The Bennington evening banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 19??-1961, 1916-05-25
By E. G. Cannon Ball" Baker

full, never failing brakes and the wonderful pickup of
the Cadillac So that made this new record possible Take
the seconds or even fractions, which saved in this
way gulles turns mud lies and in traffic and multi
ply them by many hundred for each day Of our record
rum and you will see what it amounts to-
AS the sun rose and the heat grew oppressive, we
began burning tires by excessive breaking we had
decided not to spare them For 135 miles the
desert ploughed where severe trouble would have
meant disaster if net dlScontnuance Of the run.
1t was in this desert tina. we had our first and only
mechanical trouble. noticed the oil gauge going down,
and poured in the last two gallons of oil we had We
rode on a few miles and noticed again that the gauge
was dropping Stopping the TO investigate found
that the pipe leading TO the oil pump had been broken
from the terrific torsiona strain and our oil supply was
gone. liked on foot five miles through deep sand with
the thermometer lowering around l20 degrees to rail
road station where there neither oil nor telephone
line A train was approaching and yanked of my
sweater and standing between the rails tagged the rain
but there nothing doing in the way OF OIL However,
jumped on the train, intending TO tide TO the nearest
point where oil could be secured feeling that with each
passing minute the chances for record diminish
ing
AS we passed the point where | had LETT the car
noticed that another car had halted and persuaded the
engineer stop the train and let off, When arrived
| found that Sturm had secured gallon OF oil. Having
emptied one OF water bags, he crawled under the
other car anu drained the oil from its crank case plugged
up tue broken oil line and the next station,
seven miles away. where we secured enough oil get us
into Needles
Just think Oft This was the only mechanical
trouble we had throughout this entire run We did not
touch the motor not TO clean spark plug, and
cep for this instance we did nothing but fill gasoene and
oil tanks and drive to the limit.
We negotiated the stiff mountain trails at Oakland,
Arz., ths new Klondke OF America, without trouble,
although we climbed to an altitude of 900 feet and the
paths extremely diff :ut for many to make The
RUS OF Arizona engaged our attention next, and here
again scraped high cene:s Tor thirty miles before
we gp 10 Kingsman.
With Kansas City to reach in less than four days
knew that motor trouble meant that We would FAIL But
III, old Eight never missed shot-the good old brakes
never failed when called on them. Arizona has some
miles OF line road and we took advantage OF these. hitting
II around 65 until we came to the deep sand when we
slowed down bit. The pulling power of the ,htcyin-
der motor was revelation to me In this sand. had
driven other cars and had repeatedly ehe dig
them with shovel or back out get fresh start
boz nohiog like that happened on this trip.
Kansas afforded us an opportunity Of using some oil
our speed, and at Dodge City, the third night out we
turned ia for few hours sleep with 567 miles to OUT
credit Running to Kansas City experienced our frs
touch Of what we had feared-ihat was Kansas mud VIZ
used chains for least FIVE hundred miles before gen,
10 this part.
II isa fortunate thing that the good Lord never per
mts us to look ahead and see the difficulties we are Il
: the Cadillac Eight" Is M
Greatest of All Motor Car
Ks, Local A!