Road Reminiscences

OCTOBER, 1936 ARIZONA HIGHWAYS 11 Road Reminiscences Think the Road is Rough? Remember the Days of the Duster and Two-fisted Motorists?

GOT another boy workin' here, but he's busy right now fixin' a flat, so I'll fill 'er up myself. First flat we've had to fix in some time. Roads are gettin' too good. You ought to hear those fellows kickin' about the roads. Those fellows over there that we're fixin' the flat for. Never heard such complainin' in all my life. Bad roads! Say, those ice cream eaters don't know how a bad road feels. I been runnin' this garage for pretty near seventeen years, but I first come to Coconino County, Arizona, in 1913, before people complained about roads. Nobody knew what a good road was. Roads were just two wagon ruts runnin' side by side, and when them ruts got so deep a wagon couldn't travel in 'em without scrapin' the wagon bed, why the folks would just move over a few feet and start another pair of ruts. Now I wouldn't blame anybody for kickin' a little about roads like those. I even kicked a little myself. Especially when I bought a new motorcycle and started out for Flagstaff one time."There was two of us went on that one motorcycle, which didn't make it any more comfortable. The ruts were wore pretty deep too, but they hadn't gotten deep enough to start a new pair. We had our choice of travelin' down the ruts or down the middle part between the ruts. The ruts weren't quite too deep so I'd get that motorcycle balanced like a tight rope walker with an umbrella, and we'd be goin' fine until a rock or bump in the rut would throw us to one side. Then the foot pedal would catch in the dirt givin' us a couple of skin disruptin' spills. After a little bit of that we'd try the middle where the grass grew in bunches that made great big mounds. When we had run about a half mile over those bunches we were so bounced up and shook down that we had indigestion for a month afterwards. We got to Flagstaff just the same, but we looked like we had just escaped from a Mexican revolution, and we were so short tempered people thought we had been on the losing side. But we outwitted that road comin' back. We come home down the railroad. "I suppose you're wonderin' why we didn't get killed by a train? Well that's always been a mystery to me, 'cause we sure came flyin' down the ties right in the middle of that track, and we kept sayin' how smooth they were. Say, if a road's that rough nowadays folks won't travel on it. "And now folks just hop in their car when they want to go to the Grand Canyon from Williams and about two hours later they have arrived. I'd like to see some of these highway hounds take a trip to the canyon like we used to do. If we were lucky we'd make it in a day. Why in those times it wasn't nothin' but a dirt road windin' across the country like a lost child. We'd load up our car with spare parts, spare tires, spare tubes, spare patchin', spare water, and a few spare passengers if we could get 'em, 'cause the more there were to push the better. Then we'd take a grub supply to last a few days 'cause no tellin' what might happen. Just before we'd start all our friends would say good-by like we wasn't ever goin' to see 'em again. "Maybe the road would run along fine and we'd start gettin' her up to twentyfive when all of a sudden there would be a big washed out place right in front of us. No time to slow down so we'd hit it and how things would fly. Everybody would leave the seats, and there'd be so much noise you couldn't tell for sure just what had happened. Usually there was a broken spring or a bent axle. Maybe the car wouldn't run so we'd have to wait for help when cars travelin' along that road were about as scarce as flies on a cold winter's night. One thing though, if a car did come along it would sure stop and help out. Too much chance that it might be in the same fix some time. So we'd come back to town, puttin' the trip (Continued on Page 25)