By this day 100 years ago nearly half of humanity had been tearing itself apart across Europe for nearly 2 years, trapped in the desolation of the world’s first global conflict, the war to end all wars. Death had kept busy ushering millions near the tranquil waters of the Marne and the Somme, and from the once peaceful pastures at Ypres and Verdun to their doom, but on this day, April 9, 1917, he extended his necrosed arm across the Atlantic and drew the United States into the carnage.
It was one hundred years ago this week that a reluctant United States finally resolved to enter into the horrifying bog of World War I, the gruesome mechanical death machine. On April 2nd, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson addressed congress citing that America was “but one of the champions of the rights of mankind,” and that “The world must be made safe for democracy.” On April 6th, Congress declared war against Germany and America thrust itself forward into “the war to end all wars,” a terrible new pitch of blood letting across Europe that would tear from humanity nearly 40 million casualties.
On December 30, 1912, on the wide boards of the Playa Del Rey board track in Los Angeles, a local Class B racer named Lee I. Humiston mounted his new 61ci Excelsior twin and set off for the day’s speed trails. Like a lightning bolt of grey and red, Humiston and his Excelsior shot around the massive 1 mile long wooden circle at Playa, the largest wooden track of its time which had a shallow banking of only 20 degrees, and set a new mile record of 36 seconds flat. The occasion was a spectacular moment in American motorcycle history and all who were present knew it, as it marked the first time that a man and a motorcycle had ever reached the 100 mph mark.
At only 17 years old, Ray Seymour, the “California Wonder” had already established himself as one of the top competitors in the sport of American motorcycle racing by 1909. The freckle-faced youngster had only begun racing around the dirt tracks of Southern California the year before, and became a staple crack at LA’s Agriculture Park, one of the first hubs of the sport. His ability to hold his own at such a young age against the country’s first generation of racers, experienced and hardened carry-overs from the glory days of bicycle competition put him at the top of the class of America’s second wave of pioneer racers, and helped earn him a factory sponsorship with Reading Standard.
