After reading the 1954 shop manual and reexamining my pics and reading the 1953 shop manual again, I found 1 reference to these parts. The bar and spring are barely visible in the 1953 shop manual on page 5-15 in figure 30. It is on the opposite side of the assembly than in my photo. I think it is a part of the emergency/parking brake system. After checking other posts on the parking brake, I found a link to a vendor (ClassicPartsusa.com) that actually has both the bar and spring. The bar is called a strut or spreading bar for the rear brake shoes. The spring is, wait for it, the spring for strut on rear brake shoes.
So the point of posting this: did I in fact figure it out? Or did I miss the mark?
