In about a month (after viewing the eclipse!), my family will launch on a trip -- following as closely as possible the same route that my great-grandfather, Roy Bedichek ("Bedi" to friends), rode a bicycle. I, my husband, my father and my mother (Bedi's granddaughter who is also a birder) will drive with travel trailers in tow. Fortunately, highways follow fairly closely the railroad that Bedi rode alongside. We will arrive in Deming about the same time of year he arrived -- the first week of May.
_________
On Monday, March 22nd, 1909, at 4:45am, Roy Bedichek left the family farm in Eddy, Texas -- his parents and sisters waving him off -- and started his epic 900-mile bike ride following the gravel path next to the Southern Pacific railroad to El Paso. My great-grandmother, Lillian, explains in her retelling that roads between towns were not reliable and often become muddy dirt tracks just outside of town. The gravel path along the railroad was more reliable and better kept. Sometimes, he had to actually walk his bike on the railroad track itself -- especially at bridges. After selling his bike to a barber in El Paso, he then jumped a freight train the last 100 miles to Deming, New Mexico where he planned to homestead.*
He wanted land. He wanted freedom. The Homestead Act of 1862 allowed any individual who had never taken up arms against the federal government to apply for a "claim" of 160 acres. After "proving up" on it -- making it habitable as a residence or cultivated land -- they could keep the land. (I guess it was OK if your father had fought against the government since Roy's father, JM, had fought as a Confederate. Interestingly, JM even lived on the homestead claim for the last three years of his life from 1913 to 1916.)
So, on this very day 115 years ago, twenty-nine-year-old Bedi was in the final stages of planning his epic bike ride. He planned to camp along the way, catch game and fish for food, and work now and then for a farmer to get a “square meal” – according to my great-grandmother’s telling of the story.
I have found no record of what he took on the six-week trip. Bikes back then did not seem built for long excursions, with saddle bags or even a rack in back to hold a bag. It may have had fenders. So, did he carry everything on his back? Camping gear back then was much heavier than now. He liked to sleep under the stars, often without even a tarp overhead – so perhaps he took nothing but the clothes on his back and a fishing pole.
When he announced his intentions to his family, I wonder about their reaction. Did they say, “Wow, that sounds great! Have a great trip!” or something more like, “Really???? Are you sure?? Maybe you should take the train.”
___________
In addition to Bedi's bike route, we will take a detour through the Texas coastal land from Galveston to Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. Bedi was a frequent explorer of the area and his second book, Karankaway Country, is about its natural history. Sadly, the Karankawa were a native tribe who were wiped out by Mexican and Texas settlers by 1891, when Bedi was just thirteen years old -- before he had even set eyes on the Gulf of Mexico.
Stayed tuned as we see many of the vistas he saw -- some very similar and some very much changed -- and imagine what his trip was like.
____________
*I have found several versions of what actually happened at the end of the trip. In one, he implies he biked the whole way to Deming. In another, he says he hopped on a freight train from El Paso to Deming. Lillian recalls that he sold his bike in El Paso and "took the train" the rest of the way to Deming.