In Remembrance of You
Page 13
Whit lost twenty pounds, and I lost fifteen during the eighty days from San Francisco. The newspapers and magazines have written that I killed twenty rattlesnakes on the prairies and deserts west of Omaha, though I admit to losing count at twelve. We ran over two chickens, injured a farmer’s pig, and caused several horses to run away. Darn if we didn’t scare the Indians out of their wits at the sight and sound of our “White Man’s Thunder Wagon.”
Whit telegraphed Mr. Olds for instructions about the machine and received the following reply:
Lansing, Michigan September 23rd to L.L. Whitman, Portland, Maine
SHIP MACHINE TO OLDS MOBILE CO. NEW YORK, AND WRITE ITS CONDITION FOR ENDURANCE RUN IF YOU WILL TAKE IT THROUGH THE RUN I WILL SEARCH N.Y. FOURTH AND BRING CHECK WIRE DETROIT YOU HAVE SUCCEEDED IN YOUR TRIP THE ONLY MACHINE THAT HAS EVER MADE THE RUN CALIFORNIA TO MAINE
R.E. OLDS
We took off our hats, Whit and I, and paid homage to our faithful little Curved Dash Oldsmobile Runabout, with its honorable scars and its big achievement. It had crossed the continent, and yet, at that very moment, could turn around and hit the trail back to San Francisco.
* The original accounting of the 1903 trip was given in the book From Sea To Sea In 1903 In A Curved Dash Oldsmobile written by my uncle, John S. Hammond II.
PART THREE
A LETTER FROM THE PAST
“Smile for the cameras, Holley Gene!” The drivers cranked up their three cars to start the engines. “Let’s get going!”
The unbelievable experience with the letter in City Hall was still on my mind as we drove from there to a pier in New York City. Whitman and Hammond had continued up to Boston and completed their trip in Portland, Maine. Somewhere near Boston they had put the front wheels of their car in the Atlantic to signify driving coast to coast.
Our 1985 tour ended in New York City. We could find no place to get down to the water, so we ceremoniously bucketed water up onto the front wheels of all three CDOs. Our trip had come to an end. Dad and I were so grateful to the three men and their well-running antique cars for including us on the adventure commemorating two pioneers of the early automobile.
Now it was time to celebrate. We gathered with the support team, more Hammond family members, Olds representatives, and our honored drivers to have one last meal together. There were speeches thanking everyone who helped. When the Olds representative finished his thank you’s, he called my name.
“When we were going through the archives, looking for promotional material that pertained to the Curved Dash Olds, we found this envelope. We kept it because we had no address to mail it to.”
On the outside of the envelope, in addition to the address and a postage stamp cancelled in 1903, was the note, “Please deliver to Gene Hammond’s granddaughter.”
I gratefully accepted the envelope and lost no time opening it. Out fell what looked like a large locket or watchcase with some trinkets in it. There was a rather worn newspaper article and a letter, which I read eagerly.
Dear Granddaughter,
What the heck! Me, a grandfather? Two can play this game.
We did use your notes, and to prove it, I have enclosed a watchcase full of trinkets in remembrance of you.
I can’t imagine living in your time. I hope you enjoyed being in mine.
Time has no limits when it is seen through the eyes of love.
Grampa
p.s. When you look at the photos of our trip, find the one where I am standing on a wooden bridge in the Sierras. It is your letter that I am reading.
On the back of the letter was a list of things inside the locket and an explanation of what they represented. I carefully opened the case, examined each trinket, and read down his list:
Trinket Meaning
Safety pin for emergencies
Pebble from shoe after retrieving towrope (where watch stopped and I kept case)
Splinter from Promontory Point
Bluebird fetish from Buffalo Bill’s ranch
Blackbird fetish no scarecrows, just water!
Pearl from ladies in Omaha
Shell from City Point Beach, Boston
Heart just because I love you
Leaf with #103
Why was there a leaf with the number 103 on it? What did this mean? My grandfather had left the space blank. Had he been in a hurry, or forgotten to write something about the leaf?
I know Grampa Hammond would be pleased that I have written about his transcontinental trip. It was a turning point in automotive history although, at the time for him, it was just an adventure.
EPILOGUE
I got a telephone call in the spring of 2006. The person on the phone asked, “Are you the granddaughter of Eugene Hammond, who crossed the continent in 1903?” They had seen the picture of the sister CDO on my costuming website. They were relatives of Whitman! Lester Whitman had no heirs, but he had a sister who had children.
In the fall of 2006, my husband and I took an East Coast cruise to see the fall colors. These delightful people met us as we docked in Portland, Maine. They were holding a sign that read, “Whit and Ham Reunion.” Colorful autumn leaves decorated the sign.
They took us to the Civil War monument at Post Office Square in town. The buildings had all changed around it, but the monument looked the same as when ‘Whit’ and ‘Ham’ posed in front of it with the Olds to commemorate the end of their trip. Our husbands took photos of us as our relatives had posed in 1903. It was 103 years ago, almost to the day, that the original photo had been taken! There were colorful autumn leaves everywhere around us. Grampa Hammond would have seen these colorful leaves, too.
Was this the meaning of the leaf in the watchcase?
Who could have predicted this Whitman and Hammond family reunion 103 years later?
How did Grampa Hammond know?
AUTHOR’S NOTES
At the completion of the 1903 trip, Whitman had an invitation from Mr. Olds to drive the CDO from New York to Pittsburgh in the First Annual Endurance Test Run. Whitman asked my grandfather to go along as mechanic.
Grampa Hammond turned him down because he had his own job opportunity. Mr. Olds had asked him to work with the mechanics and the sales people at Eastern Olds Motor Works agencies. He was to show them how to head off problems before they happened. They figured he had become an authority, and his advice would be well-taken.
The Curved Dash Olds proved its slogan, “It’s made to run and does it.” The Whitman Hammond 1903 Olds made it to the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, where it was on exhibition for several months. When it was returned to Michigan, Mr. Olds retained the endurance machine for his personal use. We know it came off the production line in May, 1903, and was one of 732 machines built during that month. Unfortunately, we don’t know what became of the little record-breaker.
The Whitman-Hammond trip was never meant to be a race. They left San Francisco twenty days before the Winton (driven by Dr. H. Nelson Jackson) reached New York and one day after the Packard (driven by E. Thomas Fetch) passed through Salt Lake City. The Whitman and Hammond CDO was the third car to cross the United States, but it was the longest trip, from San Francisco, California, to Portland, Maine. It was also the first international journey by a car, up into Canada and back. And it was the first car to carry U.S. Mail from coast to coast.
I talk about my grandfather as being a pioneer in the auto industry, but he loved to fish as well. A cousin of mine was having dinner at a seafood restaurant in southern California. The walls were covered with photos of prize catches. He noticed Grampa Hammond was in one of the bigger pictures. Our grandfather was standing by a 352-pound sea bass that had taken him forty-five minutes to catch! His older brother, Charles, is standing with him with his large catch. Now some of my cousins get together once a year at that restaurant to honor our grandfather.
My dad and my grandfather each appeared in two of Ripley’s Believe It or Not articles. The first showed a drawing of the CDO with Whitman and Hammond, and the cap
tion, “The first auto to cross the United States (piloted by E. I. Hammond and L. L. Whitman) traveled 900 miles without meeting another automobile, in 1903.” In March of 1987, another Ripley’s article shows Dad and the driver of the 1902 CDO that recreated the trip in thirty-seven days.
I am very grateful I had the opportunity to spend time with my dad recreating the trip his father had made. Dad was still with us when we had a family reunion in 2003 to celebrate the trip’s one-hundredth anniversary. My family owns a “sister” 1903 CDO, so we gave members of the extended family a ride. We said at the time it was too bad there were no Whitman descendants to celebrate with us.
I love driving the little car. The year 2003 was also the Centennial of the Wright brothers’ first flight at Kitty Hawk. I was asked to bring our Curved Dash Olds to a local airstrip for a centennial celebration of the flight. Gordon Cooper, one of the original seven astronauts, was the Grand Marshal of the event. We asked him if he would like to ride in the car. After helping him up onto the seat, my husband asked him, “Do you think you can handle a ride in this high-performance vehicle?” Cooper answered, “I’ll try not to black out!”
The Whitman-Hammond trip was completed in September of 1903. The Wright brothers’ flight happened in December of the same year. In one hundred years, look how far the automobile and air travel have progressed!
Because of my participation in the 1985 trip, I became a costumer and now specialize in turn of the century clothing. I wanted to accurately reproduce the clothing of the time when the original trip took place. I thank my grandfather for this unexpected gift.
How did I know my grandfather when he was alive? Well, I have a picture of him with me sitting on his lap when I was a baby. My mouth was wide open. I must have been screaming bloody murder!
Grampa Hammond died in 1948. He left seventeen grandchildren. I was the only one who inherited his name, Gene—Holley Gene. Did he know I was the granddaughter who would grow up, retrace his journey, and send him the letter?
Holley Gene (Hammond) Leffler
APPENDIX
The following is the newspaper article that accompanied my grandfather’s letter and the watchcase:
SEPTEMBER 18, 1903 NEW YORK NEWSPAPER ARTICLE
Come from ‘Frisco to New York in a Runabout in 73 Days.
Bring message from Mayor Schmitz to Mayor Low. While a small hurricane was in progress about five o’clock yesterday afternoon two weather-beaten men in rubber suits and campaign leggings drove into the Oldsmobile garage at 60th street and Broadway, in an 800 pound, 5 horsepower Runabout.
The machine, although plastered inches thick with mud, and showing the marks of hard travel, responded to the touch of the driver as though it had just left the factory.
The men were L.L. Whitman and E.I. Hammond, two citizens of Pasadena, California, just finishing a trip across the continent in their modest-looking vehicle.
Two other parties of daring and hearty motorists have ridden from San Francisco to this city, but they did the trick in regulation 2000-pound touring cars. Dr. Jackson made the trip in a Winton car in 65 days. E.T. Fetch and M.C. Krarup crossed the continent recently in a Packard car in 61 days.
Hammond and Whitman went the distance, about 5000 miles, with the detours necessary, in 73 days.
Made Record from Omaha.
While they failed to beat the time of the larger cars, they succeeded in making a new record for the latter half of the journey, coming from Omaha, Nebraska, to this city in 11 1/2 days.
They left San Francisco at 3 p.m. on July 6. As they departed from the City Hall of the Golden Gate city Mayor Schmitz gave them a written message to Mayor Low. This message will be delivered to Mayor Low on the steps of the City Hall at 11 o’clock this morning.
In speaking of the time made, the tourists said that they would have done considerably better but for the delays caused by heavy rains. They lost 15 days in Nevada alone on account of the unusual activity. They had but two punctures and one breakdown of any consequence during the journey. A small sprocket was broken about 50 miles from Chicago, and there being no repair shop within 10 miles they were forced to make a new sprocket themselves at a blacksmith shop.
Plough Through Sand Drifts.
Nevada gave them the most difficult obstacles to overcome. Although the rear wheels were equipped with canvas sand tires, the deserts of this state bothered them most. Near Wadsworth, Nevada, the sand drifts were 10 feet high. Time and again the wheels were caught in sagebrush beneath the sand and they had to dig their vehicle out. They encountered alkali beds 20 miles in length, and these were so hard to get through that they were in despair more than once of ever reaching the East.
Cowboys came to their assistance on one occasion in the nick of time. The car had plowed deep into a sand drift. Night was coming on fast and the automobilists had many miles to go in order to reach the nearest shelter. They had begun to slowly extricate the machine when a party of plainsmen came into sight and promptly aided them. The Cowboys lassooed the car, and their powerful horses soon had the automobile out of the drift.
Killed snakes on the trip.
The tourists lost their way several times in the desert but had to spend only one night in the open. On that occasion they were bothered a good deal by rattlesnakes and coyotes, the latter coming up to within a few feet of the car. Hammond was the snake killer of the party. He estimates that he killed at least 20 of them during the trip.
The pair could plainly see the trail left by the Packard machine which had preceded them a few days before, and they followed this trail for many miles. In crossing the barren wastes they sometimes traveled eight or ten hours without seeing a soul. Once they ran across an emigrant wagon containing an Indian. He gave one terrified whoop and disappeared under some blankets in the wagon. They tried to poke him out with a stick, but he refused to show his head.
At Golconda Hot Springs, Nebraska, they came across a number of squaws seated on the ground in a row. At sight of the machine the Indians scattered in every direction.
Mr. Hammond said Crossing the “Rockies” was comparatively easy to negotiating the Sierra Nevada mountains. To get over the latter range of hills they had to ascend 8000 feet.
Says Canada’s Roads Are Best.
In speaking of the roads, Mr. Hammond said that the best roads encountered were in Canada. Next to Nevada, the tourists found Wyoming the most difficult state to get through. In the vicinity of Granger, Wyoming, they had to ford many streams.
The floods were so bad in this state that they had to take to the uplands.
Both men lost close to 20 pounds during the trip.
“An automobile trip across the continent,” says Mr. Whitman, “is the surest way to reduce flesh I know of.”
The tourists were almost as dark as Indians, when they arrived in the city. They were extremely fatigued and were glad the journey was over.
“I wouldn’t ride every day for another month if I received $100 a day for doing it,” remarked Whitman.
The tourists passed through the following towns: Sacramento and Placerville, California; Carson City, Reno, Wadsworth, Winnemucca, Elko and Wells, in Nevada; Ogden, Utah; Rawlings and Laramie, Wyoming; Fort Collins and Denver, Colorado; Julesburg, Cozad, Elwood, Minden, Hastings, Lincoln, Ashland, and Omaha, Nebraska; Council Bluffs, Des Moines, and Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Sterling and Chicago, Illinois; Detroit, Michigan; Windsor, St. Thomas and Hamilton, Canada; Niagara Falls, Lockport, Rochester, and Syracuse, New York.
THANKS TO
Lester Lee Whitman, CDO driver,
For his diary
My uncle, John Smith Hammond II,
For his book,
From Sea To Sea In 1903 In A Curved Dash Oldsmobile
My father, Eugene Irish Hammond, Jr.,
For purchasing a 1903 “sister” CDO
Gary Hoonsbeen, driver of the 1902 CDO
Roy Bernick, driver of the 1903 CDO
Joe Merli, driver of the 1904 CDO
For making the 1985 trip
My husband, Mick Leffler,
For being my “write” arm