(31) Lincoln Highway Conference

Friday, June 23, 2017

Songs of the Road

Friday, June 23, I spent at the conference listening to speakers provide information about the Lincoln Highway and its history. While I was having fun, Linda spent the day getting us organized for the second half of the trip. We are going to drive on to New York and explore the rest of the highway. I guess you could say I finally talked Linda into going all the way.

We hope to get to New York City by July 1 and then drive north to Plymouth Rock where we will start our trip west on the Yellowstone Trail. Because we have so far to drive we will skip the closing breakfast and meeting in order to begin our drive east.

The conference topics were quite interesting. The folks from Iowa who organized and put on this conference did an exceptional job. I'm sorry that we have to skip town so early.

Kay Shelton, President of the Lincoln Highway Assn. presented an interesting topic on the women of the Lincoln Highway who had crossed the continent in the early days of motoring. Of course she discussed Emily Post, but she also discussed my favorite Effie Price Gladding. Effie and her husband more or less drove the entire Lincoln Highway. It's always irked me just a bit that Emily Post talked so disparagingly of the Lincoln Highway and seemed to find another route whenever she experienced any serious difficulty. Of course, in a early days of motoring there were always serious difficulties.

Kay also discussed three young girls who would take summer vacation motoring trips In an old Model T and seemed to have a great deal of fun. The young women even managed to insinuate their way into meeting Henry Ford and attending his birthday party.

We also heard from Christine Pope who, is restoring the Herring Hotel in Belle Plaines, Iowa It's a huge project and they are restoring it to how it looked in the early to mid 1920s. I wish them luck.

Finally, Lyle Henry finished the morning by informing us of some of the unusual ways people got to the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exhibition. There were actually quite a number of unusual means of getting to the 1915 fair. These unusual means included a dog team, motorbikes, push mobiles, a wheelchair and walking backwards. Much of this was caused by a rumor that a large monetary prize would be offered to the individual who arrived at the fair in the most unusual fashion.

The afternoon presentations were not only informative, but entertaining. Cece Otto returned and spoke to us about "Creating an American Song Line". As I've said before, Cece is really quite talented and after she finished her talk she treated us to more old songs. It was not only a musical experience, but an interactive history experience as well.