Here they come. Five merry travelers in a snorting, dust-caked automobile.
Wanderers, egad! Bowling rakishly across the country. Dusters and goggles
and sunburn. Prairie nights have sung to them. Little towns have grinned
at them. Mountains, valleys, forests and stars have danced across their
windshield.
The newspaper man stood watching them haul up to the Adams Street curb.
His heart was tired of tall buildings and the endless grimace of windows.
Here was a chariot out of another world. Motor vagabonds. Scooting into a
city with a swagger to their dust-caked wheels. And scooting out again.
The newspaper man thought, "The world isn't buried yet. There's still a
restlessness left. Things change from triremes to motor boats, from
Rosinante to automobiles. But adventure merely mounts a new seat and goes
on. Dick Hovey sang it once:
"I am fevered with the sunset,
I am fretful with the bay,
For the wander thirst is on me
And my soul is in Cathay."
The five merry travelers crawled out and stretched themselves. They doffed
their goggles and slipped off their linen dusters and changed forthwith
from a group of flying gnomes into five tired-looking citizens of
California. Two middle aged women. Two middle-aged men and a son.
One of the men said, "Well, we'll lay up here for awhile, I got a blister
on my hand from the wheel."