We are used to stories of soldiers and first responders who put everything on the line to save and protect others – but then this is a self-selecting group of humble patriots who put others’ safety above their own.
What of an elderly woman, at the end of her rope – she is ill, alone, without savings, the doctors giving her only a few years to live. Worse, due to a tax lien on the farm which her ancestors have tilled for generations, she is about to lose her home – what can she possibly do?
She is 62, more than two years away from her first Social Security check, and after a devastating hospitalization (which not only produces the disheartening prognosis, but strips her of her cash), her doctor thinks he can find her a place at a home for destitute women – which out of pride she declines.
Instead of giving up or giving in, she remembers a certain dream, unfulfilled, which her mother had: to visit the dreamlands of California, to see the Pacific before she dies.
Displaying the grit of an American pioneer, she determines to wager it all on one cash crop she has never raised before: cucumbers, to sell to a local pickle factory. After a long summer of hard work (which doctors told her to avoid at all costs), she earns enough to pay her doctors’ bills, buy an old horse, sell the farm for $1 (with the new owner paying the tax lien), and start on the long journey to California, without a map, flashlight, or proper clothing (at first), without a credit card, a bank account or much cash – with hardly more than a prayer and a hope.
This delightful reconstruction of her journey – from her memoir, newspaper clippings, contemporaneous interviews, and from driving the route using old maps – Elizabeth Letts’ The Ride of Her Life, published in 2021, is as good a read as armchair travel gets.
As if these challenges weren’t enough, Annie Wilkens – known as Jackass Annie to her Maine neighbors (from the mule she used to ride to a stitching job) – was only able to cash in the crop, sell her farm, and find a cheap enough horse by November of 1954, when the Maine winter is not only threatening but arrived.
Not one concerned about fashion, Annie bundles up in two heavy men’s wool working shirts, two pairs of heavy men’s work jeans, and a blanket-lined vest. Her horse, a rusty black gelding, “aged” (over 9 years old, from his teeth), possibly of good, hardly Morgan stock, is named Tarzan. Not only would he carry Annie’s 170 lbs, but an assortment of her worldly possessions, including a simple tent, a bedroll, some pots, change of clothes, and a dime store diary.
Along for the “ride” is also a young Depeche Toi, her “silky black and brown mutt,” whose collar she ties to a long, thin rope.
Annie, Tarzan, and Depeche Toi’s journey comes at a pivot point in American history, during many transformations: from horse to car culture (toll roads, such at the Maine Turnpike, were just being built), from radio to TV, to the long decline of Main Streets and the near extinction of small farms (such as hers). “There was a sense that the old way of life was passing, and not just passing but actually being destroyed.” [p.86] Sound familiar?
The most pressing transformation was that of cars, which barely slowed for a rider and her dog, forcing Annie to steer her entourage off to the unpaved, often muddy side. While Depeche Toi adapts quickly, Tarzan was a proud, likely one time “trotter” race horse, who spooks especially at roaring trucks, nearly unsaddling Annie more than once. Crossing bridges is another major concern, especially in winter with ice. At the Bear Mountain Bridge over the Hudson River, for instance, a sliding out-of-control truck sideswipes them, injuring one of Tarzan’s legs and Annie’s foot.
The adventures are continuous – but what impresses are the “astounding number of kindnesses” [p.241] extended to Annie by one stranger after another. She is taken in countless times, Tarzan stabled, and encouraged to stay as long as she wishes.
Not only does a remote house or farm nearly always show up in the nick of time, with night or poor weather threatening, but Annie is quickly taken up by one network of warm-hearted people to the next. Not only do locals suggest the next potential village at horse pace (or at “pioneer pace” as Letts calls it, p.147), but often suggest a certain home or stable owner who could take them in.
And where willing hosts are not forthcoming, Annie – after finding a stable for Tarzan – spends many a comfortable night in police stations, which as Letts points out, where commonly used to overnight homeless or vagrants, a hot meal included.
Even though she could not have imagined its importance at trip’s outset, Annie is blessed by local media attention – which Letts declares is more honest than national media. Such that, as her story makes the rounds, local newspapers announce her impending arrival and local mayors and/or organizations start to put out the welcome mat for her.
How could all this help accrue to a sickly, elderly woman who only made it through 6th grade, and barely had ever left Maine? After a disastrous first marriage to a horse thief, she worked for a time in vaudeville, where she developed a “dead pan sense of humor.” [p.70] As Letts points out, the series of disasters which befell Annie also set her free: while polite, her conversation must have been spicey, opinionated, forthright, and at times surprising – without dissembling. Never putting on airs, she gave good interviews to local reportersa which kept them coming back.
Her grit and determination shine through. An early encounter with a TV reporter, in his fancy-looking car with New York plates, is both indicative and amusing. When she reads on his business card, Toast of the Town (starring Ed Sullivan), it means nothing to her: she never had a TV at home, as there was no electricity.
The reporter insists on taking her to lunch, where he offers to sponsor her journey and adds:
“All you have to do is come down to New York City for an on-air interview.”
“Christmas?” It was the first of December – Christmas was three weeks away.
Annie barely gave it a moment’s further thought. “I thank you kindly, but I think I’ll just keep going on my way,” she said. “I need to put some miles between me and winter.”
Smart lady! She turns down a sponsorship which may have meant guaranteed sustenance for her journey – but that wasn’t what she had in mind.
Back in Massachusetts (where else?), Annie has a near run-in with the elites. Unbeknownst to her, letters to editors of various local newspapers are questioning if her treatment of Tarzan is ethical. In The Springfield Union, a letters declares:
If and when she arrives here, she will find Charles B. Marsh, prosecuting officer of he ASPCA, waiting to see her. [p.88]
They were doubting if a woman who has grown up, lived, and worked with animals all her life is capable of taking care of her horse. Lucky for Annie, the vet brought by Mr. Marsh concludes after a minute inspection: “The horse needs rubber shoes in back, and we’ll reset the ones in front. They’re not quite right. Beyond that, this is a sturdy horse, and he looks terrific.” [p.105]
The threesome gain a fourth member with a Tennessee walking horse named Rex, generously gifted to Annie by a group of well wishers in Ashland City. Despite numerous re-shoddings of Tarzan, it had been pointed out to Annie that her Maine stalwart was overburdened and would unlikely make it over the Western mountains. In Kentucky, Annie had kept an eye out for a good horse, but they were all too expensive. Rex turns out to be an excellent choice, a smoother ride as well as less spooked by trucks than Tarzan.
It helps that the author, Letts, is a horse woman herself. Her two prior non-fiction books were The Perfect Horse and The Eighty Dollar Champion. While Alice’s conversations were recorded in her memoir (presumably sourced from her diaries), the courageous team, 3 animals and 1 woman, are not capable of much talk. So Letts’ horse-tuned sensibilities add to their interactions.
The ride changes gears in the West. East of the Mississippi the towns had been frequent enough for the relay of hospitality. No so out West, as anyone knows who has driven cross-country. Rex, who at first was unprepared for the long days, gains strength and becomes a critical part of the team. Several times Depeche Toi forewarns either Tarzan or Rex of impending danger, often by jumping in front of the horse and barking insistently. One such time Tarzan, spooked by a passing truck, gets entangled in bridge cables and nearly sends Annie into the river far below. Later, it is Rex who saves the day by backing up, with Annie dangling forward holding onto the reins for dear life: it was pitch black and they were attempting to cross a creek where, unknown to them, the bank had been carved out by the creek, and they were about to be thrown into the icy moving water below.
Tragically, both Rex and Tarzan die in the Golden State, Rex during the trip, Tarzan after. The circumstances of Rex’s death are truly sad – due to veterinarian negligence – and this one time when the narrative doesn’t pull them back from tragedy, I cried. The story had become so engaging for me, I dreaded the inevitable mishaps – which Letts smoothly ventures out of with this or that saving grace, until Rex’s demise. Only Tarzan, of the two horses, makes it to the storied Pacific. In the months after journey’s end, on a leisurely ride to visit Santa Barbara, a passing truck leads to a leg injury which – one last one, after so many miles and recoveries – leads to his death within six months.
After Ed Sullivan’s side-lining, it is Art Linkletter on the West Coast who learns of Annie’s journey and her predicament after Rex’s death: she is depressed and thinking of abandoning the trip, despite being so close to her goal. He arranges a new horse for her, named King (which Annie likes, as it is the translation of Rex’s Latin name), and invites her onto his TV show People Are Funny in Hollywood.
When she, Tarzan, Depeche Toi, and King make it, Linkletter presents her with a check which is enough money “for her to live easy for several years” [p.272] – a final bridge to her Social Security checks. Annie eventually returns to the East Coast, spends some time in New York City, and moves in with one of her journey’s muses, a younger journalist from southern Maine, in order for them to co-write, edit, and publish her memoir titled Last of the Saddle Tramps. So a woman who only completed 6th grade, led a difficult life, and was only given several years to live went on to not only thrives for many more years, but publish her own memoir.
Overall, the book is a tour de force of journalistic recreation. While Letts admirably disappears while telling Annie’s tale, her own journey is revealed in the Prologue, Author’s Note and Acknowledgments, what drew her to the story, and the great lengths she went to fill in some of the gaps in Annie’s memoir (even correcting some names and towns).
What stands out is her own roadtrip of discovery, which included digging “into the archives of town libraries and historical societies all across America, locating newspaper articles and scrapbooks that included old clippings and postcards that Annie had sent back from the road.” [p.281] The last leg of exploratory trips occurred in February of 2020, just as the world was about to shut down in the worst demonstration of governmental power in history. She relates:
I drove more than ten thousand miles while researching this book. Navigating mostly with 1950s vintage gas station maps, I traveled through small towns and down the sorts of back roads the average contemporary traveler never sees. I avoided the interstates. Using old black-and-white photos, I had fun locating old motor courts that had been converted to other uses, and everywhere I went, I began to recognize buildings that had once been filling stations or roadside diners. The old America is still there; you just have to know how to look for it. [p.282]
(I have had similar experiences, driving the entirety of Rt . 66 twice and US 1 from its northern start in Maine to its southern tip in Key West, FL., finding old ghosts of gas stations along the way, especially in the South.)
Indeed, the book almost becomes the tale of not one but two adventurous women, both consumed by a worthy goal.
Letts emphasizes again and again the myriad kindnesses extended to Annie and her loyal animal companions. Therefore it rings marvelously well at the end of her Note, where she writes:
To all of them who went out of their way to help me, thank you for reassuring me that Annie’s America is still out there, and is still ours. [p.282]
Annie’s America is a wonderful, generous, and kindly place – which we can, with the right attitude and even hard work, find out there in abundance.
[To watch a recording of my book club’s discussion of book, click below.]
Elizabeth Letts, The Ride of Her Life, The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America, Ballentine Books, Penguin Random House, New York, 2022 Paperback edition
Ben Batchelder is the author of four extended travel yarns and has been a Contributor to The Miami Independent since its inception. His own roadtrip of discovery, his love letter to America, is titled Borderlands USA, or How to Protect the Country by Car. Contact him at his author site benbatchelder.com or find the book at BorderlandsUSA.com
Ben Batchelder was born into leftism and has been a black sheep ever since. A writer now for several decades, he first converted to conservatism after college during a world trip on $10 a day, to Christianity at a later date, and to populist nationalism after Trump. A graduate of two Ivy League schools, he has had to unlearn most of what he learned there.
