The Adventures of the Abernathy Brothers from Oklahoma

THE ADVENTURES OF THE ABERNATHY BROTHERS

BY: JEANIE SCOTT

The very first adventure for the Abernathy Brothers, Temple and Bud, was in 1909. Bud was nine and Temp was five.  They rode their horses from Guthrie, Oklahoma, to Santa Fe, New Mexico to see the governor’s new mansion. This trip took only two weeks.

Their second trip was in 1910, from their Frederick Cross Road’s ranch in Oklahoma to New York City to see Teddy Roosevelt return from Africa and be in a ticker tape parade in New York City.  They drove the “Wildcat” Brush automobile back from New York City to Oklahoma. This trip is considered their third trip. Their fourth trip was while they were in New York City to be a part of the 11th annual automobile show.  They sat in a booth and talked about the “Wildcat”. This took place in 1911.  They were also in a couple of movies with their horses, Sam Bass and Wylie Haynes in New York City.  At the same time two friends of the family, Fred Thompson and Skip Dundy had built a huge theater called the Hippodrome Theater.  They also owned Luna Park on Coney Island.  The boys sat in a booth and talked about their adventures. These men asked the boys to take another ride.  Not on their horses, but on a 7,000-pound elephant and a donkey, representing the Republican and Democratic Party, to predict which would win the 1912 presidential election. They were to race from Coney Island to the national capital.  The race ended when the elephant’s feet became sore.   Their fifth adventure began at midnight on August 11, 1911, when the boys rode their horses out of the Atlantic Ocean at Coney Island, with a flask of salt water from that ocean and rode to San Francisco to go into the Pacific Ocean and deposit their water from the Atlantic. They had ridden 4500 miles in only 62 days.  Their goal was 60 days, but they had beaten the old record of 182 days set earlier by an army officer. Their sixth and final adventure happened in 1913. They rode a two seater Indian Motocycle (spelled then without the “r”) from Oklahoma to New York City.  These facts were found in the book Bud and Me by Alta Abernathy.