HARTFORD — Forty-one cars pulled onto the front lawn of the J.& O. Irish Museum in Hartford on Saturday.

Eighty-two jars of Rosie Henderson’s jams and relishes pulled out.

Henderson, the president of the Hartford Heritage Society, gave each car owner who participated in the annual antique auto show and ice cream social two jars to say thank you.

The show takes place each summer and serves as a fundraiser for the museum, a three-story building built in 1867 that served as Hartford’s only store/post office. Merchandise and mail arrived by the train that ran a few feet from the back of the store.

The museum is now served by donors and volunteers, who are in the process of restoring each room to the way life once was.

The building was given to the heritage society in 1976, one year after Anita Hovanesian’s 1975 Pontiac Catalina came off the assembly line.

Hovanesian, of Livermore, pulled onto the museum lawn and popped open the hood to reveal a 400-cubic-inch motor and her 18-year-old cat, Kippy.

“She’s eatin’ up a lot of Chevys at the race track,” Hovanesian said of her well-loved Catalina. To document those occasions, Hovanesian had an image of Kippy eating a mouse airbrushed under the hood.

Big block motors are refereed to as rats, Hovanesian explained. Small block motors are refereed to as mice.

So, to memorialize Hovanesian’s dominance over small-block motors and to remember her equally loved cat at the same time, Hovanesian’s big block (Cat)alina is pictured eating a small (block) mouse.

Glenn Wilcox’s Model A Ford also had a few bones under the hood. The car owner drove over from his home in Sumner in his 1930 Ford. But, unlike a true show car, Wilcox’s antique auto had a front grille made in 1932 and a “tranny” from 1939. The “B” motor was a few years newer than his “A” car.

“I have a few extra bones here and there,” Wilcox said. “My show days are over.”

The cars will be gone, but the J.& O. Irish Museum will open its doors to the public one more time this year. Volunteers will give tours Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. following the dedication of a permanent memorial to the Irish family.

“It’s the last chance to see the museum this year,” said society member Lee Holman.

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