Ben Preston and his Death Car Roadster

From The Whittier Daily News, Thursday, July 9, 1936: 

WICHITA, Kans.—Ben Preston, mechanic, probably owns the world’s most gruesome automobile. 

His car has been assembled from parts of 25 automobiles in which 37 persons were killed. 

One fender was taken from a care used by Eddie Adams, notorious Kansas bandit, just before he was killed by Wichita police several years ago. Another fender is from a car used by the late Charles (Pretty Boy) Floyd. 

Preston began a year ago to collect various parts from wrecked machines. He was assisted in assembling the machine by Ray Wilt and E. D. Frazee. It is a roadster and capable of traveling 70 miles per hour. 

Although Preston said he does not intend to drive the car at that speed, he does not stand in fear of its gruesome reminders. He said that he assembled the machine as a hoppy, but it will stand out as a warning to other motorists. 

(E.D. Frazee, not a close relation to the Palomar Club Frazees.)

From The Nome Nugget Monday, November 21, 1938: 

OKLAHOMA CITY, Nov.—Ben Preston, an old Texas Ranger, doesn’t like the way automobiles are built. So, piece by piece, he put one together to suit himself. 

The result is a car that will go 100 miles an hour—and whose parts were involved in the deaths of 48 people. 

In 1935, Preston acquired the motor and chassis of a machine that had been crushed by a load of falling pipe. That started him on his hobby of collecting parts from cars in which people were killed. 

All over the country, people began to hear about Preston and sent him automobile parts. 

To qualify now for a place in the Preston ensemble, an automobile part has to have at least three, preferable more deaths connected with it. If he adds new parts, they must replace ones that came from multiple-death cars. 

A Texas officer recently sent Preston a tap (sic) from the car in which the southwestern desperado, Clyde Barrow and his Bonnie Parker were shot to death, but Preston hasn’t yet found a place for it. 

The left fender was the only part that remained intact after a train-car race near Valley Center, Kansas. Five people in a sedan were killed. 

It’s hood came from a car in which a jealous wife discovered her husband with another woman. She shot them and then tore up the car with a hammer. 

A government car involved in the Kansas City Union Station “massacre,” supplied the steering wheel.

So it goes—death rode along on almost every part. 

The mongrel car almost added two more to the death list. Preston drove it into a ditch near Guthrie at 70 miles per hour. He came out with a fractured arm, collar bone and shoulder and five ribs broken. A hitch-hiker was tossed through a fence, but lived. 

Preston says he is “attached” to the death car—keeps and drives it as “sort of a good luck token.” 

Like most good stories, this one consists of facts, rumors, and myth. Ben Preston was born Ben Preston Burks on July 3, 1878 in Alexander, Texas, a small village 90 miles southwest of Fort Worth. His dreams were big, however. At 18 he married Lizzie Abilene Thompson and soon after she bore him a son, Emmett. Shortly, thereafter, though, Ben can be found residing at the Cass County Convict Camp on the Texas/Arkansas/Louisiana Border. 

In 1910, on the census, he claims to own a sawmill and his wife and 12-year-old son are listed as farm laborers on his father’s farm, but then I find a newspaper ad for Ben Preston, the Strong Man of El Paso and learn from his obituary, that this was about the time Ben abandoned his family, and took his middle name as his new surname. Could this be our man? 

In March, 1915, there is an article in the Wichita Eagle which says that he was moved from Kansas City to Wichita by the Cattle Raisers Association of Texas to be a brand inspector. It’s a job he seems to do well, as he catches rustlers many times who have attempted running or fouling cattle brands in order to ship the steers out of Kansas to the Eastern market. In 1916 Lizzie contracts tuberculosis. In November 1917, he makes the news because he claims to have lost a wad of money while riding the trolley, he has no idea what the amount was, possibly $50 or $60. He promises to reward whomever returns it with a portion of his treasure. 

In January 1919, Ben was arrested for pulling a gun on Clayton Andrews after Andrews struck him with an iron bar, but he was strong enough to maintain his composure and not shoot Andrews. Then R. Gasaway, trolley conductor and supposed friend took the gun, which Ben thought reasonable since he wasn’t going to kill Andrews simply because he refused to give him a refund. But, when Gasaway then turned the gun on him, Ben knew he had to fight both armed men. 

In February 1919, he nabbed one Clarence Legear, an accused bandit, before he, himself, had been arraigned for the prior felonious assault. With numerous witnesses and advocates coming forward, he most likely was given a very lenient sentence. In an October 19, 1919 interview in the Wichita Eagle Ben claims that he was raised on his father’s cattle ranch on the Rio Grande, and that he herded cattle from Arizona all the way to Montana. He also relates that in 1910 he was involved in a big shoot out with Mexican bandits in an unnamed Mexican village,  and that he shot and killed so many bandits there is no telling how many of his pals’ lives he probably saved.  In the 1920 Census, Ben is a boarder, living alone, in Wichita, but the interview says that every night he comes home to “Mrs. Ben”.

In 1926, Lizzie dies at age 48, and Emmett moves into the home of his Uncle John.

In 1930, Ben bills himself as a salesman of oil leases.  Although it sounds like just a lot more showmanship on his part, there is an article in 1922 in which he and five other investors, had struck oil, so it is possibly true. He is unable to be found in the 1940 Census as either Preston or Burks, and even though he claims to have moved to Oklahoma City in 1938, the next mentions of him in all newspaper stories say that he is Ben Preston, of Wichita.

In 1942, he is listed as a pall barer for a district attorney in Oklahoma City, and in 1945 he is sued by that attorney’s biographer for backing out of the agreement to pay him to write and to fund publication of that book.

He died on July 6th, 1961, just days after his 83rd birthday, and was buried next to Lizzie back in Clairette (near Alexander), Texas, under the name Ben P. Burks.

In 1979, his heir, Emmett dies three weeks short of his 83rd birthday, the last of the Erath County Burks. He had never married.  So where the Death Car is today, may never be known.

 

Era Perfume

After you’ve bought your dress, your hat and your shoes, what’s next to improve your period fashion performance? Using the proper perfume. Remember when buying a bottle, that so many fragrances sold today post date the Model A Era.

In the August 2022 issue of Harper’s Bazaar, there was an article titled “In Defense of ’Old   Lady Perfumes.” which said that “if someone,  after embracing you and catching a whiff of your scent, says, “Wow, you smell like Old Lady,” that’s probably not a compliment.” But, I’m hoping for authenticity more than trendy odors.

In looking up Helena Rubenstein’s offerings on Parfumo.com, all of the ones with dates debuted after 1934. A possible reason for this is that in 1928, she sold the cosmetics business to Lehman Brothers for $7.3 million. In a 1928 advertisement for a drugstore selling Helena Rubenstein beauty products, it lists “Bath Perfume (assorted odors)” and both “Lilac” and “Violet Toilet Water.”  However, there is no indication that these were Helena Rubenstein.  Every product identified as Helena Rubenstein in the Model A era is a soap or a cream. After the onset of the Great Depression, Rubenstein bought back the by then nearly worthless stock for less than $1 million and in order to revive the business, established salons and outlets in almost a dozen US cities. I believe she also branched out at this time to include her own brand of perfumes to stock in these outlets.

New fragrances in the 1920s include Coco Chanel’s Chanel No. 5 which was available for $13.50 in 1928, D’Orsay's La Dandy was $8.50, and Guerlain’s Shalimar sold for $25 at the time. Yardley’s English Lavender debuted way back in 1873, but sold for just $1 in 1928 and is still around today, so would work.

As for out of business, but popular, Darnée was a drug store cosmetics brand out of San Francisco, founded in 1924 by the Owl Drugstore chain—dozens of California outlets, later taken over by Rexalls. Oceanside’s Modern Pharmacy owned by Carleton B. Sturdivant which later became Mission Drug Store owned by Dr. Von Sternberg was a longtime Owl drugstore outlet at Second and Hill.  In 1928 Darnée hired silent star,       Colleen Moore, to promote a perfume brand, which folded in 1930, a green bottle of that would be very time specific item you could carry in an era fashion show.. If you could find one.

 

Walter S Ball and Camel's Thorn

Walter S. Ball's first exposure with weeds was when he was a very young boy. He was born in Aspen, Colorado on March 17, 1898, but soon after the family moved to a homestead in the Southeast part of Colorado, several miles north of the town of Manzanola. While growing up on this 160-acre farm, he became very familiar with hoeing and cultivating. He attended Colorado A & M (now Colorado State University) where he participated in football, baseball, and basketball.

He left school for five years after his freshman year, to run the farm. He said that during this period managing it with his brother "Buster" (Willis E. Ball), was its only profitable time. Walt returned to Colorado A & M and obtained his B.S. degree in forestry in 1927 and an M.S. in 1929 in Botany under Dr. W.W. Robbins. This is where his real beginning in weed control began. Walt and "Doc" Robbins became close friends and following Robbins' move to UC Davis, Walt received a job offer from the California Department of Agriculture to begin a weed control program for the state.

In August of 1929, Walt alerted farmers as to the dangers of the weed Camel’s thorn, Alhagi Camelorum, which is considered the worst weed known to agriculture. The infestation was several years old by then and was thought to have been carried in alfalfa seed. It was a native of Asia Minor and a very noxious weed found in grain fields which a header could not cut. The roots may extend ten feet into the ground and 2 to 4 times this distance horizontally. It sends up new shoots every few inches from its roots.

In 1941, Walt co-authored with Robbins and Margaret K. Bellue, Weeds of California. UCSD has a copy and you can buy a used copy on Amazon for $40. Walter was promoted to the Chief of the former Bureau of Rodent and Weed Control and Seed Inspection. He was instrumental in organizing the California Weed Conference and served as its first and second president (1949 & 1950). Following his retirement in 1962, he served as its Business Manager-Treasurer for seven more years, his commitment was so strong.

Walt passed away on June 7, 1975. He will be remembered as a person who liked people, a leader, an organizer, and someone who liked to get the job done without a lot of "red tape." by Robert R. Ball His son, Bob Ball was a professor of seed certification in the Department of Agronomy at UC, Davis.

I’ve followed both Walter and Jim Ball’s ancestries back ten or more generations and have yet to find an overlap, but ask Jim his feelings towards weeds; it might run in the family.

 

A. P. Allen and C. A. Beaver

Arthur Potter Allen, born November 6, 1892 in Flint, Michigan, was certainly an active ancestor.  He came to my attention as on January 12, 1928, he was elected as president of the San Pedro  Automobile Dealer’s Association.  In 1926, he and partner C. A. Beaver (no joke), bought Seaboard Motors, a Chevrolet dealership.

A.P. was not born into wealth, however, his father, Thomas, was a teacher, but Arthur was very studious, and received a degree from the Michigan College of Mines in 1914.  His first job, rather than at a mine, was as a cost accountant for the Buick Motor Company in his home town of Flint.

He then worked as an engineer at several small mines in Michigan, then to Ashcroft, British Columbia. He was working as a draftsman at Bunker Hill and Sullivan Mining Company in Kellogg, Idaho when he signed his draft card for WWI in 1917. Then to Miami, Arizona. Somewhere in there, he married Margaret Mansfield of Pasadena, a graduate of the University of Nebraska.

In 1922 he left mining and began work as a car salesman in Los Angeles County.  As a budding industry, there was frequent turnover, and as his story goes, he moves swiftly from the sales floor to community leader.

The couple raised five children in an ocean-view house in Palos Verdes while running the dealership: A. P. Jr. (WWII vet, career in the US Dept of State), Barbara (Journalist, editor Woman’s Day, social worker) Celia (clerk married a teacher)   David (Pilot Korea, Boeing Aerospace, County Planner) and (my favorite) Margery (Librarian).

During World War II Mr. Allen served as Vice Chairman of the region’s War Labor Board & postwar, he was a member of the Presidential Board of Inquiry in the maritime dispute of 1948. During the war years he had had considerable experience as a labor arbitrator.

From 1952-53, Mr. Allen served as chairman of the San Francisco regional office of the Wage Stabilization Board. He was the author of two books, Unemployment Insurance in California and Industrial Relations in the California Aircraft Industry. On July 21, 1955, he died suddenly.

Clyde Alton “C.A.“ Beaver was born, suitably for a business man, in Enterprise, Kansas, and he, like Mr. Allen, had many jobs in his life. He managed a lumberyard in 1910, by December 1927, he had departed Seaboard Motors, leaving it exclusively to Allen, and bought a competing service station in San Pedro. By 1930, he’d left car sales and was the manager of a gravel mine in Calaveras County, in the 1940 Census he is in Yavapai County, AZ prospecting for gold. In 1948 he’s a realtor

In 1907 C.A. Beaver married Solda Campbell.  Solda should have worked the dealership herself, her name made her a natural car saleswoman.

 

Bobbi Trout

I looked for an article in which a woman dressed with flair for the career she wanted, and found record setting aviator, Bobbi Trout.

Whether hers is a story unusual to her family, or to her era, I can’t genuinely answer.  One grandfather, Henry Grant Trout, had a career making brooms, yes, brooms, and moved from Chicago to Denver to Huntington Beach. The other, William O Denman was a doctor, banker and real estate investor who lived most of his life in Greenup, Illinois, population less than 1000.

Her father George Everett Trout, was taking care of a farm and his wid
owed grandmother and sickly aunt in Greenup when he’s 13 while also attending school in 1900. From there his life is like Frank Abagnale’s (con artist portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie Catch me if You Can).

By 21, he’s married and sells a drug store he founds in Greenup, so he can buy a farm in Greeley, Colorado.  Then two years later he’s running a grocery store in Denver, and Bobbi mentions a butcher shop in a third Colorado town. His wife insists they separate, in 1915 and so he’s in Nashville studying for General Electric, while his wife is in St. Louis running a hat store. He later gets a job with Bell Telephone in California and moves in with his parents. Bobbi is sent to live with them to recover from influenza.

Reading Bobbi’s encyclopedia entries, I believed that George was a great influence on how her life turned out. But I don’t feel that way after reading an article on Airport Journals dot com from 2001 titled Just Plane Crazy. It’s clear that she couldn’t have had the same success if born ten years earlier or ten years later, or had she not moved to Huntington Beach at 14, or if she relied on the Trout family for money.  Still, she was special.

Evelyn was a precocious teen influenced by her proximity to Hollywood.  She loved breaking new ground and telling stories, and like her father’s, many of them were true and many of them she worked hard to make true. Evelyn was dubbed “Bobbi” after she copied the hairstyle of actress Irene Castle which was a short “Bob” haircut.

She was excited by machines, but wasn’t allowed to take manual arts training courses “with the boys” in high school and lamented having to take a “sissy” cooking class for the rest of her life.

She was 12 the first time she saw an airplane aloft and said, ‘That’s what I’m going to do some day,’ Her first airplane ride was at 16 in a Curtiss Jenny.

At 16, Evelyn asked her parents to buy a service station for her to run, Her mother, Lola, said, “I should say not!” but her father thought it was a good idea, and convinced Lola to buy it.  After high school, she followed her mother’s advice to enter USC to study architecture, but had to drop out when her parents separated again to put in more time at the service station.

By 1928, at 21, she had saved enough money to pay for flying lessons. Her mother bought her an International K-6 (Otherwise known as a F-17H Sportsman powered by a Curtis K-6 engine, made by Catron & Fisk of Long Beach). Her mother read in the LA Times about her flight instructor crashing them during one of her lessons, sending Bobbi to the hospital and asked her to give up flying. Instead of listening to her mom, weeks after her solo, she added a $35-a-week job demonstrating a new high-wing monoplane called the Golden Eagle, which eventually included working to build the airplanes as well. 

On Jan. 2, 1929, Trout took off from Van Nuys Airport. When she touched down after circling the airport for 12 hours and 11 minutes, she had broken the previous women pilots’ solo endurance record of eight hours.

Her triumph was short-lived -- Elinor Smith beat Trout’s time by an hour a few weeks later. But Trout proceeded to set a new record of 17 hours and 24 minutes. In the process, she logged the first all-night flight by a woman.

In a 1990 interview with The Times, Trout recalled rubbing her neck and singing to pass the hours. But engulfed in darkness and bored by the monotonous drone of her plane’s 60-horsepower engine, she said: “I went to sleep a few times, and when I went into a dive, the engine awakened me.”

In 1929, Trout also broke the woman’s altitude record for light-class aircraft by climbing to 15,200 feet. And teamed up with Smith, she set yet another world endurance record in 1929 of 42 hours, 3 1/2 minutes in what was the first women’s in-flight refueling operation: Trout leaned out of the plane to catch bags of food, motor oil and a 25-foot rope attached to a gasoline hose lowered from the refueling plane.

In a second effort, with silent movie star Edna May Cooper in 1931, Trout set a new women’s refueling endurance record: 122 hours, 50 minutes. And in 1930, Trout became the fifth woman in the U.S. to earn a transport license, allowing her to fly for hire. However, airlines at the time didn’t employ women pilots.

In 1929, Trout joined Earhart, Barnes and 17 other participants in the first All-Women’s Transcontinental Air Race from Santa Monica to Cleveland. Humorist Will Rogers dubbed it the Powder Puff Derby and the name stuck. Trout made it to Cleveland, although her engine quit twice and she was forced to make emergency landings that put her out of the running. After the race the participants and many of their friends formed the association of female pilots called The Ninety Nines.

With a scarcity of flying jobs during the Depression, Trout became a flying instructor and, in the late ‘30s, a commercial photographer.

With Barnes, she formed the Women’s Air Reserve to transport emergency supplies and personnel in disasters. She also served in the Civil Air Patrol and started two aviation-related businesses to aid the war effort: She invented a machine to sort unused rivets that were being scrapped by aircraft companies, and she developed de-burring equipment for smoothing the edges of machined metal.

Trout, who never married, later sold real estate in the Palm Springs area. She retired to Carlsbad in 1976.  (7512 Viejo Castilla Way, Carlsbad, CA 92009 – an apartment in La Costa near the third hole of the Legends course.)  And bought a red Porsche 914 which she drove over 200,000 miles—much of them over the speed limit. She died at Scripps Encinitas, January 24, 2003. She was 97.

 

History of Nighties

In Frances Paget’s article on the Paris Automobile Exhibition of 1928, she claims that “the Haute Couture has paid increased attention to negligees for the last year or so,..” It was definitely a trend building up over time.

The word negligee (also French for negligent or unprepared) was acquired in English for gauzy undergarments in the early 19th century.  A    chemise, also called a smock, was a long standing night dress or undergarment in which women often slept. 

I could find camisoles mentioned for sale in newspapers in the 1880s.  Described as made of silk and dressy, they were appreciated as fashionable, even during Victorian times in which showing an ankle to a stranger, would have been scandalous.

Teddys or camiknickers, so called because they combined camisoles with short trousers, became popular as skirts became shorter, beginning in the Teens. At the same time the word “nighty” was reserved for children’s nightwear. (Hold onto this thought.)

Bustier was only used as a surname in the early papers. Corsets, however, came in many different styles. Some of which were considered flattering to bustier women. Being “busty” was considered more troublesome than a compliment.

The word “sexy” was first used in a California newspaper in 1917 and for several years later it is regularly placed within quotes—something reserved for words readers might not be familiar with. The use of “sexy” rather than to be synonymous with the word “attractive” was more about the idea “dealing with a person’s gender”  The first time the words “sexy negligee” were used in a California newspaper wasn’t until May 1945.

The silent film star, Lila Lee, was born, Augusta Wilhelmena Fredericka Appel, in 1901. In 1925 she starred in a play called The Bride Retires according to the October 1925 issue of Theater Magazine. In the description, Lee’s costumes include knee length camisoles made to match the various colors of the sheets in her boudoir in which most of the play takes place.  The author, Anne Archbald, refers to these camisoles as nighties and she exclaims that in these costumes, Lee looks just like a babydoll. Which did seem to be the point of the costume designer.

I suspect that prior to the 1920s, appearing like a toddler in the boudoir would not have been considered sexy to most men; toddlers would be more troublesome than a compliment.

 

 

John and Fred Ott

 Brothers John and Fred Ott worked with Thomas Edison in Newark as machinists beginning in the 1870s; John beginning at 20 in 1871 and Fred beginning as a 14-year-old apprentice in 1875. Both brothers followed Edison to Menlo Park in 1876, where John was Edison's principal model and instrument maker. After the move to West Orange in 1887, John served as superintendent of the machine shop until a terrible fall in 1895 which left him severely injured.

Fred made history in 1894 as the first movie actor for pretending to sneeze while filmed. In 1900 he was also in the movie “The Kiss” with an unidentified woman. It was a remake of a movie of the same name starring May Irwin and John Rice in which the actors famously talk at each other with their mouths close for the worst kiss ever recorded.  I suppose that necessitated a remake with a machinist showing the world how to do it right.

WWI introduced problems importing latex rubber. Edison, and later Ford, bought estates in Florida and tried to find a non-tropical plant species that could replace the rubber tree if that supply would be cut off later.  John Ott retired, but Fred moved to support the work. After many years, there was some success in the weed, goldenrod, but the work hybridizing lost the energetic backing after Edison died, and the U.S. government let the attempt fail in 1936.

John died only one day after the inventor on October 19, 1931; his crutches and wheelchair were placed by Edison's casket at Mrs. Edison's request.

Fred retired shortly afterwards at the age of 81 and moved back to West Orange, New Jersey, where he died October 24, 1936.