Paula Banister,
This is off-topic, but I think that all Oklahomans should know about and read BUD & ME and our Chisholm Trail Museum exhibits. Below, I tried to convey two points:
1) BUD & ME is a great read and is historically important.
2) Our museum has 'smellavision'. .Yes, while watching a movie about the Chisholm Trail, one can smell bacon cooking while the the cowpolks are cooking bacon; one is sprinkled when cattle are running through water, and one looks back because of the the phenomenal acoustics. .The only other place that has these technologies is Disneyland. .Moreover, our museum's "Indians of Oklahoma" art and "cowboy" art is on a par with the Gilcrease in Tulsa OK and the Amon Carter in Fort Worth TX. .I must quickly add that their website fails to illustrate the quality of the museum.
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The Chisholm Trail Heritage Museum in Duncan OK has received - on loan - a substantial number of items from two benefactors that illustrates the non-fiction BUD & ME, interestingly laced with newspaper articles. On January 25, 2006, the museum received Bud and Tempie’s 1909 red Brush automobile pictured on pages 90, 96, 98, 102, and 104 of the book, BUD & ME. Their red Brush car, in mint condition, is beautifully displayed.
Our museum busses kids - 4th grade I think - from nine (9) Oklahoma counties plus four (4) Texas counties for presentations by re-actors and teachers affiliated with the museum.
http://onthechisholmtrail.com/index.htm
http://onthechisholmtrail.com/news_deta.htm?id=2456980
a photo of a 1912 Brush Company automobile.
http://americanhistory.si.edu/ONTHEMOVE/collection/object_1320.html
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BUD & ME
by Alta Abernathy
Heroes are hard to find these days. Two heroes were Bud and Temple Abernathy, who were heroes at
ages 9 and 5 when they rode on horseback from Frederick, Tillman County, Oklahoma to Santa Fe, Bernalillo County, New Mexico. This put them in the history books. In 1910, they left Frederick on horseback for New York City to ride in the parade welcoming President Theodore Roosevelt home from Europe.
Bud and Temple Abernathy, then nine- and six-year-old brothers, hold what will probably be the all-time record for riding across the U.S. on horseback. Riding from New York to San Francisco in 62 days was quite a feat, even in 1910. This accomplishment is so amazing, it would be unbelievable were it not so
well documented.
Most of us today can’t imagine a parent allowing young children to take off on a ride of this magnitude.
Bud and Temple's mom died before their famous trips. Their father was a U.S. Marshal nicknamed
“Catch-em-alive Jack." President Theodore Roosevelt gave him that name after he saw Jack catch a wolf
with his bare hands.
Bud and Temple’s first trip was far shorter than their ride across America. Their first journey began at
their home in Frederick and ended at Governor George Curry’s home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. By carefully planning every detail of the trip before discussing it with their father, the brothers convinced him to allow them to go. Temple (age five) rode Geronimo - a half-Shetland Pony - and Bud (age nine) rode Sam Bass (named for an infamous Texas outlaw), his father's Arab. Sam Bass was the horse Jack Abernathy rode when catching wolves.
The boys' trip contained a few exciting twists, but no major problems. Temple's pony, Geronimo,
stepped on a snake, that caused so much ‘excitement’ that re-telling the snake story became a family tradition. On the same trip, outlaws met the boys and escorted them many miles, ensuring their safety. The boys had no idea the men were outlaws. Later these outlaws wrote a letter to the boys' father, telling him of the boys' safety and saying that though they didn’t respect him, a U.S. Marshal, they "liked what those boys
were made of.”
The journey to Santa Fe took only two weeks, but it gave the boys a bug for travel. Soon they were
planning longer rides and their success eased their father's concerns about further travels.
President Theodore Roosevelt, their father's Rough Rider friend, returned from vacationing in Europe and began his presidential re-election campaign. He asked the boys to ride to New York to greet him and ride in his parade. Their father let Bud and Temple ride from Oklahoma to New York, after discussing it with President Roosevelt. The ride made history and every town along the way welcomed the boys, as they were becoming heroes. Because of President Roosevelt's desire for publicity, journalists in every town wrote about the boys, and that is how we have proof of these historic rides.
On this trip Geronimo, Temple's Shetland Pony, got loose in a field of alfalfa and almost foundered. He was unable to continue on the trip. The boys used some of the emergency fund their father had given them to buy a new horse they named “Big Black” and Geronimo was shipped back home by train.
Everyone wanted to get in on the publicity the boys were generating. Governors and mayors welcomed
them wherever they went. Wilbur Wright gave them a tour of the Wright Brothers Airplane Factory in Dayton, Ohio. A conductor in one town let them drive a train. People ‘adopted’ the boys along the way and
cared for them as if they were family.
After arriving in New York and riding in Theodore Roosevelt’s welcome-home parade, the boys began urging their father to investigate the new mode of ransportation, automobiles. The boys coaxed their father into buying a car for them to drive back home. The horses were shipped home by train. With their father following behind in a second car, the Abernathy boys drove home with no problems. The father wasn’t as lucky as the boys, however, and his car caught fire and was destroyed.
Their biggest quest was yet to come for the Abernathy brothers. In 1910, a man bet the Abernathy boys' father $10,000, that the boys could not ride across America on horseback in less than 60 days. More than an adventure, this was a true test of survival. Sam Bass, Bud’s horse and a long-time family friend, coliced and died on this trip. The boys were devastated as Sam Bass had been a dear friend and a hero on previous trips. .But this was not their only hardship. The last few weeks of the trip were through deserts and mountains and both boys almost died. Nothing had prepared them for this kind of peril. The boys did not finish in time to win the bet, but they did finish alive and in a record time (62 days) that has yet to be broken.
Bud grew up to be a judge and Temple became an oil wildcatter. The Abernathy boys' entire story is
told in Tempie's widow's, Alta Abernathy’s, books: BUD & ME and THE ADVENTURES OF THE ABERNATHY BOYS.
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You have to experience our museum to believe it.
Patti, prochette@Juno.com