Our Trip of 1925 [manuscript caption title]

[Various locations including Florida, Missouri, and South Dakota], 1925. Very good.. Forty-five leaves, encompassing approximately fifty pages of manuscript narrative written in white ink, interspersed with 108 photographs and a handful of ephemeral items. Oblong octavo. Contemporary red cloth photograph album, black letters on front cover, string tied. Minor edge wear. A few leaves detached, several leaves of narrative faded and difficult to decipher. Still, a wonderful and unique production. A fascinating homemade travel diary, supplemented with over a hundred photographs, recording a 5000+ mile road trip in an early Dodge Brothers sedan, undertaken by Emil M. and Anna E. Gollnick (nee Redman) of Vero Beach, Florida. Emil Gollnick emigrated from Germany to the United States in about 1872 and moved to Florida in the early 20th century, where he operated a successful citrus-growing enterprise; he died in Fort Pierce, Florida in 1946. On the trip memorialized in the present album, the Gollnicks traveled along rough rural roads from Florida and then a circuitous route through Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Iowa, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, and Georgia. They started on July 14 and ended their trip on September 3, 1925. Important points along the way seem to involve family. The couple lingered longest in Springfield, Missouri and on a sister's farm in Milbank, South Dakota. When not encumbered by family, the Gollnicks seem to have stayed mostly at tourist camps, almost always ending their daily drive around 4:00pm, well before dark.

The diary stands as a proto-travel narrative, and is written in an interesting and readable style. For instance, an excerpt from July 16 reads, "Detour of six miles beyond Madison and clay roads until up to Tallahassee, very hilly Havana, camped at Chatahatchee near this bridge for the night where hobo and pigs were our company." Another entry reads, in part: "Started on after lunch and had muddy roads galore and meet car after car on the side of the road. Pulled one car out of the ditch and another one run into the ditch on the other side before we got away. Out tow rope was our salvation. Went on and found a car on our side and a car on the other side but we all laughed and had the time of our lives." The photographs are often evocative, capturing roadside environs, family members and their houses, livestock, campsites, many other cars, trucks, and a tractor, including a Redman's Ice Cream truck (presumably belonging to Anna's family), and more. Following the narrative, and bound in at the rear, is a two-page typed accounting of the expenses for the trip, which provides a clear picture of their route. An intriguing original record of one couple's travels from Florida to South Dakota and back again in the Roaring Twenties.