THE SCENIC ROUTE
It was a flash of all this that came to me when in the midst of the
blathering and fol de rol of a gay evening Franklin suddenly approached
me and said, quite apropos of nothing: “How would you like to go out to
Indiana in my car?”
“I’ll tell you what, Franklin,” I answered, “all my life I’ve been
thinking of making a return trip to Indiana and writing a book about it.
I was born in Terre Haute, down in the southwest there below you, and I
was brought up in Sullivan and Evansville in the southern part of the
state and in Warsaw up north. Agree to take me to all those places after
we get there, and I’ll go. What’s more, you can illustrate the book if
you will.”
“I’ll do that,” he said. “Warsaw is only about two hours north of our
place. Terre Haute is seventyfive miles away. Evansville is a hundred
and fifty. We’ll make a oneday trip to the northern part and a three-day
trip to the southern. I stipulate but one thing. If we ruin many tires,
we split the cost.”
To this I agreed.
Franklin’s home was really central for all places. It was at Carmel,
fifteen miles north of Indianapolis. His plan, once the trip was over,
was to camp there in his country studio, and paint during the autumn.
Mine was to return direct to New York.
We were to go up the Hudson to Albany and via various perfect state
roads to Buffalo. There we were to follow other smooth roads along the
shore of Lake Erie to Cleveland and Toledo, and possibly Detroit. There
we were to cut southwest to Indianapolis—so close to Carmel. It had not
occurred to either of us yet to go direct to Warsaw from Toledo or
thereabouts, and thence south to Carmel. That was to come as an
afterthought.
But this Hudson-Albany-State-road route irritated me from the very
first. Everyone traveling in an automobile seemed inclined to travel
that way. I had a vision of thousands of cars which we would have to
trail, consuming their dust, or meet and pass, coming toward us. By now
the Hudson River was a chestnut. Having traveled by the Pennsylvania and
the Central over and over to the west, all this mid-New York and
southern Pennsylvania territory was wearisome to think of. Give me the
poor, undernourished routes which the dull, imitative rabble shun, and
where, because of this very fact, you have some peace and quiet. I
traveled all the way uptown the next day to voice my preference in
regard to this matter.
“I’d like to make a book out of this,” I explained, “if the material is
interesting enough, and there isn’t a thing that you can say about the
Hudson River or the central part of New York State that hasn’t been said
a thousand times before. Poughkeepsie, Albany, Troy, Syracuse,
Rochester—all ghastly manufacturing towns. Why don’t we cut due west and
see how we make out? This is the nicest, dryest time of the year. Let’s
go west to the Water Gap, and straight from there through Pennsylvania
to some point in Ohio, then on to Indianapolis.” A vision of quaint,
wild, unexpected regions in Pennsylvania came to me.
“Very good,” he replied genially. He was playing with a cheerful,
pop-eyed French bull. “Perhaps that would be better. The other would
have the best roads, but we’re not going for roads exactly. Do you know
the country out through there?”
“No,” I replied. “But we can find out. I suppose the Automobile Club of
America ought to help us. I might go round there and see what I can
discover.”
“Do that,” he applauded, and I was making to depart when Franklin’s
brother and his chauffeur entered. The latter he introduced as “Speed.”
“Speed,” he said, “this is Mr. Dreiser, who is going with us. He wants
to ride directly west across Pennsylvania to Ohio and so on to
Indianapolis. Do you think you can take us through that way?”
A blond, lithe, gangling youth with an eerie farmerlike look and smile
ambled across the room and took my hand. He seemed half mechanic, half
street-car conductor, half mentor, guide and friend.
“Sure,” he replied, with a kind of childish smile that won instantly—a
little girl smile, really. “If there are any roads, I can. We can go
anywhere the car’ll go.”
I liked him thoroughly. All the time I was trying to think where I had
seen Speed before. Suddenly it came to me. There had been a car
conductor in a recent comedy. This was the stage character to life.
Besides he reeked of Indiana—the real Hoosier. If you have ever seen
one, you’ll know what I mean.
“Very good,” I said. “Fine. Are you as swift as your name indicates,
Speed?”
“I’m pretty swift,” he said, with the same glance that a collie will
give you at times—a gay, innocent light of the eyes!
A little while later Franklin was saying to me that he had no real
complaint against Speed except this: “If you drive up to the St. Regis
and go in for half an hour, when you come out the sidewalk is all
covered with tools and the engine dismantled—that is, if the police have
not interfered.”
“Just the same,” put in Fred Booth, “he is one of the chauffeurs who led
the procession of cars from New York over the Alleghanies and Rockies to
the coast, laying out the Lincoln Highway.” (Afterwards I saw
testimonials and autographed plates which proved this.) “He can take a
car anywhere she’ll go.”
Then I proceeded to the great automobile club for information.
“Are you a member?” asked the smug attendant, a polite, airy, bufferish
character.
“No, only the temporary possessor of a car for a tour.”
“Then we can do nothing for you. Only members are provided with
information.”
On the table by which I was standing lay an automobile monthly. In its
pages, which I had been idly thumbing as I waited, were a dozen maps of
tours, those deceptive things gotten up by associated roadhouses and
hotels in their own interest. One was labeled “The Scenic Route,” and
showed a broad black line extending from New York via the Water Gap,
Stroudsburg, Wilkes-Barré, Scranton, Binghamton, and a place called
Watkins Glen, to Buffalo and Niagara Falls. This interested me. These
places are in the heart of the Alleghanies and of the anthracite coal
region. Visions of green hills, deep valleys, winding rivers, glistering
cataracts and the like leaped before my mind.
“The Scenic Route!” I ventured. “Here’s a map that seems to cover what I
want. What number is this?”
“Take it, take it!” replied the lofty attendant, as if to shoo me out of
the place. “You are welcome.”
“May I pay you?”
“No, no, you’re welcome to it.”
I bowed myself humbly away.
“Well, auto club or no auto club, here is something, a real route,” I
said to myself. “Anyhow it will do to get us as far as Wilkes-Barré or
Scranton. After that we’ll just cut west if we have to.”
On the way home I mooned over such names as Tobyhanna, Meshoppen,
Blossburg, and Roaring Branch. What sort of places were they? Oh, to be
speeding along in this fine warm August weather! To be looking at the
odd places, seeing mountains, going back to Warsaw and Sullivan and
Terre Haute and Evansville!