DTMFall'25_Final - Flipbook - Page 17
The San Angelo Press Header. Photo Courtesy of TexasHistory.unt.edu
One of the first automobile dealers in San Angelo
was A. J. Morgan, who was elected as an alderman
when San Angelo incorporated for the final time in
1903. The following blurb appeared on February 12,
1902 in The San Angelo Press: “‘Say! Have you heard
about A. J. Morgan’s automobile line for San
Angelo?’ ‘Yes, I’ve heard about it. I have also heard
about Darius Green and his flying machine. I’m
from Missouri, anyway.’” It’s difficult to
understand the significance of this
tongue-in-cheek “exchange” without knowing that
“Darius Green and his Flying Machine” was a poem
written in the 1860’s by John. T. Trowbridge.
Trowbridge was a contemporary and friend of
Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Walt
Whitman, and co-editor of the popular children’s
magazine, Our Young Folks. The magazine had
illustrations in color and black and white, sheet
music, logic and word puzzles, and ideas for
activities, as well as stories, poems and nature
articles. The humorous poem was first published in
the March 1867 edition of that magazine, along
with articles by Stowe and a poem by Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow.
An Illustration from Darius Green and His Flying Machine.
Photo Courtesy of Princeton University.
Mankind had longed dreamed of flight, with
artists such as Michaelangelo sketching and
possibly even constructing prototypes of a
single-person device that would operate
somewhat like a modern helicopter. But that
ages-old tale of Icarus, who flew too close to the
sun and ended in ruin and wreckage, seemed more
than prophetic considering the many doomed
attempts to conquer the air.
“Darius Green and his Flying Machine” features a
young boy who, convinced that the “air is also
man’s dominion,” constructs a flying machine of
bits of string, wire, old umbrellas and other odds
and ends, held together more by hubris than
physics. With an iron pot as a helmet, Darius
attempted his launch on July 4th, seeking to rival
the fireworks show. Naturally, it ends in “broken
tail and broken wings,” witnessed by his
brothers–thus adding insult to injury. In 1867, it
seemed flight was still a ludicrous dream.
Wright Brothers Biplane Type B. Photo Courtesy of AdobeStock.com
By 1891, the Harrisburg Telegraph of Pennsylvania
declared, “There is not a man, woman nor child in
all this country who has not read the funny story ...”
and speculated as to whether Darius Green was
more than a fictitious character. At any rate, the
poem was certainly familiar enough to be
referenced as a jab at the commercial possibilities
of the automobile; after all, the automobile, in
1902, was still rare enough (especially in West
Texas) to invite the same skepticism that
man-in-flight did. But the rapidity with which both
forms of transport would reshape the world was
beyond imagining in those trial-and-error
beginnings. The Wright brothers’ first successful
flight occurred in 1903, a year after The San Angelo
Press published its Darius Green blurb, but people
like John. J. Montgomery had been experimenting
with gliders, launching them as early as
1884. Montgomery died in a glider
crash of his own design in 1911. Men
had also experimented with airships
and balloons; the Montgolfier’s’ first
hot-air balloon flight with passengers
took place in November of
1783–Benjamin Franklin and Marie
Antoinette were among the witnesses of some of
the first balloon launches in Paris.
