Property:Has text
From Off the Road Database
This is a property of type Text.
C
<div class="poem">
<p>The factory wired us $500 to outfit and start, with more to be sent when and where we ordered. We were told to spare no expense and to send tires, gasoline, and spare parts ahead for use wherever we thought best. Briscoe never had been West, but he knew that few cars ever had crossed the continent and that we would not have a pleasure trip, to say the least. Since I had previously lived in Nevada and California, it seemed like a homecoming for me, or I might have taken the trip more seriously.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>The factory wired us $500 to outfit and start, with more to be sent when and where we ordered. We were told to spare no expense and to send tires, gasoline, and spare parts ahead for use wherever we thought best. Briscoe never had been West, but he knew that few cars ever had crossed the continent and that we would not have a pleasure trip, to say the least. Since I had previously lived in Nevada and California, it seemed like a homecoming for me, or I might have taken the trip more seriously.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>We spent Thanksgiving in Los Angeles, and Fred sold the new car to Fred Ingersoll, a mail carrier in Pasadena who had written the factory. He was one of the first mail carriers to use an automobile in his deliveries, and eventually drove the car enough miles to have circled the earth several times.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>We spent Thanksgiving in Los Angeles, and Fred sold the new car to Fred Ingersoll, a mail carrier in Pasadena who had written the factory. He was one of the first mail carriers to use an automobile in his deliveries, and eventually drove the car enough miles to have circled the earth several times.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>On December 20 Fred left Detroit with the old car to complete the trip across the continent, with Harvey Lincoln, a factory man, as observer. They went through Toledo, Cleveland, Buffalo, and to Little Falls, New York, where they were stopped by a blizzard.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>On December 20 Fred left Detroit with the old car to complete the trip across the continent, with Harvey Lincoln, a factory man, as observer. They went through Toledo, Cleveland, Buffalo, and to Little Falls, New York, where they were stopped by a blizzard.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>After returning home, Fred received a communication from the Bureau of Tours of the American Automobile Association, with a map marking his route, and informing him they had a record in his name as the Seventeenth Transcontinental Automobile Trip.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>After returning home, Fred received a communication from the Bureau of Tours of the American Automobile Association, with a map marking his route, and informing him they had a record in his name as the Seventeenth Transcontinental Automobile Trip.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>From here we found many dry ditches, one so deep that we considered building it up from the bottom but that would mean we would have to go through soft earth, so we decided to try it as it was. I walked ahead, afraid to watch the car go down into the ditch, but as I heard the continuous chugging of the motor, I looked around in time to see it slowly crawling up and over the edge after an attempt no big car ever could have made successfully. Can you wonder we came near to loving that loyal car?
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>From here we found many dry ditches, one so deep that we considered building it up from the bottom but that would mean we would have to go through soft earth, so we decided to try it as it was. I walked ahead, afraid to watch the car go down into the ditch, but as I heard the continuous chugging of the motor, I looked around in time to see it slowly crawling up and over the edge after an attempt no big car ever could have made successfully. Can you wonder we came near to loving that loyal car?
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>We did not try to make fast time, because safety was our first thought. Fred went over the car carefully each morning before starting.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>We did not try to make fast time, because safety was our first thought. Fred went over the car carefully each morning before starting.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>We couldn't understand where we had gone wrong, although we had commented on an increasing steepness and roughness of the track. We had come down hills so steep that when we went back I walked behind the car carrying a rock to block a rear wheel when Fred stopped to speed up the engine on these hills, so that if the brake didn't hold, the car wouldn't start rolling backward. When the car started, I would pick up the rock and follow to be ready when he stopped again, and so on, to the top of the hill, when I would drop the rock and get into the car.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>We couldn't understand where we had gone wrong, although we had commented on an increasing steepness and roughness of the track. We had come down hills so steep that when we went back I walked behind the car carrying a rock to block a rear wheel when Fred stopped to speed up the engine on these hills, so that if the brake didn't hold, the car wouldn't start rolling backward. When the car started, I would pick up the rock and follow to be ready when he stopped again, and so on, to the top of the hill, when I would drop the rock and get into the car.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>The camp cook took us into his box-car kitchen and served us a most appetizing meal, including parker house rolls. The signal maintainer, a Scotchman, took us to his house, made a fire to dry Fred's clothes, and gave us his bed for the night. He was the only person on our whole trip who would not take any money. All he wanted was a postcard from us when we reached San Francisco, probably thinking we would never reach such a place. We always carried plenty of fruit to supplement our scanty meals, and we gave him some. He said it was a great treat. Later, when we reached San Francisco, we sent him a picture of the St. Francis Hotel, where we stayed.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>The camp cook took us into his box-car kitchen and served us a most appetizing meal, including parker house rolls. The signal maintainer, a Scotchman, took us to his house, made a fire to dry Fred's clothes, and gave us his bed for the night. He was the only person on our whole trip who would not take any money. All he wanted was a postcard from us when we reached San Francisco, probably thinking we would never reach such a place. We always carried plenty of fruit to supplement our scanty meals, and we gave him some. He said it was a great treat. Later, when we reached San Francisco, we sent him a picture of the St. Francis Hotel, where we stayed.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>We never had had any mechanical trouble with the Brush, and its actions were a puzzle. Late in the afternoon the car took another rest. Fred dutifully alighted and began another search. Suddenly he announced he had found the trouble. My spirits rose at once; all I had been able to do all day was sit and worry when the car stopped and enthuse when it mysteriously started again. The trouble was a simple thing, but it had made the day tragic for us. The insulation was worn through on a wire under the machine, short circuiting the engine when the bare wire happened to touch the metal frame. Locating it was the difficult part, but a little tape remedied it and the car was itself again, fairly spurning the worst mud of the day with its wheels and bringing us to Kelton and a railroad for a Sunday night cold lunch, though we persuaded the waitress to augment it with some hot soup. There was a smug crowd of clerks, teachers, and the like at one table, with not a thought beyond food. They sat there in their Sunday best as we entered dressed in our soiled traveling clothes. They looked at us as though we were something the cat had dragged in. That didn't bother us in the least because we had completed another lap on our journey, with food and shelter for the night, and our trusty car waiting to go at the turn of the crank.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>We never had had any mechanical trouble with the Brush, and its actions were a puzzle. Late in the afternoon the car took another rest. Fred dutifully alighted and began another search. Suddenly he announced he had found the trouble. My spirits rose at once; all I had been able to do all day was sit and worry when the car stopped and enthuse when it mysteriously started again. The trouble was a simple thing, but it had made the day tragic for us. The insulation was worn through on a wire under the machine, short circuiting the engine when the bare wire happened to touch the metal frame. Locating it was the difficult part, but a little tape remedied it and the car was itself again, fairly spurning the worst mud of the day with its wheels and bringing us to Kelton and a railroad for a Sunday night cold lunch, though we persuaded the waitress to augment it with some hot soup. There was a smug crowd of clerks, teachers, and the like at one table, with not a thought beyond food. They sat there in their Sunday best as we entered dressed in our soiled traveling clothes. They looked at us as though we were something the cat had dragged in. That didn't bother us in the least because we had completed another lap on our journey, with food and shelter for the night, and our trusty car waiting to go at the turn of the crank.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>One of the men knew of an old road around the foot of the mountain and took Fred to show him where he could get on to it. Our car pushed its way between shrubs and overhanging trees until we came in view of the valley and down to the road. We were thankful for help in time of need.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>One of the men knew of an old road around the foot of the mountain and took Fred to show him where he could get on to it. Our car pushed its way between shrubs and overhanging trees until we came in view of the valley and down to the road. We were thankful for help in time of need.
</p>
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