Over the course of 382 posts here, there seem to have been a few recurring themes: Odd Places and Quirky Corners of History; The Occasional Thought and Plucky Women. If we just continued with the last one, we'd never run out of stories. And there are a lot of them about women who headed out to cross the continental United States in the very early days of automobiling. It's surprising how many, considering how bad the cars and tires were, and the roads were not only bad, often they weren't even there. Intrepid drivers had to cut fences out West, ford streams and roll across farm fields. Especially in the Spring, there was mud to contend with. Either cars got stuck up to their hubs or they just slid off sideways into ditches. Farmers pulled them out, even more convinced about the superiority and utility of horses. In fact, around 1919, there were 17 million horses and only 13 miles of Federally financed roadway. Towns were isolated by the lack of roads between them, and the cost of transporting farm products was many times higher than in more developed European nations. Services were absent, as was even gravel; dirt roads were graded by horses pulling a log crosswise behind them. Did any of that stop the enthusiastic ladies eager to experience freedom, something new and amazing and revel in their self-reliance? Alice Ramsey in her Maxwell, Winifred Dixon (Westward Hoboes, 1921), Letitia Stockett, Kathryn Hulme and Emily Post took the challenge on and cheerily wrote about their adventures.
Emily Post? Mrs. Post, before she was the Emily Post, took her son out of Harvard to drive from New York to San Francisco in 1915. Overburdened at first (being new to this thing), they had to jettison weighty items like a silver service. Unlike most such early travelers, she preferred nice hotels to camping, and reviewed each city like a newly published novel, approving heartily of Chicago and Cleveland ("great coffee") and not so much about lesser sites ("bad food in queer places"). She did, however, have to complete the journey via train from the Southwest to California after her European automobile gave its all.
Not only Emily Post went on to fame after her youthful adventure. In 1923, Kathryn Hulme (above) logged 6000 miles on the same New York to San Francisco jaunt, detouring frequently, even up into British Columbia, with her friend Petunia ("Tuny" for short). Unfortunately, since Ms. Hulme's 1928 chronicle How's the Road is unavailable except on microfilm at a university, we can't find out anything more about someone with such a delightful name. The two pursued a life of freedom and new experiences that usually only men could at that time, although that was to change dramatically during the decade. They explored a blacksmith's forge in Montana, camped with cowboys and visited traveling salesmen's hotels where women were not expected. In fact, although they took a pistol along anticipating danger, the men along the way were chivalrous (and curious). The women they asked directions of, however, often showed their "rank disapproval." Not ever apologetic and fully aware she was being rebellious, Kathryn laughed it off.
Her life was a continuation of the adventure. After attending the University of California and Columbia, she was a reporter, an expatriate writer in Paris, a ship welder again in California during the War and then relocated displaced persons after 1945 for a U.N. agency in Bavaria. At age 71, she went on safari in east Africa. Ms. Hulme is best known for The Nun's Story, which was a best seller and made into a movie starring Audrey Hepburn. That success allowed her to live out her years on Kauai, Hawaii. With less mud, I hope.
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