June 9, 2009

........Getting All Worked Up At More Than 20 Miles An Hour

One of my many favourite daily reads is Garrison Keillor's The Writers Almanac.  Found this snippet this morning and it made me laugh hysterically.  How far we have come!

It was on
 this day in 1909 that the first woman to drive across the United States, Alice Huyler Ramsey, left New York City for San Francisco. She was 22 years old, a housewife from Hackensack, New Jersey. Her trip got a lot of media attention. In 1909, not many women drove cars, and some doctors thought that it was dangerous for women to even ride in cars because they would get too worked up at more than 20 miles an hour. Alice Huyler Ramsey drove 3,800 miles across the country in a Maxwell 30 with three other women, but she was the only one who knew how to drive. They drove for 41 days and used 11 spare tires. She wrote a book about the trip called Veil, Duster, and Tire Iron(1961). In 2000, she was the first woman inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame.

5 comments:

Miss Whistle said...

I don't know about you, but I definitely get worked up over 20 mph!

I love the Writer's Almanac. It's a little ray of sunshine injected into the day.

Thanks for posting.

-- MissW x

soodie :: said...

Yeah, lots of worries then about the 'excitable' woman. Women would be taken to the doctor to remedy that.

Crazy....

Hannah Stephenson said...

Wow--what a great story! I'd never heard about this.

Thanks for sharing...

La Belette Rouge said...

We have come a long way, lovely!! Now if there was just a woman on "Top Gear" or on "Car talk". Maybe Click, Clack and Clair talking cars.

l said...

not gonna lie
this made me smile