Modern Gypsies. The Story Of A Twelve Thousand Mile Motor Camping Trip Encircling The United States

MARY CREHORE BEDELL

Publication: Brentano's, Publishers, 1924, New York

First edition. 8vo. Orange, black and green pictorial cloth, 262 pp., frontispiece, illustrated, 34 plates, map. The trip around the United States was for a period of one year and began in New York and proceeded to Florida. From Florida they moved on to the Gulf States and the Mississippi Valley and then into Texas. They visited southern California and Yosemite, Crater Lake, Mount Rainier, Glacier Park, Yellowstone and many other points of interest. This fascinating memoir of Mary and Fred Bedell’s trek across the perimeter of the United States in 1922 following World War I in their Hupmobile, over some of the worst driving conditions imaginable, including impassable roads, holdup bandits in Texarkana, tornadoes through Texas, while featuring camping stops at Yosemite, Crater Lake, Mount Rainier, Glacier National Park, Yellowstone, Banff, and more. Political and racial upheaval make infrequent appearances as she often refers to the plight of African-Americans, or Native Americans, but she and her husband were Particularly appalled at the prevalence of the Ku Klux Klan across the South and into Arizona "taking the law into its own hands and wearing masks to prevent detection. Could anything be more cowardly or more at variance with our constitution." Bedell (1870-1936) was an active photographer, while her husband Frederick Bedell (1861-1958) was a noted physicist at Cornell, specialist in alternating currents, audiologist specialist, and later a professor at Caltech. This copy is from the library of former California State Librarian, Gary Kurutz. A few pages lightly soiled, else a very good, tight copy of an elusive title.

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