The two youngsters you see sitting in that Brush Runabout car are the Abernathy brothers, age six and nine. The photo was taken in 1910 and it was not taken at a car show. It was taken in New York City and it was taken because those two kids Louis and Temple were about to drive that car home BY THEMSELVES WITH NO ADULT HELP to Oklahoma. Don’t believe us? Maybe we should mention that they got to New York by riding their horses BY THEMSELVES WITH NO ADULT HELP. As we’re fond of saying around here, this is a real thing that happened. Spoiler alert: The boys made it home and had even more adventures at ages that we barely let kids pedal a bike down the street at now. These kids were very, very famous around the turn of the century and into the ‘teens before fading off into obscurity. If you think that not being on the front page of the papers led to some sort of “celebrity meltdown” like we see on a regular basis these days, you’d be 100% wrong. Both men lived into their 80s. One was a successful lawyer and the other made piles of money in the oil industry. How did we not know about this before BangShifter Gary Taylor told us to look them up?! Books have literally been written on their adventures and believe it or not, we ordered one up after looking into these kids.

We currently live in a world where fear of everything reigns supreme. We fear the food we eat, we fear what happens when our kid doesn’t check in with a text message every two hours, we fear sending our kid down a sledding hill without being secured in bubble wrap. Do you know what the Abernathy family feared? Not a damned thing. Who in their right mind would allow their sons to head off into the great beyond without so much as a carrier pigeon? His name was Jack Abernathy and there are first hand accounts of him hunting and catching wolves…WITH HIS BARE HANDS. That’s not some backwoods saw, folks. Teddy Roosevelt went on a hunt with Jack Abernathy after hearing about him and he watched Ol’ Jack turn the trick on a wolf himself. We have to image the truly hard part of that whole operation is letting go. We’ll continue to pray that we never have to consider the thought of bare-handed wolf hunting. As you’d expect, Jack Abernathy also got an early start on life and was noted to have been an active and legitimate cowboy by the time he was 11, driving herds of cattle hundreds of miles. Knowing this, you can kind of understand his willingness to let the boys wander off. We’re sure they got a few solid hours of training from their old man on handling themselves and they could probably shoot the eyes out of a gnat from half a mile away, so if the world has ever known what a single digit bad ass was, it was these kids.

The boys made their first trip of note in 1909 when they rode to Santa Fe, New Mexico by themselves and back without incident. From then on, the world was their oyster. The ride to NY was a huge success with massive publicity following the boys and building at every stop they made along the way. When the rode their horses down the street in a ticker tape parade with Roosevelt, their act went national. The kids were officially a big deal. Brush Motor Car Company “sold” the kids a car and they shoved off from NYC towards Oklahoma. We have no idea how long it took them to get there but they got there, alive and well. No telling if their dad busted on them for going soft and driving home instead of riding their horses (which were brought home on a train).

Not too long after this, the boys were offered $10,000 if they could ride across the USA on horses in 60 days. It took them 62, but they made it despite everyone’s expectations to the contrary. Being two days late, the kids didn’t get the money (which is the equivalent of more than $200,000 today) but they got the glory. After taking a couple years off, they returned to their traveling ways and rode a two seat Indian Motorcycle from Oklahoma to NYC and back. What did they do after that? They grew up, became successful men, and led their lives as they wanted to. No more craziness, no more endurance runs, no more publicity. Like the few great athletes that have had the presence of mind to do it, they stepped off the train at the top of their game and before either of them got hurt or suffered some other type of problem in their travels.

There’s no doubt that someone, somewhere helped these kids along with that car at some point to repair a mechanical problem, free them from a ditch, etc but the point of the whole thing here is that they did it. They actually drove that car from NYC to Oklahoma at a time when the vast majority of the roads in the country were repurposed cowpaths.

In case you feel softer than a fresh bag of marshmallows, don’t feel along because we’re with you. Obviously, this wasn’t the safest or probably the smartest thing to do but it sure is incredible. In our own personal experience, striking out on a couple week long road trip with a buddy after high school graduation was a huge deal and a sign that our parents trusted us implicitly but holy smokes, this is on another celestial plane totally. Talk about something that wouldn’t or couldn’t happen in today’s world, the Abernathy brothers would have been stopped at the end of town and Jack would have been thrown in the clink for the rest of his days.

You can read more about the boy’s adventures at the link below and there’s also some of the cool advertising copy that this pair generated for the Brush Motor Car Company after completing their trip. After all, the ads write themselves. “This car is so easy to drive a pair of kids took it across country!” Talk about a PR man’s dream! Obviously it didn’t work quite as well as they hoped because Brush isn’t exactly in the car business anymore, but at the time it had to have gotten people into their showrooms.

The time you kid asks you to do something that seems a little on the fringe, remember the Abernathy boys….or don’t. That may be bad advice.

Click here to learn more about the adventures of the Abernathy brothers 

Here’s the boys on the two seat Indian they road to NYC and back!