WEBVTT - The First Road Trip 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:11.280 Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, 0:00:11.360 --> 0:00:14.240 I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:16.319 and it's just the two of us. But we're gonna 0:00:16.360 --> 0:00:18.440 make it just fine. We're gonna make it if you try. 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:20.520 As I like to say, sometimes when it's just the 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:25.439 two of us and it's sufficient. I'm excited about this 0:00:25.480 --> 0:00:29.840 episode because this is a really, really great story that 0:00:30.920 --> 0:00:34.760 doesn't have Like I was, I kept waiting for something 0:00:35.120 --> 0:00:39.080 either bad to happen or someone to be exposed as awful, 0:00:39.640 --> 0:00:42.760 and it's just a really fun, feel good story. I 0:00:42.760 --> 0:00:44.760 would go so far as to call it a hum dinger. 0:00:45.400 --> 0:00:47.800 It's a hum dinger. And we gotta give a huge 0:00:47.800 --> 0:00:50.479 credit to Ed who helps us with this, and also 0:00:51.880 --> 0:00:56.240 because he helped Ed, who helped us ken Burns, Yeah, 0:00:56.320 --> 0:01:00.360 ken Burns has a great documentary about this topic, which 0:01:00.400 --> 0:01:03.920 is the first cross country automobile road trip. It's called 0:01:04.040 --> 0:01:07.880 Horatio's Drive. It's a wonderful story and you can find 0:01:07.920 --> 0:01:11.200 it on PBS. Hopefully if you're a streamer, you pay 0:01:11.240 --> 0:01:13.440 for and subscribe to the PBS app because it's a 0:01:13.480 --> 0:01:18.880 very worthwhile and great channel to subscribe to. Narrated by 0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:22.800 the great Keith David, one of the great great voices, 0:01:23.240 --> 0:01:26.440 just amazing and such a great actor too, and everything 0:01:26.520 --> 0:01:31.800 from They Live Too Minute work there's something about Mary. Yeah, 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:34.120 he was in Platoon too. He's like just such a 0:01:34.200 --> 0:01:38.640 great actor. I love that guy. And because our protagonists 0:01:38.680 --> 0:01:41.920 in this story, who will introduce you to in a second, 0:01:42.080 --> 0:01:46.319 is such an affable, seemingly really good guy, they got 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:49.120 none other than Tom Hanks to recreate his voice for 0:01:49.800 --> 0:01:52.640 his diary letters and stuff like that. We should also 0:01:52.760 --> 0:01:56.440 give a hat tip to Dayton Duncan, who's interviewed extensively 0:01:56.480 --> 0:02:00.080 in that that documentary, because he wrote a book on 0:02:00.080 --> 0:02:04.680 on the Drive. I would argue the book, Yeah, let's 0:02:04.720 --> 0:02:10.640 just call it that, the book on Horatio Nelson Jackson. Right, Yeah, 0:02:10.639 --> 0:02:14.240 that's his name. Great name. So we're gonna talk a 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:16.240 lot more about him later, but we really kind of 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:19.919 want to like lay the groundwork, bring the context, as 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:24.799 Flavor Flavor would put it, and just kind of give 0:02:24.800 --> 0:02:27.720 you an idea of what the times were like when 0:02:28.120 --> 0:02:32.840 Horatio Nelson Jackson decided to become the first person to 0:02:33.000 --> 0:02:37.680 travel cross country in a car. Right, so, nineteen oh three, 0:02:38.080 --> 0:02:42.840 nine one one was a joke. I like that one. Yes, okay, 0:02:42.880 --> 0:02:45.760 all right, just a medium okay on that one, I'll 0:02:45.760 --> 0:02:48.720 take it. Nineteen o three is when this happened. But 0:02:48.840 --> 0:02:52.120 to put this in context, like you said, the first 0:02:52.320 --> 0:02:56.519 transcontinental railroad was built and completed or not built but 0:02:56.600 --> 0:03:01.560 completed in eighteen sixty nine, and it was eighteen seventy 0:03:01.600 --> 0:03:05.040 six when you got your first cross country train trip 0:03:05.320 --> 0:03:10.080 that happened. So this was what like twenty five ish 0:03:10.160 --> 0:03:14.240 years roughly after that, and people were still kind of 0:03:14.320 --> 0:03:19.520 only traveling by train because cars were pretty new, and 0:03:19.560 --> 0:03:23.760 they were only for richies, because I believe in the 0:03:23.840 --> 0:03:26.519 documentary they said, like the cheapest car you could get 0:03:27.040 --> 0:03:29.679 will cost more than the average American made in a year. 0:03:30.480 --> 0:03:33.720 So in the early nineteen hundreds, it was rich people 0:03:33.760 --> 0:03:37.160 who wanted to buy a super expensive, unique toy that 0:03:37.840 --> 0:03:41.360 and we'll hammer this home a lot. But they didn't 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:45.000 even know was gonna end up being a real thing. Yeah, 0:03:45.000 --> 0:03:48.720 it could have turned out like the se totally right. 0:03:49.280 --> 0:03:51.640 I mean this is kind of a kin to somebody 0:03:51.760 --> 0:03:56.480 taking a trek across America on a segue back in 0:03:56.600 --> 0:03:59.880 like nineteen ninety five. Yeah, they did not know car 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:02.480 like a lot of people thought, these cars will never 0:04:02.840 --> 0:04:07.560 amount to anything. You're silly, It'll always be trains and horses, right, 0:04:08.200 --> 0:04:11.400 So to kind of get across why people thought it 0:04:11.480 --> 0:04:13.520 was just going to be nothing but trains and horses. 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:17.600 Like that's how the American infrastructure was built. Like, if 0:04:17.640 --> 0:04:21.200 you went any any kind of lengthy distance, you took 0:04:21.200 --> 0:04:24.719 a train. If you were moving around luckily, you took 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:26.880 a horse, maybe a horse and a buggy or a 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:29.640 horse and carriage or something like that. You kind of drive, 0:04:29.800 --> 0:04:32.279 I'm sure if you wanted to be super wild west 0:04:32.279 --> 0:04:35.400 about it. But there were at the time, say around 0:04:35.520 --> 0:04:39.000 nineteen hundred, the United States had two point three million 0:04:39.080 --> 0:04:43.760 miles of roads. Sounds pretty impressive. One hundred and fifty 0:04:43.800 --> 0:04:48.040 miles were paved, right, and all of those were within 0:04:48.240 --> 0:04:53.440 big cities, right, So the vast, vast, vast majority of 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:58.880 roads in the United States were rough, rutted, dusty or 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:02.800 muddy or somehow both at the same time, roads that 0:05:02.880 --> 0:05:06.240 you would not want to walk over really, let alone 0:05:06.360 --> 0:05:09.960 ride a car over. Yeah, they were in bad shape. Generally, 0:05:10.600 --> 0:05:14.400 about fourteen million horses in the United States to about 0:05:14.520 --> 0:05:19.200 eight thousand cars. And like you said, people traveled locally, 0:05:19.240 --> 0:05:22.680 I think the average was like people generally didn't go 0:05:22.760 --> 0:05:25.640 more than twelve miles from their house, and that even 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:28.520 feels like the high end. I don't think that's an average. 0:05:28.560 --> 0:05:31.480 I think people probably didn't go within a few miles 0:05:31.480 --> 0:05:35.640 of their house. Yeah, I mean today, unless I'm traveling. Right. 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:38.880 At the time, there were and you still take trains 0:05:38.880 --> 0:05:41.960 for a long distance travel sometimes I try to. At 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:45.920 the time, also, like you you didn't really steer away 0:05:45.960 --> 0:05:48.920 from home because it took you so long to go 0:05:49.000 --> 0:05:51.640 anywhere on horse right, I think at the time it 0:05:51.680 --> 0:05:54.680 was still a two day journey basically from New York 0:05:54.720 --> 0:05:58.800 to Philadelphia by horse. So this is like a this 0:05:58.839 --> 0:06:01.080 is a this is a big deal for somebody to 0:06:01.120 --> 0:06:03.280 be like, no, I'm going to try this. The other 0:06:03.320 --> 0:06:06.760 thing was the roads themselves weren't mapped. Yeah, I mean 0:06:06.880 --> 0:06:10.040 east of the Mississippi, there were maps and guide books 0:06:10.080 --> 0:06:13.960 that you could get pretty good directions from. Right, And 0:06:14.000 --> 0:06:17.719 it's it's funny in the documentary they kind of show 0:06:18.120 --> 0:06:21.920 what the directions were, like one of those like turn 0:06:22.040 --> 0:06:26.480 right at the old Stone horse Trough. Yeah, like those 0:06:26.520 --> 0:06:29.240 were the kind of directions and because that's what a 0:06:29.440 --> 0:06:31.800 local would tell you to do. So somebody had the 0:06:31.800 --> 0:06:34.520 bright idea to print those and put them down in 0:06:34.920 --> 0:06:38.080 book form and transmit that information that way, and it's 0:06:38.120 --> 0:06:40.520 still held up because there were no road names, there 0:06:40.520 --> 0:06:42.640 were no route numbers, there was nothing like that, because 0:06:42.640 --> 0:06:45.799 there was no reason for anything like that to exist. Yeah, 0:06:45.920 --> 0:06:49.159 and funny enough, that's how I prefer directions now, because 0:06:49.880 --> 0:06:55.400 I'm very directionally challenged and famously so. And I also 0:06:55.680 --> 0:06:59.000 never know the names of roads, so I always ask 0:06:59.040 --> 0:07:01.920 people like, tell me, you know, go to that diner 0:07:02.080 --> 0:07:03.480 that you know and take a left and then go 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:06.320 to that car wash and veer right. And that's how 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:11.640 I prefer to get directions. I tend to zone out 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:14.200 when people give me directions too, but I've asked for 0:07:15.080 --> 0:07:16.840 and uh, you can just kind of see it on 0:07:16.880 --> 0:07:19.440 their face. Can tell I'm gonna get lost because it's 0:07:19.480 --> 0:07:21.840 just not sinking in well, all the fun of that. 0:07:21.880 --> 0:07:23.520 It's gone now because you just punch it into your 0:07:23.520 --> 0:07:26.320 app or whatever. But totally, I'm basically talking about pre 0:07:27.360 --> 0:07:31.240 GPS stuff. I remember, I remember, I remember that. I 0:07:31.280 --> 0:07:34.160 am also smart enough to really appreciate ways though, too. 0:07:34.240 --> 0:07:36.400 You know, do you remember the fun of a road 0:07:36.440 --> 0:07:42.400 trip of opening that Rand McNally atlas and saying like, 0:07:42.520 --> 0:07:44.200 I think we can go this way to get to 0:07:44.280 --> 0:07:46.400 this town, or it looks like this other road we 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:48.720 can go around. That was like, and I'm not like, oh, 0:07:48.760 --> 0:07:50.480 things were so much better when it was harder, but 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:53.240 it was a really had a fun, sort of magical 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:58.720 adventuresome quality to it. I think, yeah, I um spent 0:07:59.000 --> 0:08:02.440 five weeks in a van driving around the western United 0:08:02.440 --> 0:08:05.680 States doing that same thing. It was very cool and 0:08:05.800 --> 0:08:08.720 like the amount of freedom is really hard to get 0:08:08.760 --> 0:08:11.440 across of like, yeah, not having anywhere you had to 0:08:11.440 --> 0:08:14.880 be at any particular time and saying like, oh, that 0:08:14.880 --> 0:08:17.920 that landmark sounds pretty cool. I'm gonna go see that. 0:08:18.000 --> 0:08:20.000 It's pretty neat. You know what words you don't hear 0:08:20.040 --> 0:08:25.600 anymore is let's go here instead. It's true, everything seems 0:08:25.640 --> 0:08:28.480 so locked down, you know. It's like, I don't know, 0:08:28.800 --> 0:08:31.960 people don't say, oh no, let's just let's decide to 0:08:31.960 --> 0:08:35.040 go to this town instead of this town. I feel 0:08:35.040 --> 0:08:40.280 like we've entered the disgrunt old aged old man because 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:44.120 it seems like we do this almost every episode. Dude, Yeah, 0:08:44.280 --> 0:08:46.040 maybe we're gonna have to pay more attention to that 0:08:46.160 --> 0:08:48.200 or else we're gonna lose all the youngsters and just 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:51.560 attract all the oldsters and who cares. Well, Hey, youngster, 0:08:51.640 --> 0:08:53.240 I encourage you to set out on a road trip 0:08:53.280 --> 0:08:56.559 with a map and and enjoy it. Okay, there you go, 0:08:57.120 --> 0:08:59.720 I'm way to save it. I don't think I saved anything. 0:09:00.920 --> 0:09:03.120 So I think we've gotten across that it would be 0:09:03.160 --> 0:09:06.120 really hard to drive a car, right, yeah, across the 0:09:06.200 --> 0:09:08.880 United States at the time. Yeah, hard to drive a car. 0:09:08.960 --> 0:09:12.520 But because cars were becoming a little more popular, they 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:15.320 were trying to get a more positive publicity going for 0:09:15.520 --> 0:09:19.360 their cars and their companies, and so they said, hey, 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:21.920 what a great way to do this then, like kind 0:09:21.960 --> 0:09:25.280 of sponsor across country Carr trip. That'll get a lot 0:09:25.280 --> 0:09:29.000 of press. And so they tried this with John and 0:09:29.080 --> 0:09:34.680 Louise Davis from the how do you pronounce that? Deria? 0:09:34.920 --> 0:09:38.160 It sounds like something you contract that you'd be really 0:09:38.240 --> 0:09:42.040 unhappy about. Okay, the Daria I couldn't quite tell, but yeah, 0:09:42.080 --> 0:09:44.000 it does sound like a disease of some sort. Do 0:09:44.080 --> 0:09:48.880 you are yea, yeah, the Daria car company gave them 0:09:48.920 --> 0:09:51.360 a national or I'm sorry they weren't a car company. 0:09:51.679 --> 0:09:53.880 That was the car The company was the National Motor 0:09:54.000 --> 0:10:00.560 Carriage Company, Yeah, known today as the NMCC. Really kidding out, 0:10:00.600 --> 0:10:03.920 I thought you're gonna say as Portia. No, I would 0:10:03.960 --> 0:10:05.800 like to think that, but no, I don't think so. No, 0:10:05.880 --> 0:10:08.400 I don't think so either. So they sponsored this couple. 0:10:08.480 --> 0:10:11.360 This was an eighteen ninety nine. It did not work out. 0:10:11.960 --> 0:10:14.840 They very famously got beaten to They started from New 0:10:14.920 --> 0:10:17.600 York and they got beaten to Syracuse by a one 0:10:17.640 --> 0:10:21.240 armed bicyclist who gave them a ten day head start. 0:10:21.840 --> 0:10:24.200 So press it went opposite of how they wanted to. 0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:27.880 That was sort of they lost track or lost interest 0:10:28.080 --> 0:10:30.880 very early on in this sort of doomed thing. And 0:10:31.040 --> 0:10:34.240 I don't think they even know if they succeeded in 0:10:34.240 --> 0:10:36.800 getting to San Francisco. Well, I think they know they didn't, 0:10:36.840 --> 0:10:39.880 but they basically didn't really cover the story after that. No, 0:10:40.120 --> 0:10:44.680 they dropped off the map after about Chicago. They dropped 0:10:44.679 --> 0:10:51.440 off the GPS app. Sorry, so no, it's good. It 0:10:51.520 --> 0:10:54.120 just took me a second to for it to sink in. 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:55.559 I thought that was pretty good. I'm trying to get 0:10:55.559 --> 0:10:59.240 our younger listeners back, so well, we should make a 0:10:59.280 --> 0:11:01.760 TikTok of all this. Then, Okay, didn't know what people do, 0:11:01.960 --> 0:11:09.560 sure for now, so it was wonderful you just saved me. Um. 0:11:09.600 --> 0:11:12.680 So it was established though, even though the Davises didn't 0:11:12.760 --> 0:11:14.880 make it that like this is actually a really good 0:11:14.880 --> 0:11:17.880 way to to to promote a car brand is to 0:11:18.000 --> 0:11:20.160 be the first to make it across the country. I mean, 0:11:20.360 --> 0:11:23.960 then everyone will know that's a good car, because it's 0:11:23.960 --> 0:11:26.319 just so ridiculous to even think a car could do that. 0:11:26.679 --> 0:11:28.480 So a couple of years after the davis Is, I 0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:32.920 guess nineteen o one, a carmaker named Alexander Winton M 0:11:33.160 --> 0:11:39.800 who had a Winton Car Company, handmade cars, beautiful cars. Yeah. Uh, 0:11:40.480 --> 0:11:44.640 he tried it himself, I believe, with this publicist. Very smartly, 0:11:45.160 --> 0:11:48.880 he and his publicist hit the road. Um, the acid 0:11:48.960 --> 0:11:52.600 hit them around Barstow. I think, well that showed up 0:11:53.559 --> 0:11:57.120 and they ended up getting trapped in a dune in Nevada. Yeah. 0:11:57.160 --> 0:12:00.000 But you you bring up a thing that might be overlooked. 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:03.680 Is they very smartly started from west to east because, 0:12:03.840 --> 0:12:07.920 as we mentioned, the west was untamed land and bad, 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:10.760 bad bad roads if there weren't at all, So getting 0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:13.160 that hard part over first, when the car was brand 0:12:13.160 --> 0:12:16.240 spanking new, was really really smart. But what they didn't 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:20.520 count on was and we'll see what Jackson learned was 0:12:20.600 --> 0:12:22.600 driving through the desert in an old car like that 0:12:23.360 --> 0:12:27.520 is not good. Sand is not good for getting stuck, 0:12:28.040 --> 0:12:30.600 or it's great for getting stuck. It's not good for 0:12:30.679 --> 0:12:33.120 making good time. Sand is not good for getting in 0:12:33.800 --> 0:12:37.840 carburetors and in oil and gas. And you know, these 0:12:37.920 --> 0:12:40.360 engines weren't these big closed systems like they are today. 0:12:40.400 --> 0:12:44.160 So sand no good. But Winton got this press right, 0:12:44.240 --> 0:12:48.000 like like he helped I think, still publicize his car 0:12:48.080 --> 0:12:51.800 company regardless and again the fact that no one had 0:12:51.800 --> 0:12:53.840 done this, but people were starting to try it. It 0:12:54.040 --> 0:12:55.960 kept being a thing. It was going to be a 0:12:56.040 --> 0:12:58.760 thing until somebody did it. And so a couple of 0:12:58.800 --> 0:13:02.720 years after Winton try, a guy named Horatio Nelson Jackson, 0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:05.760 who's the star of our story, was hanging out at 0:13:05.760 --> 0:13:09.559 the University Club of San Francisco, and apparently a couple 0:13:09.600 --> 0:13:13.280 of fellow club members were saying that cars were basically 0:13:13.360 --> 0:13:16.920 useless and that they would never really go anywhere, and 0:13:17.040 --> 0:13:20.120 there's no reason for anybody to have one. Jackson, by 0:13:20.200 --> 0:13:23.600 this time had really developed a real love of cars, 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:26.960 had started collecting them even yeah, and I guess to 0:13:27.120 --> 0:13:31.920 defend cars honor, he slapped down a fifty wager that 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:34.880 he could make it across the United States from San 0:13:34.880 --> 0:13:38.120 Francisco to New York in less than ninety days. Ninety 0:13:38.160 --> 0:13:41.520 days or less. I'm sorry. And that was about fifteen 0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:43.800 hundred dollars that he threw down on the table right then, 0:13:44.240 --> 0:13:47.520 and the people took it. They accepted his wager, and 0:13:47.800 --> 0:13:51.079 four days later he set out for New York from 0:13:51.080 --> 0:13:55.600 San Francisco. It is madness to think about that he 0:13:55.679 --> 0:13:59.520 did this with that little planning. He didn't have a 0:13:59.600 --> 0:14:01.840 car to do it. I mean he had cars, but 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:05.520 not one to go across country at the time. Just 0:14:05.640 --> 0:14:09.960 quickly about Jackson. He was a doctor who got tuberculosis 0:14:10.040 --> 0:14:13.880 and quit his practice kind of at the same time 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:17.680 that he married a very wealthy woman named Bertha Richardson Wells, 0:14:17.800 --> 0:14:22.320 very wealthy New England family from Vermont. Her family made 0:14:22.360 --> 0:14:25.000 their money in salary compounds. I it was like a 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:30.400 tonic yeah, basically, so he as Ed Putt, did rich 0:14:30.440 --> 0:14:34.880 guy things, capital R, capital G. And his wife was 0:14:34.880 --> 0:14:37.400 super supportive, like everyone was on board. He was like, 0:14:37.880 --> 0:14:41.000 that's awesome. I'll take a train to Burlington. I'll meet 0:14:41.040 --> 0:14:43.640 you over there, honey, you have my blessing. And it 0:14:43.680 --> 0:14:46.320 seems like they had a really like judging from the 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:49.040 letters that of course it was voiced by Tom Hanks too, 0:14:49.080 --> 0:14:52.480 so you're endeared immediately. But judging from the letters, it 0:14:52.480 --> 0:14:55.160 seems like they were just a great couple, a very 0:14:55.280 --> 0:14:59.680 loving family. He called her Swipes, and no one knows 0:14:59.680 --> 0:15:02.000 why that nickname was there, but he, you know, he 0:15:02.080 --> 0:15:05.520 signed it as Nelson and the year years forever Nelson 0:15:05.640 --> 0:15:08.760 and my dearest Swipes. And it was really really sort 0:15:08.800 --> 0:15:12.880 of a beautiful story of this couple. And he knew 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:14.360 he had to get a guy to go with him, 0:15:14.760 --> 0:15:18.400 and so he picked a great traveling partner. He was 0:15:18.880 --> 0:15:23.080 a small engine mechanic and a factory named Sewell Crocker, 0:15:23.080 --> 0:15:25.520 who was about ten years younger. He's twenty two years old. 0:15:25.520 --> 0:15:30.400 I think, um, what was Horatio? Was like, okay, so 0:15:30.720 --> 0:15:34.160 this guy could fix cars, he knew cars, and apparently 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:37.440 like they really liked each other and were which was 0:15:37.480 --> 0:15:39.080 a big deal. You know, you've been on road trips 0:15:39.080 --> 0:15:42.760 in regular cars and that's a key factor. But especially 0:15:42.760 --> 0:15:44.440 back then with all the troubles they were going to have, 0:15:44.640 --> 0:15:46.360 he had to have someone that you could get along with. 0:15:47.440 --> 0:15:51.880 That's a big one for sure. So he asked Crocker, hey, man, 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:54.520 what car should we get for this? And Crocker said, well, 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:58.520 you have basically limitless fun, get the best, buy yourself. 0:15:58.520 --> 0:16:01.320 In nineteen oh three went in touring car and end 0:16:01.360 --> 0:16:03.680 points something out that I think is very astute. The 0:16:03.800 --> 0:16:07.120 reason why, probably Suel Crocker said get a Winton was 0:16:07.160 --> 0:16:10.600 because Winton had already shown that they were making really 0:16:10.600 --> 0:16:13.280 good cars enough so that they were willing to try 0:16:13.320 --> 0:16:16.280 to make it across country in one of them. So 0:16:16.760 --> 0:16:20.040 that's exactly what Jackson did. Horatio did. He's the kind 0:16:20.040 --> 0:16:21.720 of guy you call him by his first name because 0:16:21.720 --> 0:16:24.000 it's got a great first name, and he's Tom Hanks, 0:16:24.040 --> 0:16:29.320 like affable. Right. Yeah, So Horatio bought himself a Winton 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:33.200 touring car nineteen o three. Apparently he paid essentially one 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:36.840 hundred thousand dollars for it, and it was used, Yeah, 0:16:36.880 --> 0:16:39.880 it was used, but it was the only one available, 0:16:40.120 --> 0:16:42.800 so he just paid whatever the person wanted for it, 0:16:43.760 --> 0:16:48.120 and so I think in nineteen oh three dollars he 0:16:48.200 --> 0:16:50.440 paid three thousand dollars. But he named it the Vermont 0:16:50.560 --> 0:16:53.320 because that's where he and his wife Bertha lived. But 0:16:53.400 --> 0:16:56.600 a little bit about this car there was. It was 0:16:56.640 --> 0:16:59.480 an It was open in every sense of the word. 0:16:59.680 --> 0:17:05.560 It's like if you took a tub and put wheels 0:17:05.600 --> 0:17:08.280 on it and then had a steering will sticking out 0:17:08.280 --> 0:17:11.000 of it. That that was the car. There was no windshield, 0:17:11.040 --> 0:17:13.880 there was no roof, there was no back windshield, there 0:17:13.880 --> 0:17:17.480 were no doors, there was no nothing. It was like 0:17:17.560 --> 0:17:22.400 a giant riding lawnmower with like wagon wheels. Well, it's 0:17:22.400 --> 0:17:26.199 funny that you bring up riding lawnmowers, Chuck, because the 0:17:26.600 --> 0:17:30.600 two cylinder chain drive engine had twenty horsepower, and my 0:17:30.640 --> 0:17:33.600 friend a John Deere X three hundred series riding mower 0:17:33.680 --> 0:17:39.000 has twenty two horsepower. That's funny. That's really funny. This 0:17:39.000 --> 0:17:40.879 this thing topped out at thirty miles per hour. I 0:17:40.880 --> 0:17:43.080 don't think that John Deer does that, but that's probably 0:17:43.080 --> 0:17:45.000 just because it's cutting grass at the same time. But 0:17:45.200 --> 0:17:51.080 imagine imagine traveling the country on a riding lawnmower. Basically 0:17:51.480 --> 0:17:53.719 that's about what they were doing. But yes, you're right, 0:17:53.960 --> 0:17:57.600 thirty miles an hour is substantially more. That's what it 0:17:58.200 --> 0:18:01.800 could do. Max Ye, no way did they average thirty 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:05.399 miles an hour? Not even close. It was someone, uh 0:18:05.560 --> 0:18:07.840 it was it was red, a really good looking car. 0:18:07.960 --> 0:18:11.360 You'll only see black and whites. But someone on redditum, 0:18:12.280 --> 0:18:14.160 that's the picture I sent you did a very fun 0:18:14.240 --> 0:18:20.080 colorized picture of Horatio and Crocker and a third party 0:18:20.080 --> 0:18:23.119 to be named later, um and colorized it and it 0:18:23.200 --> 0:18:27.160 just it looks awesome. And this car is so cool looking. Yeah, 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:29.159 I don't mean to detract from it. It was a 0:18:29.400 --> 0:18:33.120 cool looking car, very cool as far as comfort goes, 0:18:33.240 --> 0:18:36.240 it was not at all comfortable. No, I say, we 0:18:36.320 --> 0:18:38.120 take a break and then set out on the road 0:18:38.119 --> 0:19:06.119 trip with these guys. Huh oh, let's do it all right. So, 0:19:06.280 --> 0:19:10.320 as we will see, there were other car manufacturers planning 0:19:10.359 --> 0:19:13.760 to do the same thing at the time, and a 0:19:13.840 --> 0:19:16.399 couple of them ended up. You know, it ended up 0:19:16.440 --> 0:19:19.199 sort of being a race against like a corporation versus 0:19:20.280 --> 0:19:23.480 a human. Even though he was driving. You know, it's 0:19:23.720 --> 0:19:25.679 like a car he built himself. It was a Winton, 0:19:26.520 --> 0:19:29.320 but he was doing it himself with this other guy. 0:19:29.480 --> 0:19:32.320 He wasn't fun, he wasn't sponsored. It was about the 0:19:32.320 --> 0:19:35.399 spirit of adventure. He all these as we'll see, all 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:38.840 these other companies sent like supplies ahead and the like, 0:19:38.880 --> 0:19:42.040 they had teams of mechanics. He didn't have anything to 0:19:42.080 --> 0:19:46.639 prove he'd put this together in four days, including buying 0:19:46.680 --> 0:19:51.080 the car, And that's just I really want to get across. 0:19:51.160 --> 0:19:55.160 The spirit of this whole thing was just this optimist 0:19:55.240 --> 0:19:56.959 who was like, let me see if I can do 0:19:57.000 --> 0:20:02.280 this crazy thing. Yeah. So two months after Horatio and 0:20:03.040 --> 0:20:06.560 Sewell set out on their trip, Packard sent a team 0:20:06.600 --> 0:20:08.920 out and like you said, they were very well outfitted. 0:20:09.200 --> 0:20:11.800 They had a mechanic on board. There was gasoline for 0:20:11.840 --> 0:20:15.760 them at every stop. Because gasoline was there were no 0:20:15.880 --> 0:20:19.840 gas stations, and definitely there were no gas stations out west. 0:20:20.200 --> 0:20:21.919 You would go to the general store and be like, 0:20:22.280 --> 0:20:25.560 I'd like a can of your most dangerous volatile liquids please, 0:20:26.119 --> 0:20:28.520 and they would hand you some gasoline and a can, 0:20:28.560 --> 0:20:30.760 and you'd buy a few of them to drive around with. 0:20:30.880 --> 0:20:34.120 It was incredibly dangerous, but that's how you didn't run 0:20:34.119 --> 0:20:37.320 out of gas. Packard had the advantage of like every 0:20:37.440 --> 0:20:41.080 town or every X number of miles, there was gasoline 0:20:41.119 --> 0:20:44.080 waiting for them, So they essentially had gas stations that 0:20:44.119 --> 0:20:48.240 were reserved exclusively for them. Horatio and Sewel did not 0:20:48.400 --> 0:20:50.960 have anything remotely like that, and so they got into 0:20:51.000 --> 0:20:53.639 all sorts of fun little adventures, like the time that 0:20:53.680 --> 0:20:57.439 Sewel Crucker had to bike dozens of miles on a 0:20:57.440 --> 0:21:01.280 borrowed bicycle to go to and fro to fill up 0:21:01.320 --> 0:21:03.400 their gas can and bring it back and then fill 0:21:03.440 --> 0:21:05.960 it up again and then bring it back. And that 0:21:06.119 --> 0:21:09.080 must have been there all right, exactly, And it's fun 0:21:09.160 --> 0:21:11.480 now in retrospect us talking about it here in twenty 0:21:11.520 --> 0:21:13.840 twenty three in the studio. I'm sure it was not 0:21:13.920 --> 0:21:16.760 a great day for Suel Crocker. No, I don't think 0:21:16.800 --> 0:21:18.320 they were drawing straws. Ooh you know what I mean. 0:21:18.400 --> 0:21:21.359 Like right, the rich thirty one year old with the 0:21:21.480 --> 0:21:24.960 head TB is definitely saying, all right, hit the road 0:21:25.000 --> 0:21:28.520 on the bike, my friend, were equals in almost every way, 0:21:29.440 --> 0:21:31.879 but hit the trail on the bike, right, all right. 0:21:31.960 --> 0:21:34.800 So Packard did so two months later, like he said, 0:21:34.800 --> 0:21:37.680 an Oldsmobile did the same thing a month after that. 0:21:37.840 --> 0:21:41.720 I believe much the same operation, you know, fully sponsored 0:21:41.720 --> 0:21:46.239 and like rigged up in everything. So they threw out 0:21:46.280 --> 0:21:49.280 the back seat on this Winton. I don't think we 0:21:49.359 --> 0:21:53.240 mentioned this thing could go two hundred and fifty miles 0:21:53.560 --> 0:21:56.920 with their tank of fuel, which that was way more 0:21:56.920 --> 0:21:59.720 than I thought. Yeah, for sure, I was super impressed. 0:22:00.640 --> 0:22:02.679 So they ripped out the backseat, which doesn't look like 0:22:02.720 --> 0:22:06.479 it was much of one anyway, and packed you know, 0:22:07.200 --> 0:22:11.200 cooking kit, tons of rope. Something that would probably be 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:14.399 the most valuable thing in the whole car was a 0:22:14.440 --> 0:22:17.760 pulley system, a block and tackle. Yeah, for sure. They 0:22:17.800 --> 0:22:20.600 had a code at camera, they had sleeping bags, they 0:22:20.600 --> 0:22:22.760 had a shoveling axe. They had a bunch of guns 0:22:22.760 --> 0:22:26.239 and ammunition because they might be hunting for food out 0:22:26.240 --> 0:22:28.520 in the middle of nowhere, or just maybe you want 0:22:28.520 --> 0:22:32.520 to murder someone, yeah, or just like shooting out of 0:22:32.560 --> 0:22:36.040 an untopped car is probably pretty fun when no one's around, 0:22:36.359 --> 0:22:39.840 But that is one. So Yeah, the problem is is 0:22:39.880 --> 0:22:43.840 like they weren't experts at tying down their gear. Yeah, 0:22:43.920 --> 0:22:47.200 And they would get to like a stop probably basically 0:22:47.200 --> 0:22:49.879 every day, and find that something they needed had dropped 0:22:49.920 --> 0:22:53.119 off and bounced out at some point like back on 0:22:53.240 --> 0:22:55.720 their trail, and that they had gone too far to 0:22:55.760 --> 0:22:58.600 go back to try to find it. They lost like 0:22:58.640 --> 0:23:05.040 cooking utensils. Horatio lost multiple pairs of his eyeglasses. It's 0:23:05.040 --> 0:23:06.679 just crazy to me that they weren't like, put a 0:23:06.760 --> 0:23:09.040 tarp on it and wrap the tarp up and then 0:23:09.080 --> 0:23:12.000 put rope on the tarp. You know, who knows. But 0:23:13.160 --> 0:23:14.919 they did lose a lot of stuff, and luckily, like 0:23:14.920 --> 0:23:16.840 you said, they didn't lose that block and tackle. It 0:23:16.840 --> 0:23:21.439 would really come into into play multiple times. But they 0:23:21.880 --> 0:23:25.720 made a really good decision early on number one. They 0:23:25.760 --> 0:23:31.160 followed I can't remember his first, mister Winton's Alexander Winton's example, 0:23:31.560 --> 0:23:34.160