"The Pleasure of Motoring, 1928"

… he wrote sarcastically.


(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of Eldon Harms.

"He" being Lester Harms, probably, as this photo came from the Lester Harms collection. I'm posting it now because I just recently came across a relevant newspaper item from the Hobart Gazette of July 6, 1928:

Clarence Harney and Lester Harms were to motor to Yellowstone Park, but they encountered muddy roads in the Black Hills section and gave up going further and returned via Minnesota and Wisconsin, visiting the points of interest enroute. Mr. Harney, who works at the local postoffice, had to return last Saturday at the close of his two-weeks' vacation.

The way Eldon Harms told me the story, they were heading to California. In both stories, they turned back because of the bad roads.

If Yellowstone Park was their destination, I wonder if they traveled on the Yellowstone Trail?

Lester Harms and Clarence Harney were cousins, born in 1904 and 1907, respectively. (Lester's father, John, was a half-brother of Clarence's mother, Mamie.) With the photo being so out-of-focus, it's hard to say which one of them is fixing the flat, but I am inclined to think it's Clarence. Here is his high-school senior portrait from 1925 for comparison:



And a photo of Lester from 1932 can be found here.

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This story got me wondering whether they were in the Black Hills area in hopes of seeing the Mount Rushmore monument, which led me to research how much of the monument there was to see in 1928. As it turns out: very little. The enormous work of carving the mountain had only begun in October 1927. I found some early photos here — if you scroll down, you will find one from about 1928 in which only the rough planes of Washington's face can be distinguished from nature.