Short Grass Motorcycle Club

Speedy Surgeons, Daredevil Daughters, and the short grass motorcycle club

Speedy Doctors

These days, if we need to see a doctor, we go to his or her office. But, in the early 20th century, doctors still traveled far and wide to see patients needing help; and, in the era bereft of vaccines and antibiotics, the sooner a doctor reached a patient, the better the outcome was likely to be.

Thus Doc Eddy, who arrived in Thomas County in 1887, preferred horses that were a little on the wild side to careen his buggy quickly to the side of an ailing householder. For their part, doctors Henry and Myra Patterson preferred to gallop off on the backs of their mustangs, medicines and equipment tucked safely away in saddlebags.

Their son, Benjamin J. Patterson, favored motorcycles.

Benjamin J. “B.J.” “Mun” Patterson was born in 1873 to Henry and Myra Lutgen Patterson, who at the time lived in Ohio. The family moved to the Rexford, Kan., area in 1885, where the two doctors served the surrounding communities for many years. It was said of them that “no road was too long nor the day too cold and stormy to keep them from the bedside of a patient needing care.” Myra’s grandfather, father and two brothers were doctors; brother Sydney B. Lutgen served as Thomas County Coroner for a time, and her nephew Sydney Anson Lutgen was on staff at St. Thomas Hospital in later years.

Benjamin Patterson graduated from Kansas City Medical College in 1902, and returned to Rexford to practice medicine. He established a good practice and presumably intended to stay in there for the duration of his career, as 1908 saw the completion of a large hospital and residence for the Patterson in Rexford. He named the hospital after his youngest daughter, Carmen, and, according to Lela Smith in the Rexford Kansas Centennial, it was a beautiful building. “It had an open marble stairway and a nice fireplace; a round dome on the floor with many windows for patients. A dumb waiter {sic} carried food to upstairs patients.”

In 1909, “Mun” purchased his first motorcycle. “Dr. Patterson has traded his team for a new motorcycle,” announced the Colby Free Press on April 22, 1909. It was a Wagner, manufactured in Minnesota by the Wagner Cycle Company. Getting used to this motorized bicycle involved some tumbles and scrapes, all duly reported in the newspaper. “He was coming up Main Street. . . with the speedometer registering about ninety miles an hour,” claimed the Rexford News of June 3, 1909, probably an exaggeration. But he was going fast, and when he hit the railroad crossing, the machine stopped and “Mun just kept on going.” He earned a broken leg from that lesson.

However, the machine quickly proved its worth. The Colby Free Press in November of 1909 reports that Dr. Patterson made a round trip of 46 miles to see a seriously ill child in just 2 hours and 46 minutes. Not a speed record in our time, but very impressive in a time of travel by horse. Others saw the advantages of the machine as well, most notably postal carriers.

The Short Grass Club

With the growing use of motorcycles in the area and across the country, Dr. Patterson set about forming a club called the Kansas Short Grass Motorcycle Club in July of 1910. Its purposes were to bring area cyclists together, organize short trips and one extended annual tour, arrange for track and road races, assist fellow cyclists when a machine broke down, and foster a spirit of harmony among riders.

Right away, a quick motorcycle tour to Colorado was organized for August 9-16. The cyclists traveled to Colorado Springs and Denver at a pace of 15 mph. “The club is to spend 6 days in the mountains where living is a joy, where worry and care is shed like leaves, where faded cheeks find crimson,” crooned an article in the July 14, 1910 Rexford News on the club and proposed tour. “Motor cyclists, to the number of 27, passed through town Tuesday morning in a company bout for the mountains on a pleasure trip,” reported the Colby Tribune on August 11, 1910. “Chas. Quick, Chas. Hawk and Clarence Knudson joined the company here.” The trip was a great success, and the next year a longer trip was planned to Pueblo, Royal Gorge, Cripple Creek, Colorado Springs and Pike’s Peak between August 8 and 21, 1911.

In March of that same year, Patterson’s petition to join the Federation of American Motorcyclists was approved, and the Kansas Short Grass Motorcycle Club became member #85. Attesting to the popularity of the motorcycle across the nation, the Federation had been organized in 1903 to promote motorcyclists, touring, and better roads. The organization foundered in the war years, ultimately folding in 1919.

Despite the successful practice and new hospital, Dr. Patterson made the decision to relocate to Pratt, Kan., in the fall of 1911. The larger community may have promised more opportunity for the ambitious young doctor. Far from abandoning the motorcycle club, he started a new chapter in Pratt and continued to organize tours and races for any and all participants.

The 1912 tour began in Garden City, traveling thence to Atwood, Julesburg, Cheyenne, Denver, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Las Animas, and back to Garden City. Like previous trips, a couple of “pathfinders” had determined the route and made arrangements for accommodations along the way some weeks ahead of time. Local motorcycle clubs proved to be gracious hosts and provided special tours, receptions, races and dinners for the touring cyclists all along the way.

This tour included some special guests. A baseball team traveled with the group and played the local team in each town in which the group stopped. “The way those boys tore miles and miles across the plains into a town and then proceed to wallop the home team before tearing out again was marvelous, as well as astonishing and disturbing to some of the natives,” wrote H. S. Quine in Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, October 31, 1912.

Among other guests were a couple of professional motorcycle racers: Kansas Champion Wells Bennett, and Paul Warner who was a renowned as the FAM’s central district champion. Motorcycle races were organized in towns along the way, and no doubt the two often exceeded the 15 mph pace along the way.

Daredevil Daughter

the KS Short Grass Motorcycle Club was unique in offering these extended tours, and their reputation across the nation was quickly gaining traction. But there was a another unique feature of the club that was also garnering attention: Dr. Patterson’s motorcycle-riding daughter, Inez. In 1912, she was 16 years old and had reportedly been riding motorcycles since she was 12. By now, according to a Salina Journal article quoted in the Pratt Republican on Oct. 19, 1911, she had “learned the motorcycle thoroughly and has no fear of trouble when she is on the road by her self. She dismantles and reassembles her machine as handily as any many who ever conducted a motorcycle shop.”

The Pratt Independent of April 10, 1914 announced that the “versatile girl motorcyclist and musician” had suffered an attack of appendicitis, and went on to claim that she held the record for “riding more miles in one trip unaided on a motorcycle than any other woman in the world.”

Motorcycle Vigilantes?

During the 1913 tour, the cyclists were held up by a wagon and steam that were hogging the middle of the road, refusing to pull to the side to let the cyclists through. In frustration, Dr. Patterson grabbed the bridle of one of the horses to lead it off to the side, whereupon he found a Winchester leveled at him. The other cyclists dismounted and gathered up rocks, but then saw that the Missus had a six shooter with the business end pointed in their direction. The cyclists retreated until the road widened and let them pass. A complaint was filed in the next town and the wagon driver was jailed for his threatening behavior.

In the same year, Dr. Patterson, who by that time was President of the Federation of American Motorcyclists, approached the KS Bankers Association with a proposal to make use of the state’s cyclists by organizing a series of response teams wherever a bank was robbed. Pointing out that a motorcycle can reach much higher speeds than a gateway car, and that there are cyclists in almost every county, he figured that “within three hours after a crime has been committed that three hundred men will be in on the man hunt and that a network will be shown around the scene of the crime that it will be nearly impossible for one to escape them,” according to the Dec. 25, 1913 Pratt Union. Though the banks and Governor Hodges were reportedly very interested in the proposal, it is not clear that much became of it in the end.

Endings

If there was ever an doubt that Ms. Inez Patterson was a daring and impetuous young woman, she put that to rest by eloping at age 19 with Harry Arble. “They started out for a little trip and after reaching Kingman they quickly decided to wed and did so,” states the Rexford News, Oct. 21, 1915. None of the involved parents knew anything about this until the happy couple came home and announced their new status. We can imagine the “discussions” that followed.

But Inez and Harry remained apparently happily married with three kids in Colorado, and Inez Arble occasionally authored accounts of motorcycle events. Harry was killed in an auto accident in 1939, and Inez later marred a man named Phillips; they lived in California where they owned several bottling plants.

As for B.J. Patterson, his life was upended in 1917 when wrongful death charges were leveled against him and his partner, Dr. Gregoire, after a woman died at their hospital following surgery. Gregoire was convicted of 1st degree manslaughter and sentenced to ten years, while Patterson’s sentence was two years on a charge of 4th degree manslaughter. In 1924 or ‘25, Patterson returned to Rexford and doctored until 1930, when he moved to New Mexico for health reasons; he died two years later.

The Short Grass Motorcycle Club appears to have died with Patterson’s conviction. However, in 2008 a Lawrence, Kan., realtor and motorcyclist named Stan Trekell got wind of the Short Grass Club and its nationwide fame, and tried to revive it. In 2010, he recreated the original 1910 tour to Colorado, traveling to Rexford and visiting Patterson’s grave before heading out to retrace the original tour route. Unfortunately, the resurrected club has since folded. Who knows - perhaps some Thomas County motorcycle fans will revive the club once again.

Did you enjoy this story?

This article was written by Prairie Museum Executive Director Ann Miner for Volume 48, Number 4, edition of the Prairie Winds: The Newsletter of the Thomas County Historical Society. Stories like this are shared quarterly, in addition to other museum news and event information, and made available to members of the organization. For as little as $20 per year, you can become a member. Membership includes an annual subscription to the Prairie Winds, free admission into the museum, and other great benefits. Become a Member today.