Lizzie's Last Run

(My Great Grandfather, Forrest Emerson)

I thought it would be fun every Sunday to share some of the things I'm finding in my families genealogy.  Below is a poem my Great Grandfather wrote about a trip he took.  He even got it published in the newspaper around 1926.  Below was what was published:

Lizzie's Last Run

(Forest Emerson, who went to California two months ago with Ray Ebersole, Charles Walker, and Burton Whalin in a Ford, gives his version of a perlious trip--no they were in the Ford, but he tells about it in poetry.)

Coming down the mountain, there is lots to be told,

About a Ford with brakes that wouldn't hold.

And this is what I want to tell thee--

Razz ran her up against a big tree.  

Lizzie sure did look awfully sad.  

With the front end smashed up pretty bad.

We took all five tires,

Spark plugs and even the wires.

We took the lights, I'd hope to shout,

But not the connecting rods, because they were burned out.

Then some other things we didn't want anybody to steal,

Were the radiator and guide wheel.

So, we brought everything with us,

In the back of Clifford's bus.

So now she lays with a broken heart,

You can crank but she will never start.

Because we never left a single coil,

Not even gas, but all the oil.

If we only had a car with brakes that would hold,

This story to you would never have been told.

~Forrest Emerson.

  (Picture of the Ford)

He was 18 when he traveled from Toledo Iowa to California with three of his friends, and this story is of a random side trip he was talked into up to Oregon and back.  The Ford crashed on the way back.

Hope you had a great Sunday,

Sarah