Life was anything but easy growing up on Cutler Street during the early 1940s. At the time, the bustling street in Schenectady’s Mont Pleasant neighborhood was crowded with low-income and immigrant families. Poverty was common, and there was seldom time to do anything but work.
One hundred years ago this week, magnificent men and their driving machines visited the Capital Region. An endurance competition that matched autos and men from the United States, France, Germany and Italy departed New York City's Times Square on Wenesday, Feb. 12, 1908. Their destination was Paris, their adventure was destined for the history book. Six cars, featuring the best technology of the day, would be on the road for months, 22,000 miles through Albany, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Alaska, Japan, Russia, Berlin and finally Paris.
Posted on February 11, 2008.
They're off! The cars line up at New York's Times Square on Feb. 12, with a crowd of 250,000 looking on. The next day, five of the six competitors would pass through Albany and Schenectady.
The racers battled winter for much of the early race. Here, they encounter deep snow on the way to Chicago. Drifts had earlier wreaked havoc as they headed west out of Schenectady.
A band played and the entire town greeted the Thomas Flyer in Valdez, Alaska. Because of heavy snows in Alaska, the Flyer was ordered back to Seattle. The American car and others from France, Germany and Italy were racing from New York to Paris.
Good sportsmanship is exhibited as the Thomas Flyer pulls the half-buried German Protos from mud in Siberia, where it had rained 17 days in a 20-day stretch.
It was a torturous 350-mile drive across the 90-mile width of Japan for the Flyer, shown here on one of the Asian nation's narrow streets. Occasionally the car was carried around corners, or lowered and raised by ropes on daunting grades.
