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David Burge Profile picture
David Burge
@iowahawkblog
Karma's janitor
165 subscribers
May 24 • 25 tweets • 11 min read
"There is no thing we can do that is more American than getting in a car and striking out across country."

-William Least Heat-Moon

Today #DavesCarIDService salutes the first person ever to have that most American of notions, the delightfully named Dr. Horatio Nelson Jackson, who struck out from San Francisco on May 23, 1903 in a 1903 Winton 20 hp with the goal of reaching New York City. He was 31 years old, with virtually no driving experience and no maps. Just a lot of determination and a fairly decent bankroll to blow on his seeming folly.

We also celebrate his road trip companions: 20 year old Sewell Crocker, with whom he shared driving duties, and Bud the Bulldog, a canine good luck mascot he bought for $15 in Idaho along the way.

Spoiler alert: battered and bruised, they successfully completed the journey 63 days later.Image Horatio Nelson Jackson was also an immigrant. Born in Toronto, he came to the US to study medicine at the University of Vermont. Part of his post-grad practice was at the Vermont Asylum for the Insane, where he possibly first came up with his road trip idea.

Ill healthy forced him to retire from his medical career in 1900. He married Bertha Wells, daughter of one of Vermont's wealthiest families, and acquired in some Mexican silver mines. The consummation of one of those mining deals brought him to San Francisco, where at the University Club he overheard another diner proclaim that the car was a passing fancy and no automobile could successfully make a cross-country journey.

In 1903 that was the sane take. The transcontinental railroad was already 39 years old and there was no reason to believe the car would ever supplant it for long journeys. Highways, for all intents and purposes, did not exist and there was no reason to build them.

But Jackson was undaunted. He bet the blowhard $50 (about $1700 in today money) that he himself could do it despite never having owned a car or driven one. Yikes. Fortunately he knew young Sewell Crocker who did have experience. Crocker tutored him in driving and suggested the rugged Winton as the ideal car for the journey. He named the Winton "Vermont" after his beloved state.

Jackson & Crocker took off on their ride on May 23 carrying whatever fuel and provision could be attached to the small car, including shotguns and rifles. It was extremely arduous trek with daily breakdowns, repairs, and rescues from mud. Landowners would charge them tolls. Crocker had to make a 50 mile round trip bicycle ride for fuel in the Oregon outback. In Idaho Jackson's coat containing most of his cash fell off and his was forced to wire San Francisco for more.

It was also in Idaho where Jackson bought fearless Bud the Wonder Dog as a good luck mascot. And it seemed to work. By Jackson's account Bud was always alert for road hazards, but the dust of the western alkali flats bothered his eyes so they bought him a pair of goggles.

After 63 days on their improvised route that largely parallels US 30 / Interstate 80, with daily newspaper accounts of their journey growing their fame, they arrived in NYC to a hero's welcome.

All were pretty bruised up. Jackson lost 20 pounds during the trip and most of the Winton's parts were replaced along the way. Jackson said he spent $8000 of his own money for the trip (more than $250,000 today). But hey, won his $50 bet. Which he never collected.

His Winton, the Vermont, is now in the Smithsonian.Image
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May 21 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
rekt Image
Image Literally 30% of times it's ever been done by any WNBA player and she's only played 42 games

May 20 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
The year is 1933. You are at El Tropico, the most exclusive nightclub in Palm Beach.

Me? Why I am your host, Count Eduardo Del Rio, late of Havana. I am the impresario of El Tropico and my only wish is that my esteemed guests enjoy a splendid evening of dining and dancing. Would you like a special table? Our chef's specialty, Roasted Flamingo a la Pepe? Request a favorite rumba from our beloved bandleader, Tito Nougat? Valet service for your Duesenberg or autogyro? Even though it is the High Season in Palm Beach, I and my staff will do our utmost to accommodate your every desire.

Perhaps you would like an introduction to another of our guests. Or the telephone number a cigarette girl or a chorus girl. Simply ask Count Eduardo, I am at your service. And please, do not to worry. Eduardo is the very model of discretion! Just ask my silent business partners in Chicago and Havana. You secrets shall remain inside El Tropico.

And may I ask who are you, and what are you doing in my club? If I have told you once I have told you many times you are to use the kitchen entrance, Mr Alligator person. Begone, you and your smell are scaring my guest.
May 19 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
I regret to inform you that the choo-choo fetishist are at it again No one has every died wishing they had taken more rides on the CTA
May 13 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
He should've been arrested for crimes against architecture If you had $9 million to splurge on house and you ordered up this abomination, you should be deported to a dark site Venezuelan prison just on principle Image
May 10 • 19 tweets • 10 min read
Strap on your skates, today's #DavesCarIDService is here to examine the noble and sassy history of... the car hop!

These talented gals are whisking $0.40 chili burgers to a 1952 Mercury (left) and a 1953 Oldsmobile (right). It might seem incomprehensible to those who have lived exclusively in the drive-thru era (since circa 1975) that roadside fast fooderies once employed waitstaffs to carry, or skate, orders to the cars of customers. But, true story, and not just a nostalgia movie fever dream.

With the ascendancy of widespread car ownership came the roadside restaurant, bringing with it a problem to be solved: how to get the food between the kitchen and the cars? The obvious solution was a team of perky uniformed gals (and initially guys). And Southern California was unsurprisingly an early hotbed of restaurants using this model. #1, a 1932 publicity photos of the hops at Carpenter's restaurant in L.A.; in #2, film comedian Monte Blue chows down in his electric toy car with another car hop in 1933 at an unidentified LA drive in.

In the late 1940s other solutions were being tested, like the bowling alley style chutes of the Motormat in LA (#3), or literal drive-thrus; in #4, Ye Market Place in Glendale 1949. A grocery store, believe it or not, but a few restaurants were trying this system at the time as well.Image
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May 7 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
If I get hit by a car the day before I turn 65 who inherits my fucking money So if I understand this correctly it's my fucking money, except I can't fucking check the fucking account balance, or fucking borrow against, or use as fucking collateral, or fucking leave to my kids, or fucking touch until they say so
May 6 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
Some fun facts about the University of Iowa:

1. UI has never barred admission to students on the basis of race or sex since its founding in 1847.

2. Iowa's first black law graduate, Alexander Clark Jr., received his degree in 1879.

3. The first black Hawkeye athlete, Frank Holbrook, played on the football team in 1895.

4. Archie Alexander became the first black Hawkeye football captain in 1913. He was also a renown civil engineer who became governor of the US Virgin Islands in 1956.

5. Duke Slater was Iowa's first black All-American, in 1921. He was also among the first black NFL players, and member of the College & NFL HOF. Also a Chicago Municipal Judge, and a lifelong Hawkeye booster. A new UI dormitory was named in his honor in 1968, as well as the field at Kinnick Stadium.

6. Iowa's first black quarterback was Ozzie Simmons, 1934-35. Google the story of Floyd of Rosedale.

7. Other early Hawkeye black athletes include Ledrue Galloway and Arlington Daniels in 1924, Harold Bradley Sr. in 1926, Wendell Benjamin in 1929, Voris Dickerson and Windy Wallace in 1932, Don Simmons 1934, Homer Harris 1937, and Jim Walker of the 1939 "Ironmen" team. Plus 1924 track & field captain Charles Brookins, a world record holder and 1924 Olympian.

8. Notable postwar 1940s black Hawkeyes include Emlen Tunnell (an NFL HOF and first black man to be hired for a coaching position in the NFL), Earl Banks, and Harold Bradley Jr., whose dad played for the Hawkeyes in the 1920s.

9. The great Hawkeye teams of the 1950s were replete with black athletes, including all-Americans Calvin Jones, Bob Jeter, Willie Fleming, and Wilburn Hollis. Lineman John Burroughs later became a US Ambassador. Plus Carl Cain of Iowa's 1955 and 56 Final Four hoops team.

10. One of the greatest football coaches of all time, Grambling's legendary Eddie Robinson, earned his MA at Iowa in 1954, where he was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha. He traveled north to Iowa for his degree because at the time he was denied entry to MA-granting colleges in his native Louisiana because of his race.

11. Early black Hawkeyes were pioneers in the arts, sciences, and business. Alumni include Metropolitan Opera star Simon Estes ('57), printmaker and sculpture Elizabeth Catlett ('40, student of Grant Wood and first black woman to earn an MFA), Jewel Prestage ('54, first black woman to earn a PhD in political science), Rita Dove (US Poet Laureate, MFA '77), and recording artist Al Jarreau.

12. The University of Iowa and its dreaded "corn people" were welcoming black students to campus and cheering for black Hawkeye athletes long before many universities had to be sued, kicking and screaming, to even allow them through the gates.Image *but in fairness we also enjoy watching that corn lady play basketball, which I'm told pretty much wipes out points for any of that stuff
May 1 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Who's this "we" Nutlick "our children," but for companies Image
Apr 29 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
RIP math So if, I'm understanding this correctly, there were 119 million fentanyl junkies waiting around on American street corners for their pushers to deliver 22 million fentanyl pills that they were going to split 5 ways into 119 million deadly doses
Apr 28 • 16 tweets • 4 min read
Education has deteriorated so drastically in California and NY nobody there is even aware of this Once again, this is an example of Simpson's Paradox at work. States like CA and NY have overall reading & math scores above MS and LA, but when adjusted for socioeconomic factors - school lunch eligibility, family income, race - Southern states are now outperforming.
Apr 26 • 29 tweets • 12 min read
A happy belated License Plate Day to all who celebrate from #DavesCarIDService! On April 25, 1901 the state of New York became the first to require license plates on automobiles. Oddly, though, it did not *issue* those plates; it merely required registrants to display one prominently on their vehicle, bearing the owner's initials.

Material and construction was up to the registrant - metal, wood, leather, whatever, it didn't say. Cars were still rare enough that the initials were though sufficient to track any car down. But within a few years numbers were added, and other states quickly followed suit. Most of those very early pre-1905 license plates nationwide were of the homemade leather variety.

The first 2 photos are of extremely rare surviving 1901 NY license plates; #3, a 1902-03 NY plate with number and owner initials. In #4, a 1904 Iowa leather plate. Iowa became the first state west of the Mississippi to require license plates that year.Image
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Image The distinction of the first state to *issue* its own license plates goes to Massachusetts. In 1903 Masshole car registrants receive a uniform state plate, #1 going to Frederick Tudor, descendent of Boston's famed "Ice King" Frederick Tudor, who made his fortune shipping ice from the frozen north to the American South, the Caribbean, even as far as Calcutta.

The 1903 plates themselves were quite spiffy and durable, porcelainized iron plates in Navy blue and white. And worth a pretty penny today. The pair in #1 were issued to Joshua Sears of 12 Arlington St. Boston, and are the lowest number 1903 MA plates known to exist.

Within a few years states adopted the time-honored medium of sheet aluminum, stamped by a hardworking state prison convict working his way to rehabilitation. While the 1903 MA plates are quite valuable, the most expensive American plate on record is #2, a survivor aluminum 1921 Alaska Territory, which fetched $60,000 at auction.Image
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Apr 23 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Not a single citation from the legacy press after I did all the work for them, smdh They even got this wrong, the mystery wasn't whether it was a 1940-41 Ford Deluxe woody, it was whether it was a *1941-42* Ford Deluxe woody. It obviously isn't a 1940, and I conclusively determined it was a 1941 per the fender top marker lights. Again, smdh Image
Apr 22 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
The mystery USS Yorktown car is a 1941-42 Ford woody wagon, I have spoken Sir you picked the wrong fight
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Apr 18 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
cc: @NobelPrize "Let's bring down inflation with 150% tariffs and 0% interest rates" is perhaps the most galaxy brained economic theory I have ever attempted to ponder
Apr 17 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I live in Austin TX which, as you might have heard, has a few California transplants. I know a lot of them, and without exception they are painfully aware of why they they left CA and do not want those mistakes repeated here
"Those damn California libruls moved into Austin and turned it blue" is probably the most clueless reaction I get on this site. Austin has always been lefty, and if anything Cali transplants have made it less so.
Apr 16 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Having lost my beloved Kum & Go baseball cap, I would be deeply indebted to you for a replacement.

I will never forgive the Mormons for the calumny of destroying America's most trusted Kum-themed brand name This is like when the changed the name of Marshall Field's to Macy's, only one billion times worse
Apr 10 • 14 tweets • 6 min read
I see a lot of commentary on this, but as a car-type-of-person I will offer my $0.02 (a thread) First, yeah, Boomer Bait. The Nova SS in race #1 and 1940 Ford pickup in #2 are both highly modified. Stock form, the Nova would've had ~14 second 1/4 time rather than 10. And stock 1940 Ford wouldn't even had broken 20 seconds.

But the modification is *the entire point*.
Mar 28 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
Wait'll they realized that if we really wanted to hook up 8 million rural households with broadband we could just skip this bullshit, buy all of them Starlink terminals at $400 apiece, and save 92% off the DC retail politics price tag Same thing with California High Speed Rail. For the same price to build 10 miles of choo choo track somewhere between Merced and Bakersfield you could have given free $2500 fly anywhere flight vouchers to every man woman and child in the state of California
Mar 22 • 7 tweets • 5 min read
Internal combustion, electric, steam? Old hat, been there done that. Today's #DavesCarIDService salutes some mad geniuses who REALLY thought outside the box when it came to alternative vehicle power. Starting with Ron Main's rubber band-powered "Twisted" land speed record car.

Car-wise I was kinda jaded, thinking I had seen it all, until I saw this latex propelled green energy machine debut at 2008 Bonneville Speed Week.Image Yep, you read that correctly, rubber bands. The SCTA (Southern California Timing Association) land speed record book has hundreds of classes for different body types, engine displacement, wheel counts, and power sources. Which leads to a lot of innovation, and craziness. Main owns a number of those records, including the world's fastest Ford Flathead V8 at 302 mph.

And what's more innovative than inventing your own rubber band powered class? That was the intention with Twisted. Under the hood: a battery of 150 industrial rubber bands, the kind used to secure cargo on pallets. Anchored to a set of gears that could be wound up with an electric motor.

How to keep them from binding, though? The following content is for mature audiences only. Rubber, as we all know needs to be lubricated, and a team crew member was designated to apply friction-reducing lubricants. Main referred to him as "the fluffer."

How did it do? SCTA measures speed over flying mile, but allow for a vehicle assisted push start. The goal was pretty modest, 30 mph, but the biggest challenge was to sustain rubber band power for that one mile. Sadly it wasn't going to happen that first year, which was also the last year Twisted appeared there. The rubber band class record remains vacant, in case you want to attempt it yourself.Image
Mar 16 • 25 tweets • 10 min read
Time for #DavesCarIDService to get back on the road again! During SXSW this week, I lucked into a little behind-the-scenes access at the Luck Reunion music fest at Willie Nelson's Luck Ranch outside Austin. Lucky me!

That included a couple of the more notorious vehicles around: Willie's tour buses, including the original Honeysuckle Rose. Sorry for the blurry cell phone pix, maybe it was due to a contact high, I'm not admitting anything.Image
Image Here's a more competent photo of the "Honeysuckle Rose II," a Canadian-made 1990 Eagle Model 15 with custom interior by Florida Coach, and murals by an artist name "Rainmaker" (this is a car ID service after all). Willie's original tour bus was a 1983 Prevost that was totaled, without him in it. The various Honeysuckle Roses were all Prevosts:

I: 1983-90
II: 1990-96
III: 1996-2005
IV: 2005-presentImage