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The First Road Trip · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
0:11
Speaker 1: I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck
0:14
Speaker 1: and it's just the two of us. But we're gonna
0:16
Speaker 1: make it just fine. We're gonna make it if you try.
0:18
Speaker 1: As I like to say, sometimes when it's just the
0:20
Speaker 1: two of us and it's sufficient. I'm excited about this
0:25
Speaker 1: episode because this is a really, really great story that
0:30
Speaker 1: doesn't have Like I was, I kept waiting for something
0:35
Speaker 1: either bad to happen or someone to be exposed as awful,
0:39
Speaker 1: and it's just a really fun, feel good story. I
0:42
Speaker 1: would go so far as to call it a hum dinger.
0:45
Speaker 1: It's a hum dinger. And we gotta give a huge
0:47
Speaker 1: credit to Ed who helps us with this, and also
0:51
Speaker 1: because he helped Ed, who helped us ken Burns, Yeah,
0:56
Speaker 1: ken Burns has a great documentary about this topic, which
1:00
Speaker 1: is the first cross country automobile road trip. It's called
1:04
Speaker 1: Horatio's Drive. It's a wonderful story and you can find
1:07
Speaker 1: it on PBS. Hopefully if you're a streamer, you pay
1:11
Speaker 1: for and subscribe to the PBS app because it's a
1:13
Speaker 1: very worthwhile and great channel to subscribe to. Narrated by
1:18
Speaker 1: the great Keith David, one of the great great voices,
1:23
Speaker 1: just amazing and such a great actor too, and everything
1:26
Speaker 1: from They Live Too Minute work there's something about Mary. Yeah,
1:31
Speaker 1: he was in Platoon too. He's like just such a
1:34
Speaker 1: great actor. I love that guy. And because our protagonists
1:38
Speaker 1: in this story, who will introduce you to in a second,
1:42
Speaker 1: is such an affable, seemingly really good guy, they got
1:46
Speaker 1: none other than Tom Hanks to recreate his voice for
1:49
Speaker 1: his diary letters and stuff like that. We should also
1:52
Speaker 1: give a hat tip to Dayton Duncan, who's interviewed extensively
1:56
Speaker 1: in that that documentary, because he wrote a book on
2:00
Speaker 1: on the Drive. I would argue the book, Yeah, let's
2:04
Speaker 1: just call it that, the book on Horatio Nelson Jackson. Right, Yeah,
2:10
Speaker 1: that's his name. Great name. So we're gonna talk a
2:14
Speaker 1: lot more about him later, but we really kind of
2:16
Speaker 1: want to like lay the groundwork, bring the context, as
2:20
Speaker 1: Flavor Flavor would put it, and just kind of give
2:24
Speaker 1: you an idea of what the times were like when
2:28
Speaker 1: Horatio Nelson Jackson decided to become the first person to
2:33
Speaker 1: travel cross country in a car. Right, so, nineteen oh three,
2:38
Speaker 1: nine one one was a joke. I like that one. Yes, okay,
2:42
Speaker 1: all right, just a medium okay on that one, I'll
2:45
Speaker 1: take it. Nineteen o three is when this happened. But
2:48
Speaker 1: to put this in context, like you said, the first
2:52
Speaker 1: transcontinental railroad was built and completed or not built but
2:56
Speaker 1: completed in eighteen sixty nine, and it was eighteen seventy
3:01
Speaker 1: six when you got your first cross country train trip
3:05
Speaker 1: that happened. So this was what like twenty five ish
3:10
Speaker 1: years roughly after that, and people were still kind of
3:14
Speaker 1: only traveling by train because cars were pretty new, and
3:19
Speaker 1: they were only for richies, because I believe in the
3:23
Speaker 1: documentary they said, like the cheapest car you could get
3:27
Speaker 1: will cost more than the average American made in a year.
3:30
Speaker 1: So in the early nineteen hundreds, it was rich people
3:33
Speaker 1: who wanted to buy a super expensive, unique toy that
3:37
Speaker 1: and we'll hammer this home a lot. But they didn't
3:41
Speaker 1: even know was gonna end up being a real thing. Yeah,
3:45
Speaker 1: it could have turned out like the se totally right.
3:49
Speaker 1: I mean this is kind of a kin to somebody
3:51
Speaker 1: taking a trek across America on a segue back in
3:56
Speaker 1: like nineteen ninety five. Yeah, they did not know car
4:00
Speaker 1: like a lot of people thought, these cars will never
4:02
Speaker 1: amount to anything. You're silly, It'll always be trains and horses, right,
4:08
Speaker 1: So to kind of get across why people thought it
4:11
Speaker 1: was just going to be nothing but trains and horses.
4:13
Speaker 1: Like that's how the American infrastructure was built. Like, if
4:17
Speaker 1: you went any any kind of lengthy distance, you took
4:21
Speaker 1: a train. If you were moving around luckily, you took
4:24
Speaker 1: a horse, maybe a horse and a buggy or a
4:26
Speaker 1: horse and carriage or something like that. You kind of drive,
4:29
Speaker 1: I'm sure if you wanted to be super wild west
4:32
Speaker 1: about it. But there were at the time, say around
4:35
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred, the United States had two point three million
4:39
Speaker 1: miles of roads. Sounds pretty impressive. One hundred and fifty
4:43
Speaker 1: miles were paved, right, and all of those were within
4:48
Speaker 1: big cities, right, So the vast, vast, vast majority of
4:53
Speaker 1: roads in the United States were rough, rutted, dusty or
4:59
Speaker 1: muddy or somehow both at the same time, roads that
5:02
Speaker 1: you would not want to walk over really, let alone
5:06
Speaker 1: ride a car over. Yeah, they were in bad shape. Generally,
5:10
Speaker 1: about fourteen million horses in the United States to about
5:14
Speaker 1: eight thousand cars. And like you said, people traveled locally,
5:19
Speaker 1: I think the average was like people generally didn't go
5:22
Speaker 1: more than twelve miles from their house, and that even
5:25
Speaker 1: feels like the high end. I don't think that's an average.
5:28
Speaker 1: I think people probably didn't go within a few miles
5:31
Speaker 1: of their house. Yeah, I mean today, unless I'm traveling. Right.
5:36
Speaker 1: At the time, there were and you still take trains
5:38
Speaker 1: for a long distance travel sometimes I try to. At
5:42
Speaker 1: the time, also, like you you didn't really steer away
5:45
Speaker 1: from home because it took you so long to go
5:49
Speaker 1: anywhere on horse right, I think at the time it
5:51
Speaker 1: was still a two day journey basically from New York
5:54
Speaker 1: to Philadelphia by horse. So this is like a this
5:58
Speaker 1: is a this is a big deal for somebody to
6:01
Speaker 1: be like, no, I'm going to try this. The other
6:03
Speaker 1: thing was the roads themselves weren't mapped. Yeah, I mean
6:06
Speaker 1: east of the Mississippi, there were maps and guide books
6:10
Speaker 1: that you could get pretty good directions from. Right, And
6:14
Speaker 1: it's it's funny in the documentary they kind of show
6:18
Speaker 1: what the directions were, like one of those like turn
6:22
Speaker 1: right at the old Stone horse Trough. Yeah, like those
6:26
Speaker 1: were the kind of directions and because that's what a
6:29
Speaker 1: local would tell you to do. So somebody had the
6:31
Speaker 1: bright idea to print those and put them down in
6:34
Speaker 1: book form and transmit that information that way, and it's
6:38
Speaker 1: still held up because there were no road names, there
6:40
Speaker 1: were no route numbers, there was nothing like that, because
6:42
Speaker 1: there was no reason for anything like that to exist. Yeah,
6:45
Speaker 1: and funny enough, that's how I prefer directions now, because
6:49
Speaker 1: I'm very directionally challenged and famously so. And I also
6:55
Speaker 1: never know the names of roads, so I always ask
6:59
Speaker 1: people like, tell me, you know, go to that diner
7:02
Speaker 1: that you know and take a left and then go
7:03
Speaker 1: to that car wash and veer right. And that's how
7:06
Speaker 1: I prefer to get directions. I tend to zone out
7:11
Speaker 1: when people give me directions too, but I've asked for
7:15
Speaker 1: and uh, you can just kind of see it on
7:16
Speaker 1: their face. Can tell I'm gonna get lost because it's
7:19
Speaker 1: just not sinking in well, all the fun of that.
7:21
Speaker 1: It's gone now because you just punch it into your
7:23
Speaker 1: app or whatever. But totally, I'm basically talking about pre
7:27
Speaker 1: GPS stuff. I remember, I remember, I remember that. I
7:31
Speaker 1: am also smart enough to really appreciate ways though, too.
7:34
Speaker 1: You know, do you remember the fun of a road
7:36
Speaker 1: trip of opening that Rand McNally atlas and saying like,
7:42
Speaker 1: I think we can go this way to get to
7:44
Speaker 1: this town, or it looks like this other road we
7:46
Speaker 1: can go around. That was like, and I'm not like, oh,
7:48
Speaker 1: things were so much better when it was harder, but
7:50
Speaker 1: it was a really had a fun, sort of magical
7:54
Speaker 1: adventuresome quality to it. I think, yeah, I um spent
7:59
Speaker 1: five weeks in a van driving around the western United
8:02
Speaker 1: States doing that same thing. It was very cool and
8:05
Speaker 1: like the amount of freedom is really hard to get
8:08
Speaker 1: across of like, yeah, not having anywhere you had to
8:11
Speaker 1: be at any particular time and saying like, oh, that
8:14
Speaker 1: that landmark sounds pretty cool. I'm gonna go see that.
8:18
Speaker 1: It's pretty neat. You know what words you don't hear
8:20
Speaker 1: anymore is let's go here instead. It's true, everything seems
8:25
Speaker 1: so locked down, you know. It's like, I don't know,
8:28
Speaker 1: people don't say, oh no, let's just let's decide to
8:31
Speaker 1: go to this town instead of this town. I feel
8:35
Speaker 1: like we've entered the disgrunt old aged old man because
8:41
Speaker 1: it seems like we do this almost every episode. Dude, Yeah,
8:44
Speaker 1: maybe we're gonna have to pay more attention to that
8:46
Speaker 1: or else we're gonna lose all the youngsters and just
8:48
Speaker 1: attract all the oldsters and who cares. Well, Hey, youngster,
8:51
Speaker 1: I encourage you to set out on a road trip
8:53
Speaker 1: with a map and and enjoy it. Okay, there you go,
8:57
Speaker 1: I'm way to save it. I don't think I saved anything.
9:00
Speaker 1: So I think we've gotten across that it would be
9:03
Speaker 1: really hard to drive a car, right, yeah, across the
9:06
Speaker 1: United States at the time. Yeah, hard to drive a car.
9:08
Speaker 1: But because cars were becoming a little more popular, they
9:12
Speaker 1: were trying to get a more positive publicity going for
9:15
Speaker 1: their cars and their companies, and so they said, hey,
9:19
Speaker 1: what a great way to do this then, like kind
9:21
Speaker 1: of sponsor across country Carr trip. That'll get a lot
9:25
Speaker 1: of press. And so they tried this with John and
9:29
Speaker 1: Louise Davis from the how do you pronounce that? Deria?
9:34
Speaker 1: It sounds like something you contract that you'd be really
9:38
Speaker 1: unhappy about. Okay, the Daria I couldn't quite tell, but yeah,
9:42
Speaker 1: it does sound like a disease of some sort. Do
9:44
Speaker 1: you are yea, yeah, the Daria car company gave them
9:48
Speaker 1: a national or I'm sorry they weren't a car company.
9:51
Speaker 1: That was the car The company was the National Motor
9:54
Speaker 1: Carriage Company, Yeah, known today as the NMCC. Really kidding out,
10:00
Speaker 1: I thought you're gonna say as Portia. No, I would
10:03
Speaker 1: like to think that, but no, I don't think so. No,
10:05
Speaker 1: I don't think so either. So they sponsored this couple.
10:08
Speaker 1: This was an eighteen ninety nine. It did not work out.
10:11
Speaker 1: They very famously got beaten to They started from New
10:14
Speaker 1: York and they got beaten to Syracuse by a one
10:17
Speaker 1: armed bicyclist who gave them a ten day head start.
10:21
Speaker 1: So press it went opposite of how they wanted to.
10:24
Speaker 1: That was sort of they lost track or lost interest
10:28
Speaker 1: very early on in this sort of doomed thing. And
10:31
Speaker 1: I don't think they even know if they succeeded in
10:34
Speaker 1: getting to San Francisco. Well, I think they know they didn't,
10:36
Speaker 1: but they basically didn't really cover the story after that. No,
10:40
Speaker 1: they dropped off the map after about Chicago. They dropped
10:44
Speaker 1: off the GPS app. Sorry, so no, it's good. It
10:51
Speaker 1: just took me a second to for it to sink in.
10:54
Speaker 1: I thought that was pretty good. I'm trying to get
10:55
Speaker 1: our younger listeners back, so well, we should make a
10:59
Speaker 1: TikTok of all this. Then, Okay, didn't know what people do,
11:01
Speaker 1: sure for now, so it was wonderful you just saved me. Um.
11:09
Speaker 1: So it was established though, even though the Davises didn't
11:12
Speaker 1: make it that like this is actually a really good
11:14
Speaker 1: way to to to promote a car brand is to
11:18
Speaker 1: be the first to make it across the country. I mean,
11:20
Speaker 1: then everyone will know that's a good car, because it's
11:23
Speaker 1: just so ridiculous to even think a car could do that.
11:26
Speaker 1: So a couple of years after the davis Is, I
11:28
Speaker 1: guess nineteen o one, a carmaker named Alexander Winton M
11:33
Speaker 1: who had a Winton Car Company, handmade cars, beautiful cars. Yeah. Uh,
11:40
Speaker 1: he tried it himself, I believe, with this publicist. Very smartly,
11:45
Speaker 1: he and his publicist hit the road. Um, the acid
11:48
Speaker 1: hit them around Barstow. I think, well that showed up
11:53
Speaker 1: and they ended up getting trapped in a dune in Nevada. Yeah.
11:57
Speaker 1: But you you bring up a thing that might be overlooked.
12:00
Speaker 1: Is they very smartly started from west to east because,
12:03
Speaker 1: as we mentioned, the west was untamed land and bad,
12:07
Speaker 1: bad bad roads if there weren't at all, So getting
12:10
Speaker 1: that hard part over first, when the car was brand
12:13
Speaker 1: spanking new, was really really smart. But what they didn't
12:16
Speaker 1: count on was and we'll see what Jackson learned was
12:20
Speaker 1: driving through the desert in an old car like that
12:23
Speaker 1: is not good. Sand is not good for getting stuck,
12:28
Speaker 1: or it's great for getting stuck. It's not good for
12:30
Speaker 1: making good time. Sand is not good for getting in
12:33
Speaker 1: carburetors and in oil and gas. And you know, these
12:37
Speaker 1: engines weren't these big closed systems like they are today.
12:40
Speaker 1: So sand no good. But Winton got this press right,
12:44
Speaker 1: like like he helped I think, still publicize his car
12:48
Speaker 1: company regardless and again the fact that no one had
12:51
Speaker 1: done this, but people were starting to try it. It
12:54
Speaker 1: kept being a thing. It was going to be a
12:56
Speaker 1: thing until somebody did it. And so a couple of
12:58
Speaker 1: years after Winton try, a guy named Horatio Nelson Jackson,
13:02
Speaker 1: who's the star of our story, was hanging out at
13:05
Speaker 1: the University Club of San Francisco, and apparently a couple
13:09
Speaker 1: of fellow club members were saying that cars were basically
13:13
Speaker 1: useless and that they would never really go anywhere, and
13:17
Speaker 1: there's no reason for anybody to have one. Jackson, by
13:20
Speaker 1: this time had really developed a real love of cars,
13:23
Speaker 1: had started collecting them even yeah, and I guess to
13:27
Speaker 1: defend cars honor, he slapped down a fifty wager that
13:32
Speaker 1: he could make it across the United States from San
13:34
Speaker 1: Francisco to New York in less than ninety days. Ninety
13:38
Speaker 1: days or less. I'm sorry. And that was about fifteen
13:41
Speaker 1: hundred dollars that he threw down on the table right then,
13:44
Speaker 1: and the people took it. They accepted his wager, and
13:47
Speaker 1: four days later he set out for New York from
13:51
Speaker 1: San Francisco. It is madness to think about that he
13:55
Speaker 1: did this with that little planning. He didn't have a
13:59
Speaker 1: car to do it. I mean he had cars, but
14:01
Speaker 1: not one to go across country at the time. Just
14:05
Speaker 1: quickly about Jackson. He was a doctor who got tuberculosis
14:10
Speaker 1: and quit his practice kind of at the same time
14:13
Speaker 1: that he married a very wealthy woman named Bertha Richardson Wells,
14:17
Speaker 1: very wealthy New England family from Vermont. Her family made
14:22
Speaker 1: their money in salary compounds. I it was like a
14:25
Speaker 1: tonic yeah, basically, so he as Ed Putt, did rich
14:30
Speaker 1: guy things, capital R, capital G. And his wife was
14:34
Speaker 1: super supportive, like everyone was on board. He was like,
14:37
Speaker 1: that's awesome. I'll take a train to Burlington. I'll meet
14:41
Speaker 1: you over there, honey, you have my blessing. And it
14:43
Speaker 1: seems like they had a really like judging from the
14:46
Speaker 1: letters that of course it was voiced by Tom Hanks too,
14:49
Speaker 1: so you're endeared immediately. But judging from the letters, it
14:52
Speaker 1: seems like they were just a great couple, a very
14:55
Speaker 1: loving family. He called her Swipes, and no one knows
14:59
Speaker 1: why that nickname was there, but he, you know, he
15:02
Speaker 1: signed it as Nelson and the year years forever Nelson
15:05
Speaker 1: and my dearest Swipes. And it was really really sort
15:08
Speaker 1: of a beautiful story of this couple. And he knew
15:12
Speaker 1: he had to get a guy to go with him,
15:14
Speaker 1: and so he picked a great traveling partner. He was
15:18
Speaker 1: a small engine mechanic and a factory named Sewell Crocker,
15:23
Speaker 1: who was about ten years younger. He's twenty two years old.
15:25
Speaker 1: I think, um, what was Horatio? Was like, okay, so
15:30
Speaker 1: this guy could fix cars, he knew cars, and apparently
15:34
Speaker 1: like they really liked each other and were which was
15:37
Speaker 1: a big deal. You know, you've been on road trips
15:39
Speaker 1: in regular cars and that's a key factor. But especially
15:42
Speaker 1: back then with all the troubles they were going to have,
15:44
Speaker 1: he had to have someone that you could get along with.
15:47
Speaker 1: That's a big one for sure. So he asked Crocker, hey, man,
15:51
Speaker 1: what car should we get for this? And Crocker said, well,
15:54
Speaker 1: you have basically limitless fun, get the best, buy yourself.
15:58
Speaker 1: In nineteen oh three went in touring car and end
16:01
Speaker 1: points something out that I think is very astute. The
16:03
Speaker 1: reason why, probably Suel Crocker said get a Winton was
16:07
Speaker 1: because Winton had already shown that they were making really
16:10
Speaker 1: good cars enough so that they were willing to try
16:13
Speaker 1: to make it across country in one of them. So
16:16
Speaker 1: that's exactly what Jackson did. Horatio did. He's the kind
16:20
Speaker 1: of guy you call him by his first name because
16:21
Speaker 1: it's got a great first name, and he's Tom Hanks,
16:24
Speaker 1: like affable. Right. Yeah, So Horatio bought himself a Winton
16:29
Speaker 1: touring car nineteen o three. Apparently he paid essentially one
16:33
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars for it, and it was used, Yeah,
16:36
Speaker 1: it was used, but it was the only one available,
16:40
Speaker 1: so he just paid whatever the person wanted for it,
16:43
Speaker 1: and so I think in nineteen oh three dollars he
16:48
Speaker 1: paid three thousand dollars. But he named it the Vermont
16:50
Speaker 1: because that's where he and his wife Bertha lived. But
16:53
Speaker 1: a little bit about this car there was. It was
16:56
Speaker 1: an It was open in every sense of the word.
16:59
Speaker 1: It's like if you took a tub and put wheels
17:05
Speaker 1: on it and then had a steering will sticking out
17:08
Speaker 1: of it. That that was the car. There was no windshield,
17:11
Speaker 1: there was no roof, there was no back windshield, there
17:13
Speaker 1: were no doors, there was no nothing. It was like
17:17
Speaker 1: a giant riding lawnmower with like wagon wheels. Well, it's
17:22
Speaker 1: funny that you bring up riding lawnmowers, Chuck, because the
17:26
Speaker 1: two cylinder chain drive engine had twenty horsepower, and my
17:30
Speaker 1: friend a John Deere X three hundred series riding mower
17:33
Speaker 1: has twenty two horsepower. That's funny. That's really funny. This
17:39
Speaker 1: this thing topped out at thirty miles per hour. I
17:40
Speaker 1: don't think that John Deer does that, but that's probably
17:43
Speaker 1: just because it's cutting grass at the same time. But
17:45
Speaker 1: imagine imagine traveling the country on a riding lawnmower. Basically
17:51
Speaker 1: that's about what they were doing. But yes, you're right,
17:53
Speaker 1: thirty miles an hour is substantially more. That's what it
17:58
Speaker 1: could do. Max Ye, no way did they average thirty
18:01
Speaker 1: miles an hour? Not even close. It was someone, uh
18:05
Speaker 1: it was it was red, a really good looking car.
18:07
Speaker 1: You'll only see black and whites. But someone on redditum,
18:12
Speaker 1: that's the picture I sent you did a very fun
18:14
Speaker 1: colorized picture of Horatio and Crocker and a third party
18:20
Speaker 1: to be named later, um and colorized it and it
18:23
Speaker 1: just it looks awesome. And this car is so cool looking. Yeah,
18:27
Speaker 1: I don't mean to detract from it. It was a
18:29
Speaker 1: cool looking car, very cool as far as comfort goes,
18:33
Speaker 1: it was not at all comfortable. No, I say, we
18:36
Speaker 1: take a break and then set out on the road
18:38
Speaker 1: trip with these guys. Huh oh, let's do it all right. So,
19:06
Speaker 1: as we will see, there were other car manufacturers planning
19:10
Speaker 1: to do the same thing at the time, and a
19:13
Speaker 1: couple of them ended up. You know, it ended up
19:16
Speaker 1: sort of being a race against like a corporation versus
19:20
Speaker 1: a human. Even though he was driving. You know, it's
19:23
Speaker 1: like a car he built himself. It was a Winton,
19:26
Speaker 1: but he was doing it himself with this other guy.
19:29
Speaker 1: He wasn't fun, he wasn't sponsored. It was about the
19:32
Speaker 1: spirit of adventure. He all these as we'll see, all
19:35
Speaker 1: these other companies sent like supplies ahead and the like,
19:38
Speaker 1: they had teams of mechanics. He didn't have anything to
19:42
Speaker 1: prove he'd put this together in four days, including buying
19:46
Speaker 1: the car, And that's just I really want to get across.
19:51
Speaker 1: The spirit of this whole thing was just this optimist
19:55
Speaker 1: who was like, let me see if I can do
19:57
Speaker 1: this crazy thing. Yeah. So two months after Horatio and
20:03
Speaker 1: Sewell set out on their trip, Packard sent a team
20:06
Speaker 1: out and like you said, they were very well outfitted.
20:09
Speaker 1: They had a mechanic on board. There was gasoline for
20:11
Speaker 1: them at every stop. Because gasoline was there were no
20:15
Speaker 1: gas stations, and definitely there were no gas stations out west.
20:20
Speaker 1: You would go to the general store and be like,
20:22
Speaker 1: I'd like a can of your most dangerous volatile liquids please,
20:26
Speaker 1: and they would hand you some gasoline and a can,
20:28
Speaker 1: and you'd buy a few of them to drive around with.
20:30
Speaker 1: It was incredibly dangerous, but that's how you didn't run
20:34
Speaker 1: out of gas. Packard had the advantage of like every
20:37
Speaker 1: town or every X number of miles, there was gasoline
20:41
Speaker 1: waiting for them, So they essentially had gas stations that
20:44
Speaker 1: were reserved exclusively for them. Horatio and Sewel did not
20:48
Speaker 1: have anything remotely like that, and so they got into
20:51
Speaker 1: all sorts of fun little adventures, like the time that
20:53
Speaker 1: Sewel Crucker had to bike dozens of miles on a
20:57
Speaker 1: borrowed bicycle to go to and fro to fill up
21:01
Speaker 1: their gas can and bring it back and then fill
21:03
Speaker 1: it up again and then bring it back. And that
21:06
Speaker 1: must have been there all right, exactly, And it's fun
21:09
Speaker 1: now in retrospect us talking about it here in twenty
21:11
Speaker 1: twenty three in the studio. I'm sure it was not
21:13
Speaker 1: a great day for Suel Crocker. No, I don't think
21:16
Speaker 1: they were drawing straws. Ooh you know what I mean.
21:18
Speaker 1: Like right, the rich thirty one year old with the
21:21
Speaker 1: head TB is definitely saying, all right, hit the road
21:25
Speaker 1: on the bike, my friend, were equals in almost every way,
21:29
Speaker 1: but hit the trail on the bike, right, all right.
21:31
Speaker 1: So Packard did so two months later, like he said,
21:34
Speaker 1: an Oldsmobile did the same thing a month after that.
21:37
Speaker 1: I believe much the same operation, you know, fully sponsored
21:41
Speaker 1: and like rigged up in everything. So they threw out
21:46
Speaker 1: the back seat on this Winton. I don't think we
21:49
Speaker 1: mentioned this thing could go two hundred and fifty miles
21:53
Speaker 1: with their tank of fuel, which that was way more
21:56
Speaker 1: than I thought. Yeah, for sure, I was super impressed.
22:00
Speaker 1: So they ripped out the backseat, which doesn't look like
22:02
Speaker 1: it was much of one anyway, and packed you know,
22:07
Speaker 1: cooking kit, tons of rope. Something that would probably be
22:11
Speaker 1: the most valuable thing in the whole car was a
22:14
Speaker 1: pulley system, a block and tackle. Yeah, for sure. They
22:17
Speaker 1: had a code at camera, they had sleeping bags, they
22:20
Speaker 1: had a shoveling axe. They had a bunch of guns
22:22
Speaker 1: and ammunition because they might be hunting for food out
22:26
Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere, or just maybe you want
22:28
Speaker 1: to murder someone, yeah, or just like shooting out of
22:32
Speaker 1: an untopped car is probably pretty fun when no one's around,
22:36
Speaker 1: But that is one. So Yeah, the problem is is
22:39
Speaker 1: like they weren't experts at tying down their gear. Yeah,
22:43
Speaker 1: And they would get to like a stop probably basically
22:47
Speaker 1: every day, and find that something they needed had dropped
22:49
Speaker 1: off and bounced out at some point like back on
22:53
Speaker 1: their trail, and that they had gone too far to
22:55
Speaker 1: go back to try to find it. They lost like
22:58
Speaker 1: cooking utensils. Horatio lost multiple pairs of his eyeglasses. It's
23:05
Speaker 1: just crazy to me that they weren't like, put a
23:06
Speaker 1: tarp on it and wrap the tarp up and then
23:09
Speaker 1: put rope on the tarp. You know, who knows. But
23:13
Speaker 1: they did lose a lot of stuff, and luckily, like
23:14
Speaker 1: you said, they didn't lose that block and tackle. It
23:16
Speaker 1: would really come into into play multiple times. But they
23:21
Speaker 1: made a really good decision early on number one. They
23:25
Speaker 1: followed I can't remember his first, mister Winton's Alexander Winton's example,
23:31
Speaker 1: and started out west. So what they would be doing
23:34
Speaker 1: is getting the hardest part of the trip out of
23:36
Speaker 1: the way first, while the car had very few miles
23:40
Speaker 1: on it, right, yeah, which was you know, a nice
23:44
Speaker 1: little copy. But then they made a really really great decision,
23:47
Speaker 1: and I think the decision that frankly made them a
23:51
Speaker 1: success in the end. Did I just spoil it? I guess.
23:54
Speaker 1: We talked about what a great story it was. It
23:56
Speaker 1: wouldn't be great if they conked out in Michigan. True, true,
24:00
Speaker 1: But they decided to go add hundreds of miles to
24:03
Speaker 1: their trip by not just taking a right and going
24:07
Speaker 1: across the country, but going north up through Oregon to
24:12
Speaker 1: avoid that Nevada desert, and that, my friend, even though
24:16
Speaker 1: there were some treacherous mountains that they had to go through,
24:19
Speaker 1: avoiding that desert I think is what ultimately made them successful. Yeah,
24:25
Speaker 1: I mean hundreds of miles added to the trip. But
24:28
Speaker 1: it was incredibly smart because again Winton had bottomed out
24:32
Speaker 1: in that sand. That sand wasn't going anywhere. At the
24:35
Speaker 1: very least. There were wagon trails and stuff up in Oregon,
24:39
Speaker 1: and they were able to kind of make their way
24:41
Speaker 1: along these the railroad tracks that were there. So there
24:44
Speaker 1: were a railroad right of ways, which is the land
24:48
Speaker 1: cleared on either side of a railroad track, and they
24:51
Speaker 1: would drive on those or if they had to drive
24:53
Speaker 1: on the railway themselves, and they would they would ride
24:57
Speaker 1: on railroad bridges in a car that could go thirty
25:01
Speaker 1: miles per hour max. Yeah, and hoped God that there
25:05
Speaker 1: wasn't a train that was going to come. And I
25:07
Speaker 1: was like, man, I'm so glad. I watched Stand by
25:09
Speaker 1: Me a couple of days ago, just about to bring
25:11
Speaker 1: that up, and he watched it. It's such a great
25:13
Speaker 1: part of that movie. And then I was telling you,
25:15
Speaker 1: like that was a masterpiece, Like that is Rob Briner's masterpiece.
25:20
Speaker 1: And he's made some pretty great movies, but it is
25:23
Speaker 1: exponentially better than I even remembered as a kid. I'll
25:27
Speaker 1: throw a spinal tap in there, but I a yeah,
25:29
Speaker 1: have you still not seen that? That's what I'm saying. No,
25:31
Speaker 1: it's great. That's a great movie. I think When Harry
25:33
Speaker 1: Met Sally's a great movie. Like there's tons of great
25:36
Speaker 1: movies Rob Brianer's made, but I think stand By Me
25:39
Speaker 1: might be the best. Yeah, it's a great movie. I
25:41
Speaker 1: loved that scene when he they put their hands on
25:44
Speaker 1: the rail, Yeah, and it just gets real quiet and
25:46
Speaker 1: they're listening. They were like, do you feel any vibration
25:49
Speaker 1: at all? And that's probably what these guys were doing,
25:51
Speaker 1: I'm sure, but they were doing it bumping along in
25:54
Speaker 1: their open car. Yeah. Also shout out. I don't know
25:57
Speaker 1: Phil Wheaton still listens to us. I know he used to,
26:00
Speaker 1: but man, all of those kids did a great, great job.
26:04
Speaker 1: But he really did a magnificent job acting in that movie.
26:08
Speaker 1: So way to go Wheaton. Totally listening. Great movie. I
26:11
Speaker 1: love it. I'm gonna watch it too now. Talking about
26:13
Speaker 1: it in Vegas, it made me nostalgic for it for sure.
26:16
Speaker 1: All right, all right, So we are at leave time,
26:21
Speaker 1: which was May twenty third, nineteen oh three. It was
26:23
Speaker 1: a Saturday. Apparently it was a hot spring in California
26:28
Speaker 1: and it rained that afternoon and they took off from
26:32
Speaker 1: San Francisco and very quickly blew a tire out. It
26:36
Speaker 1: was like Romeo Michelle, Yeah, totally. And the chronicle in
26:42
Speaker 1: San Francisco wasn't even covering it. Basically, the San Francisco
26:45
Speaker 1: Examiner had a very short little piece about it about
26:48
Speaker 1: a horseless carriage going from sea to sea. But it
26:52
Speaker 1: would build, as you will see with the press as
26:54
Speaker 1: things went along, but it wasn't well covered at first.
26:57
Speaker 1: And the tire thing, it was an issue. I mean
27:01
Speaker 1: that car tires at the time would routinely blow out.
27:05
Speaker 1: They had a hard time on the trip finding new tubes.
27:08
Speaker 1: They would stock up on used tubes. Whenever they went
27:11
Speaker 1: to a town it seemed like that had any kind
27:14
Speaker 1: of tubes, they would just buy them, right and you
27:16
Speaker 1: know your tubes. Yeah, And it was it was tires
27:19
Speaker 1: were an issue thatould seemed like one of the main issues. Yeah,
27:22
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, because I mean you can imagine there's
27:26
Speaker 1: not people selling car tires because there were so few cars,
27:29
Speaker 1: and out west they kept encountering people who had never
27:32
Speaker 1: seen a car. Yeah, I saw mention of that Packard
27:36
Speaker 1: team that was riding. I think Tom Fetch was the
27:40
Speaker 1: Packard guy who was driving the car. And they pulled
27:43
Speaker 1: into one town that where a murder had just been committed,
27:47
Speaker 1: and so few people had seen a car in that
27:49
Speaker 1: town that everybody left the fresh murder scene, including the sheriff,
27:53
Speaker 1: to come look at the car that had just rolled
27:55
Speaker 1: into town. Like that was like what it was like
27:57
Speaker 1: out west of the time. So of course you weren't
27:59
Speaker 1: going to find our tires easily. You had to improvise
28:01
Speaker 1: any way. You could sure an a murdered body out there.
28:04
Speaker 1: Back then was the Diamond dozen. Diamond dozen, it's not
28:07
Speaker 1: going anywhere. That's right, Let's go check out that new car.
28:11
Speaker 1: It's not going anywhere. So they're going east, they're going
28:16
Speaker 1: through some treacherous terrain. They're going through the Cascade Mountains.
28:21
Speaker 1: It's fun in the documentary to hear the diary or
28:24
Speaker 1: letters home to his wife where he was talking about,
28:27
Speaker 1: you know, the roads that are basically big enough for
28:31
Speaker 1: one car, because I can't remember exactly I said it
28:33
Speaker 1: but like because nature has made it that way, basically,
28:36
Speaker 1: like it's a cliff side on the side of a mountain.
28:39
Speaker 1: So luckily, you know, they're having to share the road
28:42
Speaker 1: with stage coaches and horses and stuff like that. Not
28:45
Speaker 1: really any other cars probably, but they would. It was
28:49
Speaker 1: what you would think. They were constantly getting stuck, constantly
28:52
Speaker 1: blowing tires. They I think the record was eighteen times
28:56
Speaker 1: in a day they had to use that block and
28:59
Speaker 1: tackle to pull themselves out of a ditch or a
29:02
Speaker 1: river or a mud hole. That must have been the
29:04
Speaker 1: suckiest day ever. Yeah. And then the maps were an
29:07
Speaker 1: issue too, right, Yeah, they would have to rely on
29:10
Speaker 1: locals for directions. Some when they could find locals, a
29:13
Speaker 1: lot of times they just had to guess. I saw
29:16
Speaker 1: again the Packard team started to keep bringing them up.
29:18
Speaker 1: I know they're not what the stories about, but they
29:20
Speaker 1: learned to avoid the nicest roads because out west that
29:23
Speaker 1: usually meant that it just dead ended in some rich
29:26
Speaker 1: person's house. And when you could find locals, they would
29:31
Speaker 1: sometimes just literally misguide you. There was one that Horatio
29:35
Speaker 1: and Sewell ran across a woman on horseback who told
29:38
Speaker 1: them to get to the next town they should go
29:40
Speaker 1: down this road and it dead ended in her family's farm.
29:43
Speaker 1: It was her driveway. Basically, they came back the way
29:47
Speaker 1: they went and ran across her again. They're like, why
29:49
Speaker 1: did you do that? And she's like, oh, my dad
29:51
Speaker 1: and mom and husband would have wanted to see a car.
29:54
Speaker 1: They've never seen a car before, so she purposefully sent
29:57
Speaker 1: them the wrong way down to dead end, miles down
30:00
Speaker 1: dead apparently too. And I did not hear that they
30:03
Speaker 1: had gotten angry with her or cross even. I think
30:06
Speaker 1: they probably just said like, good day to you, madam,
30:08
Speaker 1: right and kept on. They should have said, you don't
30:11
Speaker 1: know this yet, but one day giving directions will be
30:13
Speaker 1: very important, and this will not be cool. This is
30:16
Speaker 1: not going to reflect good on your family. Tina Manson
30:23
Speaker 1: like Tina, I just loved. Tina was so not a
30:28
Speaker 1: name back then. Tina Manson, I love it. Great choice.
30:32
Speaker 1: The breaks were kind of what you would imagine. They
30:35
Speaker 1: weren't great, so it was quite thrilling when they would
30:38
Speaker 1: get on these downhill runs and they're what a lot
30:41
Speaker 1: you could do about it? The clutch went out a lot.
30:44
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we talked about our our various
30:47
Speaker 1: van journeys out west We were in a Volkswagen Van
30:49
Speaker 1: for mine and the mountains killed it. Like we had
30:54
Speaker 1: to get a rental jeep Cherokee and Nevada for the
30:58
Speaker 1: whole second half of the trip because going through the
31:01
Speaker 1: mountains literally killed his. And it wasn't like a brand
31:06
Speaker 1: new vwvan. It wasn't one of the old ones, but
31:08
Speaker 1: it was like the Vanagan. But like it drove us
31:11
Speaker 1: from Atlanta to the mountains just fine, and the mountains
31:14
Speaker 1: killed it. So imagine what the mountains did to the
31:17
Speaker 1: clutch system on this, you know, lawnmower. Basically. Yeah, I
31:22
Speaker 1: have to admit, until today I did not know what
31:25
Speaker 1: a clutch did. I knew that the clutches the thing
31:27
Speaker 1: you push into shift gears, never understood why the reason
31:31
Speaker 1: why you push in is because you actually want to
31:33
Speaker 1: stop the clutch from working temporarily. Yeah. What the clutches.
31:37
Speaker 1: It transmits the motor power or the motor's torque to
31:42
Speaker 1: the transmission, which in turn turns the axle to the
31:47
Speaker 1: tires the wheels, Right, that's my understanding of it. And
31:50
Speaker 1: when you're pressing in the clutch, what you're really doing
31:53
Speaker 1: is keeping that transfer from taking place so that you
31:56
Speaker 1: can go into another gear and then you let the
31:59
Speaker 1: clutch out in that transfer begins again. So, yes, the
32:02
Speaker 1: clutch is an extremely important instrument. The car does not
32:07
Speaker 1: go without it, and apparently Suel Crocker had to fix
32:10
Speaker 1: that thing almost as many times as they used the
32:13
Speaker 1: block and tackle to pull themselves out of mud. Well
32:15
Speaker 1: he was worth his weight, wasn't, Oh boy, Yeah he was.
32:18
Speaker 1: They did have one modification they made, like on the
32:22
Speaker 1: way there, as they added a head lamp and a
32:25
Speaker 1: seed lean head lamp so they could drive at night,
32:27
Speaker 1: because he wanted to make up time, you know, because
32:29
Speaker 1: there were times when they had to go to a
32:32
Speaker 1: town and wait for I think one of them was
32:35
Speaker 1: like three or four days where they're waiting, ironically for
32:39
Speaker 1: a stage coach to show up with parts that they
32:41
Speaker 1: had ordered. There were times when a stage coach or
32:45
Speaker 1: a guy on a horse would pull them out ironically. Again. Yeah,
32:49
Speaker 1: And I didn't get the impression that Horatio was trying
32:52
Speaker 1: to prove that horses were obsolete. No, I don't think
32:55
Speaker 1: so at all. I think he still saw it as
32:57
Speaker 1: pretty ironic that he still relied on horses in this
32:59
Speaker 1: horse carriage. Yeah, I don't think he threw shade even
33:02
Speaker 1: when blacksmiths would make repairs. They pointed out in the
33:06
Speaker 1: documentary that I think it was in one of his
33:09
Speaker 1: letters he said it like the irony wasn't lost on him.
33:11
Speaker 1: But I don't think he was like, you're not gonna
33:14
Speaker 1: have a job in a few years, sucker, right right,
33:18
Speaker 1: that's what segue maker said to people on foot, didn't
33:22
Speaker 1: the adventure the segue drive off a cliff on a segue.
33:25
Speaker 1: Oh that sounds like an urban legend, but is maybe
33:28
Speaker 1: one that's just crazy enough to be true. I have
33:31
Speaker 1: to look that up. Should we take a break, Yes,
33:33
Speaker 1: we look, we'll take a break and look that up.
33:35
Speaker 1: All right, we'll be back here with the truth right
33:37
Speaker 1: after this star. Okay, we're back and Chuck it's true,
34:06
Speaker 1: BBC says it. Yeah. Wow. Jimmy Hezeldin was sixty two
34:10
Speaker 1: when he rode off a cliff on his company's segues.
34:15
Speaker 1: It killed him, obviously, Yes, in West Yorkshire. That's sad. Yeah,
34:21
Speaker 1: but my god, that's quite a legend. It is. It's
34:25
Speaker 1: like Fabio getting hit in the face with a duck
34:27
Speaker 1: on a roller coaster. What no, you know that? No,
34:33
Speaker 1: Fabio on a roller coaster, a duck flew across his
34:37
Speaker 1: path and hit him in the face and killed him. No, no, no, okay,
34:42
Speaker 1: but it's uh, it's one of these pictures on the
34:44
Speaker 1: Internet where you're like, oh, that's got to be fake,
34:47
Speaker 1: and it's and it really happened, poor Fabio. I know,
34:51
Speaker 1: I feel bad for the guy, but it was also like,
34:53
Speaker 1: of all the people to get for this to happen too,
34:58
Speaker 1: it was just it was pretty rich. Yeah, I can imagine,
35:01
Speaker 1: what is he a jerk? No? No, no no, he okay,
35:04
Speaker 1: but he's Fabio and like, you know, that kind of
35:06
Speaker 1: stuff didn't happened to Fabio Dan, me too, totally with
35:12
Speaker 1: you on that. Did you look up that picture? I'm
35:14
Speaker 1: watching the video right now. I can't not chuck. Maybe
35:18
Speaker 1: we'll have an episode someday where we just tell each
35:21
Speaker 1: other internet memes and the other one will look it
35:24
Speaker 1: up and then react on Mike, and that's how we'll
35:28
Speaker 1: do it. Okay, stuff stuff you shouldn't I couldn't care
35:30
Speaker 1: less about. We'll be the name of that stuff you
35:32
Speaker 1: really probably shouldn't bother listening to. All right, So let's
35:36
Speaker 1: pick up with the trip. It sounds like we're painting
35:39
Speaker 1: and ed. I'm glad he pointed this out. It sounds
35:42
Speaker 1: like we're painting a picture of an awful time because
35:44
Speaker 1: of all of the delays and all of the things
35:46
Speaker 1: that happened. They knew what they were in for with this.
35:48
Speaker 1: They didn't think it was going to be a pleasure cruise.
35:51
Speaker 1: It was also a great fun adventure. Like these guys
35:54
Speaker 1: were having a great time. They were seeing things that
35:57
Speaker 1: few people had ever even seen in person before, even
36:00
Speaker 1: by horse at times. And they had no schedule. I mean,
36:04
Speaker 1: they were trying to beat this ninety day thing. But
36:07
Speaker 1: like I get the feeling he really just wanted to
36:09
Speaker 1: finish the trip, so you know, he had money. They
36:12
Speaker 1: were staying in hotels, they were staying with people along
36:14
Speaker 1: the way who opened their homes to them. They were
36:17
Speaker 1: driving about two hours at a time, and it seemed
36:21
Speaker 1: like they were they were having fun at the same time.
36:23
Speaker 1: I have that same impression too, for sure. And plus,
36:26
Speaker 1: don't forget Seuel Crocker was making some pretty good money too. Yeah,
36:29
Speaker 1: well I didn't find that. What was he getting paid.
36:32
Speaker 1: I didn't see either, But we can go ahead and
36:35
Speaker 1: say at the end they tallied up how much Horatio
36:39
Speaker 1: Jackson spent on the trip, and this included Crocker's pay.
36:44
Speaker 1: It was about eight grant back in nineteen o three,
36:46
Speaker 1: which is a two hundred and sixty seven grand today money.
36:50
Speaker 1: So if you think about it, hotels, food supplies, gas,
36:55
Speaker 1: car parts, repairs, that still leaves a pretty decent amount
36:59
Speaker 1: for Suel Crocker, and I hope you got a big
37:00
Speaker 1: chunk of that. I hope so too, Chuck. I cannot,
37:04
Speaker 1: for the love of life find the stupid picture of
37:07
Speaker 1: Fabio getting hit in the face. I found some ABC
37:10
Speaker 1: report and it just shows him going into the roller
37:14
Speaker 1: coaster station after the ride, just faces all bloody and
37:17
Speaker 1: he looks really upset, but nothing about the actual hit.
37:21
Speaker 1: You know. I wonder if I what I saw was
37:24
Speaker 1: a faked recreation of that, and there is only a
37:27
Speaker 1: before and and after that would make sense that it
37:29
Speaker 1: looked photoshop, then I'm sorry. I just had to head
37:34
Speaker 1: to circle back on that because my disappointment was palpable.
37:37
Speaker 1: Oh boy. So they're making their way out west or
37:40
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, back east, and it's funny they say, back east,
37:44
Speaker 1: out west, up north, down south. So they're back. They're
37:49
Speaker 1: heading back east and they come to Idaho. When I
37:54
Speaker 1: mentioned a third party in that photograph. We were holding
37:59
Speaker 1: out for this surprise and Caldwell, Idaho. They left without
38:02
Speaker 1: Jackson's coat, turned back to go get it, and this
38:05
Speaker 1: guy said, here, I have this pit bull named Bud
38:10
Speaker 1: and he wants to go with you and be your mascot.
38:13
Speaker 1: And they said, hop aboard Bud, and all of a sudden,
38:16
Speaker 1: they have this beautiful white pit bull in between the
38:19
Speaker 1: two of them. Yeah, he's routinely described as a bulldog,
38:22
Speaker 1: but he's pretty clearly a pit bull. He's a pity
38:25
Speaker 1: and he's beautiful. And like, if this story couldn't get
38:29
Speaker 1: any better, now you have a pit bull in between you.
38:32
Speaker 1: And they made him doggles to protect his little eyes,
38:35
Speaker 1: and there's a wonderful photo of it in the documentary. Yeah,
38:39
Speaker 1: so they were, you know, like you said, they were
38:42
Speaker 1: getting pressed as they went from town to town, and
38:44
Speaker 1: they were like, oh my god, a car. There's people
38:46
Speaker 1: actually trying to use it to cross the United States
38:49
Speaker 1: in that car. When Bud joined it, people just went
38:52
Speaker 1: berserk over this whole thing, in part because he was
38:57
Speaker 1: wearing these goggles, but also he very quickly learned how
39:00
Speaker 1: to ride in the car, he went look ahead. He
39:02
Speaker 1: loved it to look for rots or bumps or whatever,
39:05
Speaker 1: and would like brace himself like he just took to
39:08
Speaker 1: it very easily and became like this great mascot. So
39:12
Speaker 1: everybody started to really find out about this when when
39:15
Speaker 1: Bud joined and I don't get the impression that Sewel
39:17
Speaker 1: or Horatio were the least bit jealous. No, he paid
39:21
Speaker 1: him fifteen dollars, which is five hundred dollars today for
39:24
Speaker 1: this dog. And Crocker said, hey, adopt, don't shop, And
39:28
Speaker 1: Jackson said, what does that mean, right, and he said, no,
39:31
Speaker 1: don't worry about it. That comes later. Right. So they're
39:34
Speaker 1: getting all us press thanks to Bud. They make their
39:40
Speaker 1: way through sort of that toughest stretch of terrain, they're
39:43
Speaker 1: running out of food. They finally sort of cross out
39:47
Speaker 1: of the mountains and they're like, all right, that was
39:51
Speaker 1: sort of it, like we think this is not literally
39:54
Speaker 1: but this is sort of downhill from here. And he
39:57
Speaker 1: in his letters he was saying, I've never felt more
40:00
Speaker 1: confident now that we're going to make it to New York.
40:02
Speaker 1: And this is when they were in like Wyoming. Yeah,
40:06
Speaker 1: and then once they got to Omaha, it really got easier.
40:09
Speaker 1: And then after Omaha, Chicago, and then after Chicago, probably
40:12
Speaker 1: Cleveland or something like that, maybe in Indianapolis in between,
40:16
Speaker 1: like the city after city just started to pop up
40:19
Speaker 1: and they were getting closer and closer, and there were
40:21
Speaker 1: much better roads. The railroad ride of ways were just beautiful.
40:26
Speaker 1: Sitting there for the picking. They started to really yeah,
40:29
Speaker 1: they started to really make some pretty good time. Yeah.
40:32
Speaker 1: I think how many miles did they top out at
40:36
Speaker 1: the day. I feel like it was like seventy something,
40:40
Speaker 1: which is not too bad. I don't remember actually, I
40:43
Speaker 1: think the documentary said seventy seventy something miles in a
40:46
Speaker 1: single day, like when they were kind of cruising, Which
40:49
Speaker 1: that's awesome. That's good time for that car. Yeah, that's
40:52
Speaker 1: not bad at all, especially considering it maxed out at
40:55
Speaker 1: thirty miles an hour. Yeah, so that was just like
40:58
Speaker 1: a two and a half hour day for them. Yeah,
41:01
Speaker 1: sure so, but that that really does go to point
41:04
Speaker 1: out like just how slow they were going because of
41:07
Speaker 1: things like breaking down and waiting for parts and just
41:11
Speaker 1: the roads being terrible. And I mentioned Cleveland too. They
41:15
Speaker 1: actually when they showed up in Cleveland, that's where the
41:18
Speaker 1: Winton Motor Carriage Company was located, and we didn't say
41:23
Speaker 1: I don't think that Winton had by this time heard
41:26
Speaker 1: about the whole trip and that they were actually making
41:29
Speaker 1: pretty good headway, right, Yeah, so he got he sort
41:32
Speaker 1: of officially offered to kind of sponsor them from that
41:36
Speaker 1: point on, and Jackson turned him down. He was like, no,
41:40
Speaker 1: I've got Packard an Oldsmobile behind me, and I don't
41:44
Speaker 1: want this to become like a corporate sponsored thing. Like
41:47
Speaker 1: we've made it this far, we can make it the
41:49
Speaker 1: rest of the way. And they did go by the
41:51
Speaker 1: factory and they got some fanfare and I think they
41:53
Speaker 1: helped him out with fixing this car up and stuff.
41:55
Speaker 1: But they got free beer cousies exactly, refrigerator magots, and
42:00
Speaker 1: they were on their way. Yeah, I'm sure they probably
42:03
Speaker 1: fixed the car up a little bit. But Winton was
42:04
Speaker 1: talking like, we'll have gas like every hundred miles for
42:08
Speaker 1: you kind of thing. We'll send a technician to ride
42:11
Speaker 1: along with you. I'm sure the idea of adding a
42:13
Speaker 1: third stranger or a stranger to this mix by this
42:16
Speaker 1: time would is just unthinkable. So yeah, they turned them down,
42:20
Speaker 1: but they made it through Cleveland. They made it all
42:22
Speaker 1: the way to Buffalo. It wasn't until Buffalo, New York
42:25
Speaker 1: that they had the worst wreck that they had, where
42:29
Speaker 1: all three of them sewell, Horatio and Bud were ejected
42:33
Speaker 1: from the car because they hit something. Horatio only mentions
42:37
Speaker 1: it as a hidden obstruction, so I'm not sure if
42:40
Speaker 1: you ever knew what it was. But none of them
42:42
Speaker 1: were injured in the car was okay, So they just
42:45
Speaker 1: kept on keeping on. So take us home. When did
42:48
Speaker 1: they pulled into Manhattan? Didn't They? Finally on July twenty six,
42:52
Speaker 1: at four thirty am, sixty three days, twelve hours and
42:56
Speaker 1: thirty minutes after they set out from San Francisco, they
43:00
Speaker 1: made it to Manhattan, New York, and her ratio Nelson
43:05
Speaker 1: Jackson won his bet, which, by the way, he never
43:07
Speaker 1: collected on. Oh, I was curious about that he didn't. Nope,
43:12
Speaker 1: what a stand up guy. Yeah, or he's like, I'm
43:15
Speaker 1: never going out west against too long. Have a ride,
43:19
Speaker 1: uh and there to greet him where it was a
43:22
Speaker 1: throngs of press and journalist people from the Winton Car
43:26
Speaker 1: Company and swipes the old girl herself right there. Yeah,
43:30
Speaker 1: that's so cool. I love that they had like a
43:33
Speaker 1: great relationship and he had a great relationship with Seoul,
43:35
Speaker 1: and everybody loved Budd. If you're wondering what happened to Bud,
43:38
Speaker 1: Bud lived out the rest of his days on the
43:40
Speaker 1: Jackson farm in Vermont. Like, right, he really got lost
43:47
Speaker 1: and died, right, No, he really did live out his
43:50
Speaker 1: days there. That's great. Jackson went on to live a
43:54
Speaker 1: very interesting life after this, even he had a number
43:57
Speaker 1: of businesses that he ran. He joined the military in
44:01
Speaker 1: World War One in his forties and apparently became a
44:05
Speaker 1: decorated veteran. Probably collected tobacco baseball cards at the time,
44:11
Speaker 1: probably so so. Yeah. I think he ran for governor
44:14
Speaker 1: and lost governor of Vermont at one time in loss.
44:16
Speaker 1: I don't know how he lost. I don't know who
44:17
Speaker 1: in the world would vote for someone else other than
44:19
Speaker 1: this guy. Right, and donated that car the Vermont to
44:24
Speaker 1: the Smithsonian which and those doggles. Ed has seen this
44:28
Speaker 1: in person? I don't think I have, even though I've
44:31
Speaker 1: been there, so or maybe I didn't. I just didn't
44:33
Speaker 1: know the story at the time. Maybe it seems like
44:37
Speaker 1: you'd be able to recall a car like that. I
44:39
Speaker 1: don't know. I've been to a lot of museums, seen
44:43
Speaker 1: a lot of old cars, right. Sadly, Suel Crocker. He
44:47
Speaker 1: died young. He contracted an illness and died in nineteen thirteen,
44:52
Speaker 1: so he was about forty, no thirties something, early thirties.
44:56
Speaker 1: I think he's thirty one. He had been sent to
44:58
Speaker 1: um Mexico, I think, to protect some land during the
45:02
Speaker 1: revolution there, and he the stress of it killed him, essentially,
45:07
Speaker 1: is how I saw it. Geez. That's really sad, I
45:10
Speaker 1: know it is. So that's really the only big sad
45:12
Speaker 1: thing that happened, aside from Bud getting ejected from the
45:15
Speaker 1: car in Buffalo, New York. A nice little cherry on
45:19
Speaker 1: top here that ed found. Two was six years after
45:22
Speaker 1: this trip, a woman named Alice Ramsey and three of
45:25
Speaker 1: her friends became the first woman and women to accomplish
45:29
Speaker 1: this same thing. They were sponsored by Maxwell Briscoe, an automaker,
45:35
Speaker 1: and they did the trip in fifty nine days in
45:38
Speaker 1: basically the same or maybe just barely slightly better conditions
45:43
Speaker 1: than Jackson and Crocker did it in. So they pulled
45:49
Speaker 1: it off, and they kind of encountered the same issues,
45:53
Speaker 1: and they got a lot of press at the time,
45:54
Speaker 1: and obviously did a lot to advance, you know, the
45:59
Speaker 1: shine a light on what women were capable of doing,
46:01
Speaker 1: which was driving a car through terrible circumstances for fifty
46:06
Speaker 1: nine days, right exactly, Also despite being described as pretty
46:11
Speaker 1: in every single article that was for sure about them
46:14
Speaker 1: at the time. Yeah. So one other thing that was
46:19
Speaker 1: a kind of a note about this is that thirty
46:21
Speaker 1: years after her Ratio and Sewell and Bud made their trip,
46:25
Speaker 1: the record was set that stood for decades. Fifty four hours,
46:31
Speaker 1: so two and a half days. Guy named Irwin Cannonball Baker,
46:35
Speaker 1: we had a famous run from New York to LA
46:39
Speaker 1: and I think about forty years after that, in the
46:42
Speaker 1: early seventies, Car and Driver magazine editors said, this Cannonball
46:46
Speaker 1: Baker guy, he deserves his own his own place in history.
46:49
Speaker 1: So we're going to commemorate him with a recreation of
46:52
Speaker 1: his run. We're gonna call it the Cannonball Run. That's right.
46:56
Speaker 1: And if you want to learn more about that, we
46:58
Speaker 1: was that a two parter, was just a one quarter
47:01
Speaker 1: I think it was probably one of our fifteen minute episodes. No,
47:04
Speaker 1: that was a good one. It was a good one.
47:05
Speaker 1: I'm just saying we're real short back then. I can't
47:08
Speaker 1: believe I just didn't talk that much back then that
47:11
Speaker 1: we could actually record an episode that was fifteen minutes long.
47:14
Speaker 1: I think we probably talked for fifteen minutes about Burt Reynolds.
47:17
Speaker 1: Probably probably, but that was probably the episode two. Yeah,
47:21
Speaker 1: you're right, you got anything else? Uh No, I don't either,
47:27
Speaker 1: which means it's time for a listener Mayo. I'm gonna
47:31
Speaker 1: call this shortwood sweet Amazon factoid. Okay, hey, guys, About
47:36
Speaker 1: a quarter of the way in through the episode, at
47:37
Speaker 1: the moment, the episode reminded me of our trip up
47:41
Speaker 1: the Amazon to I don't know, is that Manaus or
47:45
Speaker 1: Manou's m A n A u s. I think Manaus
47:48
Speaker 1: manous and back on a Viking ocean cruise, he said, Surprisingly,
47:53
Speaker 1: ocean cruise ships can go that far about a thousand miles.
47:56
Speaker 1: Who knew on the cruise, Our Amazon guy told us
47:58
Speaker 1: that what I think is a greatest bit of trivia
48:00
Speaker 1: I've ever heard. The volume of water leaving the mouth
48:04
Speaker 1: of the Amazon is equal to the volume of water
48:08
Speaker 1: going over Niagara Falls Victoria Falls. I'm going to do
48:13
Speaker 1: my best with my pronunciation on this falls in South America.
48:17
Speaker 1: Iguazu perhaps very nice for South American listeners should write
48:21
Speaker 1: in and let us know. Right so, it is the
48:23
Speaker 1: volume of water leaving the mouth of the Amazon is
48:25
Speaker 1: equal to those three giant falls times twelve. Wow. I
48:30
Speaker 1: was not expecting that extra little bit of math right there.
48:32
Speaker 1: I think that's what makes it amazing. That's from Rich Pope.
48:35
Speaker 1: Thanks Rich Pope. Great name too, really gets it across,
48:38
Speaker 1: Rich Pope. Yeah, good to meet you, you know. Yeah,
48:42
Speaker 1: I agree. Well, it's good to meet you to Rich Pope.
48:44
Speaker 1: And if you want to be like Rich Pope, you
48:46
Speaker 1: can email us as well. Send it off to stuff
48:49
Speaker 1: Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
48:56
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
48:59
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
49:03
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.