REO Grande was No Lady

The Grande REO automobile

 

The third heroic character in The Legend of REO Grande is this horseless carriage named after the “REO” logo on the front of the hood between the two large brass side lamps. The car maker was Ransom E. Olds, whose name and reputation went on to grace the “Oldsmobile.” In 1908, the vintage of this auto, it ran first on one cylinder, and later on two cylinders located beneath the driver seat where it meshed with the planetary  transmission with two forward gears and one reverse that was engaged with a pedal. The battery sat in a box on the dashboard and both fuel and water tanks were located under the hood lid in front. Elliptical leaf springs gave it a bouncy “buggy” ride and stopping power came from two mechanical drum brakes. The 32-inch gum rubber tires were levered onto artillery-spoked wheels

In the two cylinder, two seater model, a top speed of 35 miles an hour could be reached with a following wind. The first Oldsmobile – called the “curved dash” after its sleigh-like curved front end – steered with a tiller bar, but the later REO employed a wheel on the right side of the bench seat. Protection from the elements came from an optional folding top.

Flat out, it sounded like a water pump: "chi-pump, chi-pump, chi-pump." The brass horn clamped to the metal dash plate had a single “Bwomp! with each squeeze of the rubber bulb. It was about as low down as you could get and still own an automobile. But like Dixie and Sonny Jim, it was simple, reliable and low maintenance.

Virtually all the autos in this period were hand-made: engine onto chassis to coachwork. The larger six and eight cylinder touring sedans had hundreds of parts and needed constant fiddling to stay on the road. The REO only had 35 horsepower, but more powerful, expensive vehicles had problems and their marks eventually disappeared.

There were virtually no “service stations” at this time, especially out West where the horse was still the cheapest and most economical transportation. In the 1900s, Blacksmiths began carrying auto parts for the more popular vehicles. Gaskets, tires, hoses, gears, anything that might break, wear out, or fall off. The Spindletop oil strike in Texas in 1901 suddenly made gas and oil combustion engines more popular than steam or electric modes. General merchandise stores sold oil in long neck bottles, or poured into tin long-spout oil cans from a refillable raised tank. “Stove gasoline” came from barrels which were emptied into underground or above ground tanks for hose pouring into auto gas tanks. Often, the gas was pumped through a chamois skin to separate flies and other matter from the liquid. “Sparking plugs” had to be hand cleaned while most transmission gears turned in axle grease.

One of the joys of writing about events in this period is the chance to explore these old timey automobiles and their ideosyncrasies.

Welcome to Souterfiction in Kindle novels

Welcome to my humble blog that beats the drum for the worlds I create out of my head and a mess of research as befits a historian with 50 some non-fiction volumes on publishers' reading lists.  This blog is a bit more casual than my other Web stuff that tends to beg for the imprimatur of fellow historians and non-fiction readers who hang on the details that, when stitched together, create characters from real life and events that actually happened. Do not get me wrong, however. Many of the characters, places and events that appear in my fiction really did shape our history.

For example, the "Great Burn-out of 1910" featured in the Legend of REO Grande, the introductory story to the first series of four books, did occur and was a giant prairie fire at least as destructive as portrayed in my story. The same goes for the details of the period where our unlikely heros, Dixie and Sonny Jim pursue their improbable dreams. That time in the new 20th Century was also the launching pad for the new feminism with head-strong, smart, worldly and adventursome women began taking their place on our cultural stage. Clementine Booker is a combination of some of those pioneer feminists. For the boys, her infiltration into their manly world was a thunder clap of good fortune -- though they were hard pressed to see  it at the time.

I also love trains and nothing gets my blood up faster than the operation of a narrow guage logging railroad winding through the great forests of the Northwest. Our Daring Clementine, the second book of the series sends the boys and their female sidekick and biographer off to the damp heights of Washington state to help out an old employer, Snoose MacDonald who has a lumber lease under seige by a wealthy lumber baron. Nothing is more exciting than the ancient steam engines chugging over shaky wood trestles high above rock-filled gorges battling ambushes and hordes of hired guns. There are twists to this story with court battles as well as gun fights -- and high above the woods and mountain peaks an early "aeroplane" makes its debut and the final outcome is a surprise for everyone.

Some of the last independent ranches of the west mingle their herds for a long train ride to the Chicago Stock Yards and ask Dixie and Sonny Jim to shepherd the cattle to the pens and bring back the sales money. Clementine is in New Jersey getting her pilot's license -- the 3rd woman in the U.S. to do so. The boys deliver the herds and foil an assasination of a Chicago mob boss Big Jim Colosimo in his Wabash Avenue restaurant. Their adventures also find Sonny Jim doing riding stunts for a movie company filming a silent western on Chicago's lake front. A Sioux Indian prostitute is rescued from a Colosimo brothel  with the help of the largest pre-war aviation meet ever held flying from Chicago's Grant Park. No good deed goes unpunished as a gang of Chicago gangsters invade the boys' home town to face the last of the Old West gunslingers in The Battle of Bradley Station. 

The REO Boys in Hollywood finds the trio helping the movie producer they worked with in Chicago who is being threatened by the Hollywood Patents Trust. These companies who monopolize the patents for much of the Hollywood film making industry in 1912 want to shut out all independent producers with licensing fees, lock-outs and distribution control. The "Trust," headed by inventor Thomas Edison and film manufacturer, George Eastman, relies on tough thugs to wreck studios and intimidate producers to get them to sign long term contracts. A ruthless law firm runs he Los Angeles operation. The boys try to stave off the toughs while lawyers wrestle with the California legislature in Sacremento and San Francisco. The war boils down to a battle in a near-by mountain film location. Truck loads of tough guys surround the film makers while Dixie, Sonny Jim and some about-to-be-famous western movie stars show their real cowboy skills. Clementine takes to the air again, diving into the battle only to find herself in the first aerial dog fight of her life with no way out other than victory or in flames.

The fifth book is a stand-alone novel, Kilgore's Colt. It is a story of second chances, of virtue turned sour and a struggle to regain values that were lost. And it's funny as a pair of mis-fit runaways -- a down-at-the-heels war veteran and a hard case teen ager -- come to grips with their inner grit as they are thrown togeher for mutual survival. It is also about the West and technology of 1912 bringing big life changes to the isolated rural commuities. Neighbors caught in the rush of progress hang on to old customs while embracing the encroaching modern world. The story is also about the erosion of gender stereotypes where men and women can step outside the boundaries of society's expectation. Sometimes with a good horse, a six-gun, and a repeating rifle.  

Please enjoy these stories. They are all good reads with characters drawn from real life and plunked down in the years before World War I when technology was gaining ground, but old virtues like honor, keeping one's word, and siding your pal when he or she needed you was never in doubt.            

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