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Weekly News July 24, 2017Description
Minneapolis in the Summertime: In 1949, Earle Eckel drove his 1914 Stanley from his home in New Jersey to Minneapolis and return and kept a log of the trip. It inspired me to want to do a coast-to-coast round-trip in a steamer, which was a dream that came true in 1972 with my first “Trans-Con” tour in our 1912 30-H.P. Model 87. Two days ago, I made a 15-mile round-trip in that same car to Greenbank Station on the Wilmington & Western Railroad.
I have known two career girls who worked in Minneapolis in the mold of Mary Tyler Moore. One is Sarah Stanley. The other, Sue Pyle, my first cousin once removed, who grew up two miles from Yorklyn, was living and working there in 1972. The Trans-Con tour that we joined in Montreal spent two nights at the Sheraton Ritz Hotel in Minneapolis with beautiful June weather. Since we had covered about 1,500 miles at that point, I had shipped five gallons of Harris superheat steam cylinder oil and five gallons of Atlantic Solvent 36, a wonderful product for Stanley pilots, to the hotel, and they were there when we arrived. The antique cars on the tour occupied the second floor of a parking garage across the street from the hotel.
Our last day into Minneapolis had been eventful. The night before, at a wine and cheese party at Rhinelander, Wisconsin, Millard Newman, the tour chairman, announced he had changed the route into Minneapolis so the group could attend an auto flea market at Wausau, some 60 miles to the south. I told Millard I had made arrangements for soft water along the original route, and therefore I wanted to go that way. He said “fine.” So Jules Reiver, my passenger on that portion of the trip, and I headed straight west from Rhinelander, our first water stop being at a hospital in Ladysmith, Wisconsin. Some 35 miles farther west at Barron, we encountered another car from our tour which was also on the original route. The car’s owner, Bayard Sheldon from Illinois, had gone home on business and the car was under the care of his son, who was having magneto trouble. Jules and I stayed with him two hours and got him some lunch, but neither of us knew how to time a mag, so we had to leave in order to make our check point in Minneapolis on time. We stopped again for water at a fish hatchery in St. Croix Falls before crossing into Minnesota northeast of Minneapolis.
The tour chairman had extended the check-in time from the usual 6:00 to 7:00 P.M. to allow participants time at the Wausau flea market. The local AACA region around Minneapolis had planned to welcome our tour to their area. They knew of the original route and timing but had not been advised of the last-minute change. They sent out a welcoming party with about 6 or 8 cars to meet the tour on the route we followed, not the last-minute route taken by most of the cars. We were rolling along toward the city shortly after 6 P.M. when we encountered the welcoming party, confused and wondering where everyone was. I explained and apologized. One Stanley had about 8 local cars escorting it the last six miles or so to its destination at the hotel. A trailer went back that night to retrieve the car with a problematical magneto.
Two men from the Culligan water office in Minneapolis came around on our free day and advised me that frequent boiler blow-downs through the west would be better than any chemicals they could sell me for water treatment. Also, two men from Baraboo, Wisconsin, 200 miles away, who had purchased a Model 735 Stanley, heard we would be in Minneapolis, and they appeared, hoping to have some questions answered. When I went across the city for kerosene, right across the street from where I was filling up was the shop of a man named Gary Bros, whom we had seen often at the steam seminars at the AACA Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. He had three Stanleys there. That evening with its long June days, the local AACA region led our cars on a tour through the city’s vast park system, ending at Minnehaha Falls for an ice cream social. My cousin accompanied me in the Stanley, and I took her to dinner at a very nice restaurant she recommended. Our waiter told me not to come in the wintertime! I never did. Jules Reiver, my passenger up to that point, flew home, and I was joined by Jim Johnson of Park Ridge, Illinois. The next day, we headed west.
In July 1989, Ruth and I visited again. Her friends, the Nechtel sisters from teaching days in Stuttgart, Germany, lived in the suburb of Edina, and a mini-reunion, the first of three such at their home, was held there. In 1995, we did it again, and this time the two of us took the new American Queen down river from St. Paul to St. Louis. Finally in 1999, the last of the mini-reunions in Minneapolis was held, but one of the sisters had died. Ruth and I stopped again in 2004 for a final visit. Our FAHP member Leon Brewer, a frequent visitor to northern Delaware, lives in New Hope, Minnesota, a northwest suburb of Minneapolis
