One August a few years ago (1918) I set out with some friends for a two
weeks' automobile trip into the land of Dixie--joy-riders with a
luxurious outfit calculated to be proof against any form of discomfort.
We were headed for the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina. I
confess that mountains and men that do not smoke suit me better. Still I
can stand both, and I started out with the hope that the great
Appalachian range held something new and interesting for me. Yet I knew
it was a risky thing for an octogenarian to go a-gypsying, and with
younger men. Old blood has lost some of its red corpuscles, and does not
warm up easily over the things that moved one so deeply when one was
younger. More than that, what did I need of an outing? All the latter
half of my life has been an outing, and an "inning" seemed more in
order. Then, after fourscore years, the desire for change, for new
scenes and new people, is at low ebb. The old and familiar draw more
strongly. Yet I was fairly enlisted and bound to see the Old Smokies.
Pennsylvania is an impressive State, so vast, so diversified, so
forest-clad--the huge unbroken Alleghany ranges with their deep valleys
cutting across it from north to south; the world of fine farms and rural
homesteads in the eastern half, and the great mining and manufacturing
interests in the western, the source of noble rivers; and the storehouse
of many of Nature's most useful gifts to man.
The great Lincoln Highway, of course, follows the line of least
resistance, but it has some formidable obstacles to surmount, and it
goes at them very deliberately; and, in a powerful car, gives one a
sense of easy victory. But I smile as I remember persons with lighter
cars standing beside them at the foot of those long, winding ascents,
nursing and encouraging them, as it were, and preparing them for the
heavy task before them. An almost perfect road, worthy of its great
namesake, but an Alleghany range which you cannot get around or through
gives the automobilist pause.
As we were hurled along over the great highway the things I remember
with the most satisfaction were the groups or processions of army trucks
we met coming east. The doom of kaiserism was written large on that
Lincoln Highway in that army of resolute, slow-moving army trucks. Dumb,
khaki-colored fighters on wheels, staunch, powerful-looking, a host of
them, rolling eastward toward the seat of war, some loaded with
soldiers, some with camp equipments, and all hinting of the enormous
resources the fatuous Kaiser had let loose upon himself in this far-off
land. On other highways the weapons and materials of war were converging
toward the great seaports in the same way. The silent, grim,
processions--how impressive they were!
Pittsburgh is a city that sits with its feet in or very near the lake of
brimstone and fire, and its head in the sweet country air of the
hill-tops. I think I got nearer the infernal regions there than I ever
did in any other city in this country. One is fairly suffocated at times
driving along the public highway on a bright, breezy August day. It
might well be the devil's laboratory. Out of such blackening and
blasting fumes comes our civilization. That weapons of war and of
destructiveness should come out of such pits and abysses of hell-fire
seemed fit and natural, but much more comes out of them--much that
suggests the pond-lily rising out of the black slime and muck of the
lake bottoms.
We live in an age of iron and have all we can do to keep the iron from
entering our souls. Our vast industries have their root in the geologic
history of the globe as in no other past age. We delve for our power,
and it is all barbarous and unhandsome. When the coal and oil are all
gone and we come to the surface and above the surface for the white
coal, for the smokeless oil, for the winds and the sunshine, how much
more attractive life will be! Our very minds ought to be cleaner. We may
never hitch our wagons to the stars, but we can hitch them to the
mountain streams, and make the summer breezes lift our burdens. Then the
silver age will displace the iron age.
The western end of Pennsylvania is one vast coal-mine. The farmer has
only to dig into the side of the hill back of his house and take out his
winter's fuel. I was surprised to see how smooth and gentle and grassy
the hills looked. It is a cemetery of the old carboniferous gods, and it
seems to have been prepared by gentle hands and watched over with kindly
care. Good crops of hay and grain were growing above their black
remains, and rural life seemed to go on in the usual way. The shuffling
and the deformation of the earth's surface which attended the laying
down of the coal-beds is not anywhere evident. The hand of that
wonderful husbandman, Father Time, has smoothed it all out.
Our first camp was at Greensborough, thirty or more miles southeast of
Pittsburgh, an ideal place--a large, open oak grove on a gentle eminence
well carpeted with grass, with wood and water in abundance. But the
night was chilly. Folding camp-cots are poor conservers of one's bodily
warmth, and until you get the hang of them and equip yourself with
plenty of blankets, Sleep enters your tent very reluctantly. She
tarried with me but briefly, and at three or four in the morning I got
up, replenished the fire, and in a camp-chair beside it indulged in the
"long, long thoughts" which belong to age much more than to youth. Youth
was soundly and audibly sleeping in the tents with no thoughts at all.
The talk that first night around the camp-fire gave us an inside view of
many things about which we were much concerned. The ship question was
the acute question of the hour and we had with us for a few days
Commissioner Hurley, of the Shipping Board, who could give us first-hand
information, which he did to our great comfort.
Our next stop was near Uniontown, Pennsylvania, where for that night we
slept indoors.
On the following day one of the big cars had an accident--the fan broke,
and the iron punctured the radiator. It looked as if we should be
delayed until a new radiator could be forwarded from Pittsburgh. We made
our way slowly to Connellsville, where there was a good garage, but the
best workmen there shook their heads; they said a new radiator was the
only remedy. All four arms of the fan were broken off and there was no
way to mend them. This verdict put Mr. Ford on his mettle. "Give me a
chance," he said, and, pulling off his coat and rolling up his sleeves,
he fell to work. In two hours we were ready to go ahead. By the aid of
drills and copper wire the master mechanic had stitched the severed arms
to their stubs, soldered up the hole in the radiator, and the disabled
car was again in running order.
On August the 31st we made our camp on the banks of a large, clear creek
in West Virginia called Horseshoe Run. A smooth field across the road
from the creek seemed attractive, and I got the reluctant consent of the
widow who owned it to pitch our camp there, though her patch of
roasting-ears near by made her hesitate; she had probably had
experiences with gypsy parties, and was not impressed in our favor even
when I gave her the names of two well-known men in our party. But Edison
was not attracted by the widow's open field; the rough, grassy margin of
the creek suited him better, and its proximity to the murmuring,
eddying, rocky current appealed to us all, albeit it necessitated our
mess-tent being pitched astride a shallow gully, and our individual
tents elbowing one another in the narrow spaces between the boulders.
But wild Nature, when you can manage her, is what the camper-out wants.
Pure elements--air, water, earth--these settle the question; Camp
Horseshoe Run had them all. It was here, I think, that I got my first
view of the nonpareil, or painted bunting--a bird rarely seen north of
the Potomac.
An interesting object near our camp was an old, unused grist-mill, with
a huge, decaying overshot oaken water-wheel. We all perched on the
wheel and had our pictures taken.
At our lunch that day, by the side of a spring, a twelve-year-old girl
appeared in the road above us with a pail of apples for sale. We invited
her into our camp, an invitation she timidly accepted. We took all of
her apples. I can see her yet with her shining eyes as she crumpled the
new one-dollar bill which one of the party placed in her hand. She did
not look at it; the feel of it told the story to her. We quizzed her
about many things and got straight, clear-cut answers--a very firm,
level-headed little maid. Her home was on the hill above us. We told her
the names of some of the members of the party, and after she had
returned home we saw an aged man come out to the gate and look down upon
us. An added interest was felt whenever we came in contact with any of
the local population. Birds and flowers and trees and springs and mills
were something, but human flowers and rills of human life were better. I
do not forget the other maiden, twelve or thirteen years old, to whom we
gave a lift of a few miles on her way. She had been on a train five
times, and once had been forty miles from home. Her mother was dead and
her father lived in Pennsylvania, and she was living with her
grandfather. When asked how far it was to Elkins she said, "Ever and
ever so many miles."
The conspicuous roadside flowers for hundreds of miles, in fact, all the
way from Pennsylvania to North Carolina, were the purple eupatorium, or
Joe-Pye-weed, and the ironweed--stately, hardy growths, and very
pleasing to look upon, the ironweed with its crimson purple, and the
eupatorium with its massive head of soft, pinkish purple.
August the 22d we reached Cheat River in West Virginia, a large, clear
mountain trout-brook. It crossed our path many times that day. Every
mountain we crossed showed us Cheat River on the other side of it. It
was flowing by a very devious course northwest toward the Ohio. We were
working south and east.
We made our camp that night on the grounds of the Cheat Mountain Club,
on the banks of the river--an ideal spot. The people at the big
clubhouse gave us a hospitable welcome and added much to our comfort. I
found the forests and streams of this part of West Virginia much like
those of the Catskills, only on a larger scale, and the climate even
colder. That night the mercury dropped to thirty. On June the 24th they
had a frost that killed all their garden truck. The paper outlines of
big trout which covered the walls in the main room of the clubhouse told
the story of the rare sport the club-members have there. Evidently Cheat
River deserves a better name.
The mountains and valleys of the Virginias all present a marked
contrast to those of New York and Pennsylvania. They were not rubbed
down and scooped out by the great ice-sheet that played such a part in
shaping our northern landscapes. The valleys are markedly V-shaped,
while ours are markedly U-shaped. The valley sides are so steep that
they are rarely cultivated; the farm land for the most part lies on the
tops of the broad, rounded hills, though we passed through some broad,
open river valleys that held miles upon miles of beautiful farms in
which hay and oats were still being harvested. Everywhere were large
fields of buckwheat, white with bloom, and, I presume, humming with
bees.
Here and there, by the rocks and the boulders strewn over the landscape,
I saw evidences of large local glaciers that had hatched in these
mountains during the great Ice Age.
We made camp at Bolar Springs on August the 23d--a famous spring, and a
beautiful spot. We pitched our tents among the sugar maples, and some of
the party availed themselves of the public bathhouse that spanned the
overflow of the great spring. The next night our camp was at Wolf Creek,
not far from the Narrows--a beautiful spot, marred only by its proximity
to the dusty highway. It was on the narrow, grassy margin of a broad,
limpid creek in which the fish were jumping. Some grazing horses
disturbed my sleep early in the morning, but on the whole I have only
pleasant memories of our camp at Wolf Creek.
We were near a week in Virginia and West Virginia, crossing many times
the border between the two States, now in one, then in the other, all
the time among the mountains, with a succession of glorious views from
mountain-tops and along broad, fertile valleys. Now we were at Warm
Springs, then at Hot Springs, then at White Sulphur, or at Sweet Water
Springs. Soft water and hard water, cold water and warm water, mineral
water and trout-streams, companion one another in these mountains. This
part of the continent got much folded and ruptured and mixed up in the
building, and the elements are unevenly distributed.
I think to most of us West Virginia had always been a rather hazy
proposition, and we were glad to get a clear impression of it. We
certainly became pretty intimate with the backbone of the continent--or
with its many backbones, as its skeleton seems to be a very multiplex
affair. The backbones of continents usually get broken in many places,
but they serve their purpose just as well. In fact, our old Earth is
more like an articulate than a vertebrate. Its huge shell is in many
sections.
One of our camps we named Camp Lee, the name of the owner of the farm.
One of the boys there, Robert E. Lee, made himself very useful in
bringing wood and doing other errands.
A privation, which I think Mr. Edison and I felt more than did the
others, was the scanty or delayed war news; the local papers, picked up
here and there, gave only brief summaries, and when in the larger towns
we could get some of the great dailies, the news was a day or two old.
When one has hung on the breath of the newspapers for four exciting
years, one is lost when cut off from them.
Such a trip as we were taking was, of course, a kind of a lark,
especially to the younger members of the party. Upon Alleghany Mountain,
near Barton, West Virginia, a farmer was cradling oats on a side-hill
below the road. Our procession stopped, and the irrepressible Ford and
Firestone were soon taking turns at cradling oats, but with doubtful
success. A photograph shows the farmer and Mr. Ford looking on with
broad smiles, watching Mr. Firestone with the fingers of the cradle
tangled in the oats and weeds, a smile on his face also, but decidedly
an equivocal smile--the trick was not so easy as it looked. Evidently
Mr. Ford had not forgotten his cradling days on the home farm in
Michigan.
Camp-life is a primitive affair, no matter how many conveniences you
have, and things of the mind keep pretty well in the background.
Occasionally around the camp-fire we drew Edison out on chemical
problems, and heard formula after formula come from his lips as if he
were reading them from a book. As a practical chemist he perhaps has
few, if any, equals in this country. It was easy to draw out Mr. Ford on
mechanical problems. There is always pleasure and profit in hearing a
master discuss his own art.
A plunge into the South for a Northern man is in many ways a plunge into
the Past. As soon as you get into Virginia there is a change. Things and
people in the South are more local and provincial than in the North. For
the most part, in certain sections, at least, the county builds the
roads (macadam), and not the State. Hence you pass from a fine stone
road in one county on to a rough dirt road in the next. Toll-gates
appear. In one case we paid toll at the rate of two cents a mile for the
cars, and five cents for the trucks. Grist-mills are seen along the way,
driven by overshot wheels, and they are usually at work. A man or a boy
on horseback, with a bag of grain or of meal behind him, going to or
returning from the mill, is a frequent sight; or a woman on horseback,
on a sidesaddle, with a baby in her arms, attracts your attention. Thus
my grandmother went to mill in pioneer days in the Catskills.
The absence of bridges over the small streams was to us a novel feature.
One of the party called these fording places, "Irish bridges." They are
made smooth and easy, and gave us no trouble. Another Southern feature,
indicating how far behind our Northern and more scientific farming the
South still is, are the groups of small haystacks in the meadows with
poles sticking out of their tops, letting the rain and the destructive
bacteria into their hearts. Among the old-fashioned features of the
South much to be commended are the large families. In a farmhouse near
which we made camp one night there were thirteen children, the eldest of
whom was at the front in France. The schools were in session in late
August, and the schoolrooms were well filled with pupils.
No doubt there are many peculiar local customs of which the hurrying
tourist gets no inkling. At a station in the mountains of North Carolina
a youngish, well-clad countryman, smoking his pipe, stood within a few
feet of my friend and me and gazed at us with the simple, blank
curiosity of a child. There was not the slightest gleam of intelligent
interest, or self-consciousness in his face; it was the frank stare of a
five-year-old boy. He belongs to a type one often sees in the mountain
districts of the South--good human stuff, valiant as soldiers, and
industrious as farmers, but so unacquainted with the great outside
world, their unsophistication is shocking to see.
It often seemed to me that we were a luxuriously equipped expedition
going forth to seek discomfort, for discomfort in several forms--dust,
rough roads, heat, cold, irregular hours, accidents--is pretty sure to
come to those who go a-gypsying in the South. But discomfort, after all,
is what the camper-out is unconsciously seeking. We grow weary of our
luxuries and conveniences. We react against our complex civilization,
and long to get back for a time to first principles. We cheerfully
endure wet, cold, smoke, mosquitoes, black flies, and sleepless nights,
just to touch naked reality once more.
Our two chief characters presented many contrasts: Mr. Ford is more
adaptive, more indifferent to places, than is Mr. Edison. His interest
in the stream is in its potential water-power. He races up and down its
banks to see its fall, and where power could be developed. He never
ceases to lament so much power going to waste, and points out that if
the streams were all harnessed, as they could easily be, farm labor
everywhere, indoors and out, could be greatly lessened. He dilates upon
the benefit that would accrue to every country neighborhood if the
water-power that is going to waste in its valley streams were set to
work in some useful industry, furnishing employment to the farmers and
others in the winter seasons when the farms need comparatively little
attention. He is always thinking in terms of the greatest good to the
greatest number. He aims to place his inventions within reach of the
great mass of the people. As with his touring-car, so with his tractor
engine, he has had the same end in view. Nor does he forget the
housewife. He has plans afoot for bringing power into every household
that will greatly lighten the burden of the women-folk.
Partly owing to his more advanced age, but mainly, no doubt, to his
meditative and introspective cast of mind, Mr. Edison is far less active
than is Mr. Ford. When we would pause for the midday lunch, or to make
camp at the end of the day, Mr. Edison would sit in his car and read, or
curl up, boy fashion, under a tree and take a nap, while Mr. Ford would
inspect the stream or busy himself in getting wood for the fire. Mr.
Ford is a runner and a high kicker, and frequently challenged some of
the party to race with him. He is also a persistent walker, and from
every camp, both morning and evening, he sallied forth for a brisk
half-hour walk. His cheerfulness and adaptability on all occasions, and
his optimism in regard to all the great questions, are remarkable. His
good-will and tolerance are boundless. Notwithstanding his practical
turn of mind, and his mastery of the mechanical arts and of business
methods, he is through and through an idealist. As tender as a woman, he
is much more tolerant. He looks like a poet, and conducts his life like
a philosopher. No poet ever expressed himself through his work more
completely than Mr. Ford has expressed himself through his car and his
tractor engine. They typify him; not imposing, nor complex, less
expressive of power and mass than of simplicity, adaptability, and
universal service, they typify the combination of powers and qualities
which make him a beneficent, a likable, and a unique personality. Those
who meet him are invariably drawn to him. He is a national figure, and
the crowds that flock around the car in which he is riding, as we pause
in the towns through which we pass, are not paying their homage merely
to a successful car-builder or business man, but to a beneficent human
force, a great practical idealist whose good-will and spirit of
universal helpfulness they have all felt. He has not only brought
pleasure and profit into their lives, but has illustrated and written
large upon the pages of current history a new ideal of the business
man--that of a man whose devotion to the public good has been a ruling
passion, and whose wealth has inevitably flowed from the depth of his
humanitarianism. He has taken the people into partnership with him, and
has eagerly shared with them the benefits that are the fruit of his
great enterprise--a liberator, an emancipator, through channels that are
so often used to enslave or destroy.
In one respect, essentially the same thing may be said of Mr. Edison:
his first and leading thought has been, What can I do to make life
easier and more enjoyable to my fellow-men? He is a great chemist, a
trenchant and original thinker on all the great questions of life,
though he has delved but little into the world of art and literature--a
practical scientist, plus a meditative philosopher of profound insight.
And his humor is delicious. We delighted in his wise and witty sayings.
A good camper-out, he turns vagabond very easily, can go with hair
disheveled and clothes unbrushed as long as the best of us, and can
rough it week in and week out and wear that benevolent smile. He eats so
little that I think he was not tempted by the chicken-roosts or
turkey-flocks along the way, nor by the cornfields and apple-orchards,
as some of us were, but he is second to none in his love for the open
and for wild nature.
Mr. Firestone belongs to an entirely different type--the clean,
clear-headed, conscientious business type; always on his job, always
ready for whatever comes; in no sense an outdoor man; always at the
service of those around him; a man generous, kindly, appreciative,
devoted to his family and his friends; sound in his ideas--a
manufacturer who has faithfully and honestly served his countrymen.
It is after he gets home that a meditative man really makes such a trip.
All the unpleasant features are strained out or transformed. In
retrospect it is all enjoyable, even the discomforts. I am aware that I
was often irritable and ungracious, but my companions were tolerant,
and gave little heed to the flitting moods of an octogenarian. Now, at
this distance, and sitting beside my open fire at Slabsides, I look upon
the whole trip with unmixed pleasure.