engine on, it was very apparent what it was and he had me come check it out. I turned the engine off, and realized the water pump had a lot of back and forth play, I don't mean an 1/8th of an inch, but it moved back and forth about an inch and a half. Not only that but the fan had started to get loose. We were in a parking lot next to a gas station, so we decided we'd pull the water pump and swap in a freshly rebuilt one. Luckily we'd bought one from our friend Bob in Concord before we left! We spent the next hour or so taking the radiator off, and putting on the new water pump. And at that point we saw exactly why the fan was loose, the rivets had started to back off so the blades would make a clicking sound. I know it's not a good idea to drive with a bad fan, but, you know what? We weren't about to sit at a gas station in an ugly part of some town we'd never heard of and wait for a fan to drop into our laps, so we did what we did and headed out of town in the dark and head towards San Angelo, TX. We made it over the border and down to a rest stop just outside of Andrews, and decided to stay the night there, and call some folks in San Angelo and see if we could find a fan there since it was the closest town to us in the Model A Membership Roster. That night drive was terrible and trucks flew by us at 80 miles an hour, swerving close to us, even though we weren't even on an interstate. It felt good to get off of the road and set up our camp on the rest stop lawn, hope no one cares!