Courtesy of T.S. "Buck" Deyerle

The 1926 Model T Ford named Ignatz cost T.S. "Buck" Deyerle and Sid Turnbull (above) $25 in 1942. Many people had a hand in the paint job.

There was a war on. America was just emerging from the Great Depression. But youth was still youth in Roanoke in 1942, and its heart was light.

For proof, just look at Ignatz. Named apparently for a mouse in a comic strip, the 1926 Model T Ford was owned by a pair of Roanoke teenagers, Sid Turnbull and T.S. "Buck" Deyerle.

"We bought the thing for $25," recalled Deyerle, who recently sent a photograph of Ignatz to The Roanoke Times. He and Turnbull, now deceased, paid $12.50 apiece for the car, Deyerle explained by telephone from Florida, where he lives in the winter months.

Turnbull is the kid in the hat and trench coat in the picture. He is clowning around with a hand crank, although the late-model Model T had an electric starter. The boys never had a key, Deyerle said, but it didn't matter. They just poked a fingernail file into the ignition slot to start the car up.

The photo was taken by Deyerle in 1942, when the boys were both students at Jefferson High School. Deyerle couldn't remember where the name Ignatz came from -- it was 68 years ago, after all -- but a Google search revealed it was the name of a mouse in the popular comic strip "Krazy Kat," which ran in U.S. newspapers from 1913 to 1944.

"My father wouldn't let us keep it in the driveway," Deyerle said about the car. "It was such a comical-looking thing, he said, 'You're not going to park that in front of the house.' " They parked it instead behind a nearby filling station where Deyerle worked.

A community car

The Model T's eccentric paint job was a community effort. "Everybody on Grandin Road probably had a hand in it," said Deyerle, who lived in the Grandin neighborhood. "Anybody who wanted to paint on it, they just did it."

Along with its name, and the words "Approved by Good Housekeeping," the car's decor featured a triangular symbol on the door that Deyerle recalled was for a Roanoke Army unit. Also written on the car, though not visible in the photograph, were the words "P-51 Mustang," for the famous American-made fighter plane.

The two youthful owners weren't the only ones who drove Ignatz. There were 10 or so who would take it out now and then for a spin, Deyerle recalled. Gas was 21 cents a gallon, and a dime's worth was enough to get Ignatz going.

"We'd drive it until it ran out," said Deyerle, then leave it wherever it stopped. Sooner or later, somebody else would put more gas in it and drive it home. "It was a Grandin Road car," he said.

Although the drivers were mostly boys, at least one girl drove the old car, too. Deyerle said he looked up once to see Ignatz passing with young Kitty Coxe at the wheel. "She just waved and went on by," Deyerle recalled. "She drove it a few times. She was a tomboy."

As Kitty Coxe, now Kitty Coxe Koomen, recalled it, Deyerle had actually loaned Ignatz to her for a couple of weeks. She also remembered driving Ignatz down Jefferson Street once with a carload of cheerleaders when the brakes failed at Church Avenue. Fortunately there were no cars coming.

"We just went through that intersection and kept going," said Koomen, now 83. "I kept that car in front of my house for a long time. We had a good time in high school."

Roanoke police did not appreciate Ignatz, said Deyerle, who with Turnbull was summoned to juvenile court because of it. As Deyerle remembered it, a police officer told the judge: "No less than 10 boys drive it all day and night and leave it where it runs out of gas. We got to make these kids get rid of this junk." Deyerle said the judge told them to try and keep other people from driving Ignatz, and he let them go.

Eventually, Deyerle and Turnbull sold the car, for the same amount they had paid for it: $25. The two boys "sort of separated and went different ways," Deyerle said. "I got drafted."

Life after Ignatz

Deyerle was stationed in California during the war. On his return, he married LeCompte Glenn of Roanoke and opened a photography studio, Deyerle Studios -- now located in Salem under different ownership. The Deyerles are retired and live in Roanoke and Fort Pierce, Fla.

Turnbull joined the Marines and was stationed in Iran, at the Persian Gulf Command, said his daughter, Sidna Gragnani of Richmond.

The dashing grin in the photograph was apparently right in character: "My father's nickname was 'Six Way Sid,' as he was quite the pool shark," Gragnani wrote in an e-mail. She had never heard of Ignatz, but she said her father always liked Model T's.

After the war, Turnbull married fellow Roanoker Doris Page and moved to Richmond, where he worked as a salesman for General Electric, Gragnani said. He became ill and died in 1971, when he was just 47.

As for Ignatz, it vanished along with ration books and victory gardens.

"It was just a phase of life on Grandin Road," Deyerle said.