Cross Florida in only 12 hours

A cross-Florida car journey was such a
major undertaking in 1909 that it attracted
newspaper attention. Photo credit:
Chronicling America

Summer is the season of car travel for so many of us. It's easy and convenient, even if gas prices are ridiculous. Hopping in a car is such a way of life we don't even think about it.

That wasn't the case in 1909.  A century ago, cruising along Florida's roads was an adventure. Vehicle trips weren't for the faint-hearted. A journey that today takes a few hours required an entire day in 1909. One such journey was so amazing it garnered front-page newspaper attention.

On March 23, 1909, the Daytona Beach News featured this headline: From Coast to Coast in a Day. That's one Florida coast to the other, not the Atlantic to the Pacific. The cross-state trip was considered a stunt. The Hotchkiss party broke a record when they made the trip in 12 hours in their Pope-Hartford Touring Car. 

George Hotchkiss, his daughter and a Miss Rollins, all chauffeured by driver Auguste Grosjean "reported a most successful and interesting trip." They journeyed from Tampa to Daytona Beach and at times achieved a speed of almost 16 miles per hour. The fact that there wasn't engine or tire trouble was worthy of mention.

They weren't driving on pavements we're familiar with. The group considered some of the roads they traversed - primarily in the larger towns - "most excellent." Others were less so. The group crossed through stretches of heavy sand and flatwoods and had to ford several streams. Once, the water reached the bed of the car. They also had to board a ferry at one point.

Cars and everything about them were much in the news that day. Daytona Beach was gearing up for the "sixth renewal" of the Daytona Beach Races. "Dare-devil drivers ready for the coming fray," the newspaper reported. That remains true today. Daytona Beach is still a mecca for car races.

Today, a cross-state car trip is a regular thing. Nobody has to drive through flatwoods or sand or ford streams to get from Tampa to Daytona. They do have to deal with traffic congestion and the nightmare otherwise known as Interstate 4. A trip that should require about 3 hours can stretch to 5 or 6. It only feels like it's taking 12 hours.

1909 Pope Hartford Touring Car appears
luxurious for its time.
Photo credit: Flickr - Jack Snell

First car in Florida?

First car in Florida? Could be. (Credit:
Jacksonville Motorcar History website)

The hero of my upcoming Christmas novella is a man of his time and place, 1898 Florida. When he sees a magazine advertisement for a Winton automobile, he's so enthusiastic that he immediately wants to buy one of the new, innovative vehicles.

Such a purchase didn't fit into my storyline. But the idea made me wonder when Floridians saw their first gasoline automobile in action along local streets. Turns out that was in 1900 in Jacksonville, according to my internet research.

I'm not a car enthusiast or credentialed historian. If you know of cars in Florida earlier or elsewhere, please leave a comment. The car in Jacksonville was the first factory-made car to show up in town, so that qualifier may be important in a list of firsts.

Some websites quote relevant Jacksonville Times-Union newspaper articles, including one from Jan. 5, 1900. I can't locate that primary source, so this blog post relies on secondary online resources. I'll link to them at the end of this post. My thanks to all the chroniclers for the information below:

A crowd gathered on Jan. 4, 1900 to see undertaker Charles A. Clark drive "the first car in Florida" into the Jacksonville city center. Local men reacted much the way my fictional hero does. Many declared intentions to buy the same model car right away. That meant as soon as the factory could make them. Mass-production auto assembly lines didn't yet exist.

The vehicle that astonished everyone was a Locomobile Stanley No. 2. Mr. Clark happily granted onlookers rides in his fancy new contraption.

A few months later, a tourist drove another Locomobile on the beach in Jacksonville. It was a speed test, not an ordinary drive around town. Driver C.W. Seamans covered three miles in six minutes. An astonished newspaper reporter wrote, "This is about as rare a thing as a shooting star in Purgatory."

Within three years, in 1903, there were about 40 cars in Jacksonville. The city had a population somewhere between 28,000 (1900) and 57,800 (1910) at the time. 

At first, no laws regulated use of automobiles on Florida roads. But legislators kept an eye on the rapidly growing popularity of cars statewide. A 1905 bill required car owners to register their vehicles with the state. Cost: $2 per car. That's about $69 today. 

At first, owners had to make their own license plates out of wood, tin or leather, according to a history of the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. A unified, annually renewable Florida license plate made of steel was created in 1917.

It's hard to imagine cars being such new inventions that people gathered just to see one in real life. Autos changed the Florida landscape over the past century. They're still doing so today. I can't wait for auto-driving cars to be perfected. I'll be one of the people waiting in line to get one.

Parish women lead the way

The 'new' Blessed Trinity Church opened in
1922. It replaced a smaller, wooden church. 

Parish-affiliated Catholic women's groups have existed for a long time. Each supports parish needs. Each also contributes to the wider community through charitable work and donations. 

We hear a lot today about the decline in volunteerism. It's always been somewhat of a struggle, though. Listen to this memoir about a 1937 meeting that occurred after morning Mass at Blessed Trinity Church in Ocala. The pastor asked for a woman to step up and lead a new altar society. 

As Father Nixon went from lady to lady, they would decline saying they were too busy, or not well enough, or had small children. ...

Father Nixon was stymied. He had to leave Ocala to say Mass in mission territory and was in danger of being late. He was also still fasting, per the era's church rules about not eating past midnight the day before Mass. And September in Florida is hot, humid and summery. Air conditioning as we know it today didn't exist in the average home and business in 1937. 

The priest finally turned toward 19-year-old Audrey Mortimer (later Audrey Mortimer Chambers) and appointed her president for a year. No one objected. Except Audrey, the writer of the memoir. She felt out of her league among the older women there. She'd only attended the meeting in place of her mother, who was ill. But Father Nixon was gone. He had just enough time to gulp some food at the rectory before racing to the mission church.

Audrey embraced her duties and gathered 22 women her own age to form the altar society. One of their duties was to cover the parish's candle bill. Money was tight during the Depression, so the young women staged rummage sales and card parties on weekends when they weren't working.

Today, parish maintenance is usually handled by professionals. Back then, members of altar societies literally cleaned the altars in church. They also polished brass, wiped down  woodwork and cleaned wax bits from vigil lights. 

One of the most difficult jobs, says Audrey in her memoir, was caring for the priestly vestments and the altar linens. She writes:

We did not have steam irons or air conditioning or even fans in those days, so you had to keep a towel handy to keep from sweating on the fresh linens.

The members had to create their own steam by ironing the heavy Irish linen altar cloths while  still wet. Vestments with lace had to be ironed on a bath towel, also while still wet. (I just gave thanks for my modern appliances.)

Many early 20th century altar societies became part of the larger Council of Catholic Women organization, which formed on the national level in 1920. The Ocala group did exactly that, encouraged by Father Nixon. The altar society affiliated with the local diocesan CCW. 

The connection brought the Ocala women into the orbit of CCWs throughout the diocese, station, region and nation. During a 1940 regional meeting, members heard a letter sent by then-Pope Pius XII in which he blessed their work. 

The meeting's theme still resonates today. The world was troubled in 1940. In light of that, CCW members were urged to offer the best of religion and the best of citizenship. They were reminded to stay confident in God, to live their faith, do charitable work, support the parish's needs and "be prepared to meet the more serious times that were ahead."  

That could have been written in 2023. My parish's CCW group this season raised and donated over $6,000 to local community initiatives. We gave to educational, medical, mission and family housing organizations. And yes, to specific parish needs. No, we're not chipping wax chips from the vigil lights. But we are bracing for serious times ahead.

---

Historical information in this post is from the book, "Catholics of Marion County," by Jane Quinn, published in 1978 by Mission Press, Ocala.

Prices: High in any era

These 1923 prices seem low from the
distance of a century. But the 
modern equivalent is $50 to $140.
  

Inflation shocks me every time I go to a store, particularly the supermarket. Prices seem to increase every week. On top of that, I'm an elder now and prices in general regularly surprise me. I tend to compare them to costs as they existed in my youth. 

People in the past probably felt the same about rising prices no matter when they lived. Particularly as they aged or lived through high-inflation periods. I thought it'd be interesting to do a cursory review of how much things cost a hundred years ago, in 1923. If only to be astonished at the differences.

My point of comparison is the once-famous Dreka Department Store in the Central Florida city of DeLand. It was founded in 1878 and operated for decades. The mercantile was so successful the owner, George A. Dreka, expanded in the early 1900s. He built the first reinforced concrete structure in the county in 1909. The showcase multistory building cost $75,000. Depending on which website you look at, that equates to between $1.9 and $2.5 million in modern dollars. The building is still around and is a downtown landmark.

Dreka's prided itself on selling everything a person could "eat, wear, and use." The store was a regular advertiser in the DeLand Sun News, which was the DeLand Daily News in 1923. Here's what some of the advertised items sold for in 1923:

• Ipswich Hosiery - for ladies, in wool and silk and in a range of brown and tan colors, plus white, $1 a pair. That's a hefty $17 today.
• Men's Felt Hats - these came in a range of prices, from $3.50 to $10. A sale in late December dropped those prices to $2.79 to $7.98. Translated to modern times, that's about $50 to $140. Not such a great bargain.
• Dresses, Capes and Coats - a special sale was being held, with $32.50 to $40 dresses available for $27.50, and $15 to $18 capes and coats for $11.75. They may have been on sale but they sure weren't cheap. Inflation calculators peg those 1923 prices as over $200 each today. 
• Dollar Day - "Exceptional values in every department" were to be had Nov. 8, 1923, during a special Dollar Day. Some were special deals. For example, if you bought a 78x88 Marseilles Bedspread for $3.50 you could get a second one for only $1. But there was an array of goods available for just $1. They included: 5 yards of dress gingham; 10 yards of muslin; 6 yards of flannel; a corset; middy blouse; children's romper; 3 lb. box of peanut brittle; 24 Hershey's chocolate bars; 2 pairs of earrings; men's overalls; ladies' knit vest; and on and on.

Some of the Dollar Day deals did appear to be bargains. Using today's $17 equivalent of 1923's single dollar, you'd get 5 yards of dress gingham for $17. That's slightly less than what you'd pay today. Ditto for the flannel yardage. And where in the world would you be able to buy 24 Hershey's chocolate bars for $17?

 

One of my favorite Dreka advertisements didn't include pricing at all. It was a small ad advertising a Butterick Pattern for The New Long Blouse. "Paris decrees it, Butterick features it," states the ad. It encourages home sewists to shop the Dreka piece goods counters to select fabric and suggests appropriate choices: crepe de Chine, novelty silk, chiffon velvet, crepe satin and silk crepe. Customers were also urged to stop by the store's Butterick Pattern counter to buy the blouse pattern. It's interesting that the ad points out how the pattern includes sewing instructions. That's a given today. 

I wish I could temporarily step back to 1923 so I could stroll into Dreka's and buy that or some other pattern. Mainly to find out how much they cost. Inflation has affected modern sewing patterns greatly. Some cost more than ready-made fast-fashion clothes. 

I don't have to leave 2023 to buy Butterick patterns, though. They're still around and known as one of the Big 4 pattern companies. As for those prices: I wait for the sales. Which I'm sure shoppers also did 100 years ago. I won't snag a pattern for a single dollar except at a yard or estate sale. But a sale is a sale, no matter what year it is.

Centuries aside, people are people

A modern photo from a movie set?
 Hardly. It's from the 1920s.

The past few weeks have been hectic. I'm in need of a battery recharge. So excuse my excuse of a post here.

Take a close look at the photo that's with this blog post. At first glance, it seems to be from a modern costume drama or the set of a period movie or TV show. It appears to have been taken recently. 

But no. It's actually a screengrab from a short video that's about 100 years old. The women in the picture were relaxing on the beach during a sunny day in Palm Beach in the 1920s. 

Then, as now, Palm Beach was the playground of the 1 percenters. The two visitors pictured here had plenty of leisure time and enough money to carefully craft fashion-casual attire. Resort wear, it used to be called.

The original black-and-white video has been restored to a remarkable level. Most significant, to me, is how the bright color and sharp quality of the restored film erases time. You could imagine having seen these people yesterday, at the beach or on the street or at the grocery store. The intervening years disappear. 

One hundred years, one thousand years, people are people. Filled with dreams, dealing with life, snatching fun, doing the day-to-day, just as we all do today. 

External cultural and social trappings evolve and change with time. But the essence that makes us human connects people from one epoch to another. When a restored video brings that idea closer to home, it's a win for all mankind.

Here's the video link in case the one attached to the photo doesn't work: https://youtu.be/jCWJYZM9yeU

Past, future merge in AI audiobook

Listen to the AI narrator Mary
in the free sample.

I write about the past in this blog and in my fiction. But I just took a dive into the AI future. My novella, Trust in Love, a story that takes place in 1891-1892, is now available as an audiobook narrated by artificial intelligence.

It seems weird to even write that.

"Mary," the narrator of the book on Google Play, has a pleasant voice. Her diction is good. Better than I expected. She falls short at times on inflection and emotion. And I had to insert a few transitions into the text because Mary couldn't handle a scene break. 

Those are minor points. I'm happy the book is available in audio. It bugged me that my third novel, Growing A Family in Persimmon Hollow, and my novella lacked that option. Especially because the publisher of my first two novels released audio CD versions. I'm the indie publisher of the third novel and novella, and my budget didn't include money for audio. 

Transforming a written work into audio using traditional techniques is very expensive. Narration and production costs are high. AI audiobooks are still new and Google is letting authors try it out. Apple is launching AI audiobooks, too.

I've submitted my novel and novella into the Apple queue. If accepted, Apple will handle production. Google puts the business into the author's hands. It quickly created my AI file and gave it to me for review. I listened to every word of the novella before publishing the audio version. Google then reviewed the finished product.

I'm well aware that AI narration will get better and better and become stiff competition for voice artists. Just as I'm aware that AI writing will get better and better and become stiff competition for authors. 

Will AI get good enough to mimic the emotions a good storyteller needs? Time will tell. For now, I'll take a backward look at what was trending in literature in 1891 and 1892, when AI was the stuff of science fiction. These factoids are courtesy of Wikipedia:

• Strand Magazine is first published in 1891.
• Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Herman Melville, Jules Verne and Oscar Wilde all release new fiction in 1891. Many others do, too, but these are the authors whose names I recognize.
• Zora Neale Hurston and Henry Miller are born in 1891.
• The first collection of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories from Strand Magazine is published in 1892.
• W.B. Yeats is one of the founders of the Irish Literary Society in 1892.
• Pearl S. Buck, J.R.R. Tolkien and Edna St. Vincent Millay are born in 1892.
• Walt Whitman dies in 1892.

It'd be too dramatic of me to say fiction writing and narration are on their deathbeds. But I suspect living arrangements might be up for negotiation in the not-too-distant future.

Lue Gim Gong deserved better

Screengrab from a 1922
issue of the Manatee River
Journal in Bradenton, FL

It's a joy to uncover instances when pioneers in Florida helped others make it through day-to-day life. And sad to find times when they don't. Today's post encompasses both.

Discrimination against people of Asian descent, again on the rise, marred Florida's frontier days. A visible case is that of Lue Gim Gong, a gifted and lauded horticulturist about whom I've written before.

We know basic facts about Lue's life (see this post from 2014). One of these facts is that he died in poverty in 1925. He was a brilliant horticulturist but a naive businessman. People took advantage of his generous heart and soul.

Lue's major contribution to the citrus industry -- the Lue Gim Gong orange -- was hailed as revolutionary upon introduction in the early 1900s. It earned a federal agricultural award. Then drifted into obscurity. Some industry leaders decided it was simply a strain of the better known Valencia orange. 

I'm no botanist, but after learning how sad and lonely Lue's final years were, I can't help but wonder if those citrus leaders deliberately pushed him and his discovery into the footnotes. Jealousy? I found a 1912 newspaper account proclaiming the orange's greatness - and explaining why. And I found other articles mentioning Lue's other botanical achievements.

Bigoted competitors wouldn't want a Chinese immigrant stealing any of Florida's citrus glory. Florida in the 1920s wasn't known for its tolerance, as black, Catholic and Jewish people can attest.

Thankfully, the state's agriculture industry included people who stood by Lue. Some neighbors in DeLand and the surrounding area likewise supported him. One man who'd grown up in DeLand spoke loudly and eloquently on a statewide platform about Lue's mistreatment. 

The words of those who supported Lue are what I wish to share here. In most cases, I don't have individual names. The information was printed and reprinted in various newspapers.

Lue died in 1925, but he needed help years earlier. The Miami Herald on January 31, 1917 carried a reprint from "The Lancer in Florida Grower," an industry publication. The headline stated, "Hard Luck for Lue Gim Gong."  Lue is described as "a poor, inoffensive, loveable, Christian Chinaman who lives a lonely life on a little citrus grove, his only company being a pet horse and a rooster." 

It says Lue's name was known throughout Florida, and that prominent fruit growers from throughout the state had visited him and "learned to admire his honest and earnest character." 

The article says Lue had only left his farm once in the past seven years, meaning since 1910, "not even visiting his nearby city of DeLand."

Perhaps DeLand wasn't always welcoming to Lue, especially after the woman who adopted him died and left him her land and house in the early 1900s. His grave in DeLand's Oakdale Cemetery was left unmarked until a New York historian place a bronze marker on it five years after Lue's death. Yet the Orange County Regional History Center's webpage about Lue says prominent citizens served as pallbearers. So who knows. I do know Lue's grave didn't have a headstone until 1999. 

The 1917 Miami Herald article continues by stating Lue was often defrauded and ripped off, to use today's terms, and couldn't pay his bills. The writer calls on readers to support a fund drive ($1 apiece) to raise money for Lue. And to "make him realize there is something more than mere words in the Christianity he has adopted..."

Did it help? Hard to say. Maybe for a while. But it wasn't enough. Five years later, on December 8, 1922, the Manatee River Journal-Bradenton Herald headlined an article with this: "Chinese 'Burbank' of Florida Going Broke." (Burbank was a noted horticulturist of the times.) 

The article reports that the aged - he was 63 - and internationally known Lue was dependent on the generosity of friends. It describes him as "feeble and broken," with a heavy mortgage on his property and in danger of foreclosure.

It also notes that Lue had only visited downtown DeLand four times over the past 16 years. That's four times between 1906 and 1922. 

By the end of the month, The Florida Grower was fundraising again for Lue. A Florida Grower article was reprinted in the December 28, 1922, Manatee River Journal. It urges readers to pledge $100 each to help Lue meet a payment deadline and secure a new mortgage on his property. A large amount was coming due - $5,700 on January 1, 1923. That's the equivalent of about $95,000 in 2022.

I don't know the end of the story. Haven't yet found more vintage newspaper coverage. But I did find an article about one man who supported the fund drive, contributed $100 and pledged to give more if needed. That person was Bishop Frederick Leete of the Episcopal diocese of Florida.

The family name of Leete was one of the oldest and best known in DeLand at the time. Its members contributed to the city's founding. Bishop Leete grew up in DeLand and had known Lue. He also knew Lue had faced discrimination.

The DeLand Sun on January 5, 1923, carried a reprint from the Tampa Times in which Leete is quoted. Leete lauded the Florida Grower fundraising effort, urged others to contribute and lamented that Lue had reached such a low point. His next statement is poignant:

"I do not need to tell you that Lue has not been altogether well treated by the Philistines.* He is also a little too good for this wicked world."

Leete closed with what could be taken as an admonition to DeLand: "The home of my boyhood is too splendid a city to allow any serious calamity to happen to this remarkable man."

Some people in DeLand rose to the occasion. Others didn't. Today, DeLand embraces Lue and pays him the tribute he deserves. 

Rest in Peace, Lue. Your contributions are not forgotten.