September 26, 2022
Last day in the White Mountains. Finished "The Road to Nowhere" this morning and thoroughly enjoyed reading about Greer in the old days. Back in 1914 it was a two-and-a-half day trip from Phoenix to Greer. Aunt Molly remembered it wasn't considered safe to take children on those kinds of trips but Milt Coggin Sr, told the story about driving a "touring car with a bronze radiator" but that did not stop the 18 "tire failures" on the trip to Greer and the job of removing those tires with the high-pressure tire and tube, then patching it, pumping it up by hand and reattaching it to the car "was tedius."
Ay-Yi-Yi, to anyone who has had to patch a tire in the wilds (only once on a Triumph motorcycle for me!) it is mind blowing that someone would do it 18 times in one trip. Seems like he would run out of patches.
Cowboy Fun
One of my favorite anectdotes from the book is about some cowboys hiding out near a big billboard for "Becker Mercantile Company" near the turnoff to Big Lake, when in the middle of the night, they snuck out and painted the lower part of the "B" on the sign so it would read, "Pecker Mercantile Company."
"And that'd drive old man Becker crazy."
—An anonymous Greer cowboy remembering "the greatest fun we ever had."
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