The 1927 Model T truck that W.J. Menge used to bring produce from the former farming community of the Ninth Ward to New Orleans’ French Market is on exhibit at LSU’s Rural Life Museum.
This is a different kind of food truck, the kind that conjures images of the Clampetts riding atop a makeshift frame from the Ozarks to Beverly Hills.
That’s not meant to be derogatory; even Bill Stark sees the similarities between the truck once owned by W.J. Menge and the Clampetts’ contraption in the 1960s sitcom “The Beverly Hillbillies.” Stark is director of the LSU Rural Life Museum and Windrush Gardens, the truck’s home since 2021.
“It looks like something you would see in an old sitcom,” he said. “That’s the thing that comes to mind, because you could just see them sitting on the back of this truck. But this wasn’t in a TV show. It was real.”
LSU’s Rural Life Museum has stocked the interior of the former food truck owned by W.J. Menge with artificial produce to illustrate how it appeared when he used the 1927 Model T Ford to deliver produce to the French Market in the early 20th century. The truck is part of the museum’s collection.
As real as its story, which begins with Menge and his family in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward. The truck’s frame is a little rusty, but it’s as solid as the wood-frame shelter constructed on its bed.
The truck wasn’t fancy, but it wasn’t meant to be. Its purpose was to haul produce from the Ninth Ward to the French Market in an era when the neighborhood one of several farming communities surrounding New Orleans, Metairie and Kenner among them.
The Menge family may have donated and hauled the truck to the museum in the spring of 2021, but its story begins in 1927.
LSU’s Rural Life Museum has stocked the interior of the former food truck owned by W.J. Menge with artificial produce to illustrate how it appeared when he used the 1927 Model T Ford to deliver produce to the French Market in the early 20th century. The truck is part of the museum’s collection.
“It’s a 1927 Ford Model T,” Stark said. “That’s when W.J. Menge bought it, and it didn’t have the cab on the back. So, the family drove it home sitting on top of the gas tank.”
Yes, the gas tank. Sounds dangerous, but it was part of the necessity of getting the truck from point A to point B, where Menge could construct the wooden cab.
The frame looks more like a portable food stand. But then, that was the point.
“They would use it to gather the produce that was grown outside in the Ninth Ward at the time,” Stark said. “It was one of the farming communities that helped support New Orleans back before we had good refrigerated trucks and your food came in from all across the world.”
The running board of the 1927 Ford Model T truck once owned by W.J. Menge, who farmed in the former farming community of the Ninth Ward. The truck was used to transport fresh produce to New Orleans’ French Market and is now part of LSU’s Rural Life Museum’s permanent collection.
The Menges would load up their seasonal bounty and drive it to the French Market, the nation’s oldest open-air market, where New Orleanians sought out fresh produce.
“The Menges were also delivering flowers and such around the city,” Stark said.
The truck’s history doesn’t include information on whether or not Menge owned the Ninth Ward fields, but the family provided Stark other stories about the truck, including an interesting tidbit about tire sharing during the Great Depression.
Owner W.J. Menge’s name is printed on the side of the 1927 Ford Model T truck he used to transport produce from the Ninth Ward to New Orleans’ French Market. The truck is now part of LSU’s Rural Life Museum’s permanent collection.
“This happened during the Depression and then the early part of the 1940s, because we really didn’t come out of the scarcity until after the war,” Star said. “They would go to the neighbors’ house, borrow tires from them and put the tires on the truck so they could take a day trip and go to Lake Pontchartrain. When they came back that night, they’d take the tires off the truck ad give them back to the neighbors.”
The Menge children also drove the truck to Pontchartrain Beach amusement park, whose star attraction was a wooden roller coaster called the Zephyr.
A front tire of the 1927 Ford Model T truck used by W.J. Menge to transport produce from the Ninth Ward to New Orleans’ French Market. The truck is in the permanent collection of LSU’s Rural Life Museum.
“The family told us that the last time the truck ran was in the early 1950s,” Stark said. “They got it running after the boys came back from World War II. It stayed in the Ninth Ward until 2004, when it was moved up to Pearl River.”
Stark pauses at the thought of 2004. That was the final pre-Katrina year for New Orleans. The hurricane’s aftermath in the following year would forever change the city.
“And so, if you think about it, if the truck had still been there another year, it probably would have been lost,” he said. “We wouldn’t have this piece of history today. The Menges wanted it to be in a museum, so they gave it to us.”
The front seat and steering wheel of the 1927 Ford Model T truck used by W.J. Menge to transport produce from the Ninth Ward to New Orleans’ French Market. The truck is part of LSU’s Rural Life Museum’s permanent collection.
But the truck isn’t just eye candy among the museum’s agrarian artifacts. Stark and curator Katherine Fresina are planning to incorporate it in a permanent exhibit of locally grown food products.
Those same products were abundant at one time in the Ninth Ward, where, as family’s tradition has it, a future rock ‘n’ roll legend worked for the Menges.
“As the story goes, there was young man who was working in the fields there in the Ninth Ward, who had a bit of a singing voice and got on the radio,” Stark said “And when Mr. Menge saw him again, he said, ‘Well, Fats, I guess you’re famous now.’ And Fats Domino replied, ‘Yeah, and I’m not going to be singing to any more horses’ behinds.’ That was his job — working behind the plow. And you know the rest of the story.”
LSU’s Rural Life Museum is open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Admission is $10-$12. For more information, call (225) 765-2437 or visit lsu.edu/rurallife.
The 1927 Model T truck that W.J. Menge used to bring produce from the former farming community of the Ninth Ward to New Orleans’ French Market is on exhibit at LSU’s Rural Life Museum.
