IN AND OUT OF SCRANTON
Darkness had fallen when we reached Scranton. We approached from the
south along a ridge road which skirted the city and could see it lying
below to the east and ablaze with arc lights. There is something so
appealing about a city in a valley at dark. Although we had no reason
for going in—our road lay really straight on—I wanted to go down,
because of my old weakness, curiosity. Nothing is more interesting to me
than the general spectacle of life itself in these thriving towns of our
new land—though they are devoid of anything historic or in the main
artistic (no memories even of any great import). I cannot help
speculating as to what their future will be. What writers, what
statesmen, what arts, what wars may not take their rise in some such
place as this?
And there are the indefinable and yet sweet ways of just life. We
dwellers in big cities are inclined to overlook or forget entirely the
half or quarter cities in which thousands upon thousands spend all their
lives. For my part, I am never tired of looking at just mills and
factories and those long lines of simple streets where just common
people, without a touch perhaps of anything that we think of as great or
beautiful or dramatic, dwell. I was not particularly pleased with
Scranton after I saw it—a sprawling world of perhaps a hundred and fifty
or two hundred thousand people without the verve or snap of a half
hundred places half its size,—but still here were all these people. It
was a warm night and as we descended into commonplace streets we could
look through the open windows of homes or “apartments” or “flats” and
see the usual humdrum type of furniture and hangings, the inevitable
lace curtains, the centre tables, the huge, junky lamps, the upright
pianos or victrolas. Whenever I see long, artless streets like these in
the hot, breathless summer time, I feel a wave of commiseration sweep
over me, and yet I am drawn to them by something which makes me want to
live among these people.
Oh, to escape endless cogitation! To feel that a new centre table or a
new lamp or a new pair of shoes in the autumn might add something to my
happiness! To believe that mere eating and drinking, the cooking of
meals, the prospect of promotion in some small job might take away the
misery of life, and so to escape chemistry and physics and the horror of
ultimate brutal law! “In the streets of Ur,” says an old Chaldean
chronicle, “the women were weeping for that Bel was dead.” Bel was their
Christ and they were weeping as some people weep on Good Friday to this
day. Such women one might find here in Scranton, no doubt; believers in
old tales of old things. After five or six thousand years there is still
weeping in simple streets over myths as vain!
Once down in the heart of Scranton, I did not care for it at all. It was
so customary—an American city like Utica or Syracuse or Rochester or
Buffalo—and American cities of the hundred thousand class are so much
alike. They all have the long principal street—possibly a mile long.
They all have the one or two skyscrapers and the principal dry goods
store and the hotel and the new post office building and the new
Carnegie library and sometimes the new court house (if it’s a county
seat), or the new city hall. Sometimes these structures are very
charming in themselves—tastefully done and all that—but most American
cities of this class have no more imagination than an owl. They never
think of doing an original thing.
Do you think they would allow the natural configuration of their land or
any river front, or lake, or water of any kind to do anything for them?
Not at all. It’s the rarest exception when, as at Wilkes-Barré for
instance, a city will take the slightest æsthetic advantage of any
natural configuration of land or water.
What! put a park or esplanade or a wall along a handsome river bank in
the heart of the town! Impossible. Put it far out in the residence
section where it truly belongs and let the river go hang. Isn’t the
centre of a city for business? What right has a park there?
Or perhaps it is a great lake front as at Buffalo or Cleveland, which
could or should be made into something splendid—the municipal centre,
for instance, or the site of a great park. No. Instead the city will
bend all its energies to growing away from it and leave it to shabby
factories and warehouses and tumble-down houses, while it constructs
immense parks in some region where a park could never possibly have as
much charm as on the water front.
Take the City of St. Louis as a case in point. Here is a metropolis
which has a naturally fascinating water front along the Mississippi.
Here is a stream that is quite wonderful to look at—broad and deep.
Years ago, when St. Louis was small and river traffic was important, all
the stores were facing this river. Later railroads came and the town
built west. Today blocks and blocks of the most interesting property in
the city is devoted to dead-alive stores, warehouses and tenements. It
would be an easy matter and a profitable one for the city to condemn
sufficient property to make a splendid drive along this river and give
the city a real air. It would transform it instantly into a kind of
wonder world which thousands would travel a long way to see. It would
provide sites for splendid hotels and restaurants and give the city a
suitable front door or facade.
But do you think this would ever be seriously contemplated? It would
cost money. One had better build a park away from the river where there
are no old houses. The mere thought of trading the old houses for a
wonderful scene which would add beauty and life to the city is too much
of a stretch of the imagination for St. Louisians to accomplish. It
can’t be done. American cities are not given to imagination outside the
walks of trade.
Scranton was no worse than many another American city of the same size
and class that I have seen—or indeed than many of the newer European
cities. It was well paved, well lighted and dull. There were the usual
traffic policemen (like New York, b’gosh!), but with no traffic to
guide, the one hotel designed to impress, the civic square surrounded by
rows of thickly placed five-lamp standards. It was presentable, and,
because Speed wanted to get oil and gasoline and we wanted to see what
the town was like, we ran the machine into a garage and wandered forth,
looking into shoe and bookstore windows and studying the people.
Here again I could see no evidence of that transformation of the
American by the foreigner into something different from what he has ever
been—the peril which has been so much discussed by our college going
sociologists. On the contrary, America seemed to me to be making over
the foreigner into its own image and likeness. I learned here that there
were thousands of Poles, Czechs, Croatians, Silesians, Hungarians, etc.,
working here in the coal mines and at Wilkes-Barré, but the young men on
the streets and in the stores were Americans. Here were the American
electric signs in great profusion, the American bookstores and
newsstands crowded with all that mushy adventure fiction of which our
lady critics are so fond. Five hundred magazines and weekly publications
blazed the faces of alleged pretty girls. “The automat,” the “dairy
kitchen,” the “Boston,” “Milwaukee” or “Chicago” lunch, and all the
smart haberdasheries so beloved of the ambitious American youth, were in
full bloom. I saw at least a half dozen moving-picture theatres in as
many blocks—and business and correspondence schools in ample array.
What becomes of all the young Poles, Czechs, Croatians, Serbians, etc.,
who are going to destroy us? I’ll tell you. They gather on the street
corners when their parents will permit them, arrayed in yellow or red
ties, yellow shoes, dinky fedoras or beribboned straw hats and
“style-plus” clothes, and talk about “when I was out to Dreamland the
other night,” or make some such observation as “Say, you should have
seen the beaut that cut across here just now. Oh, mamma, some baby!”
That’s all the menace there is to the foreign invasion. Whatever their
original intentions may be, they can’t resist the American yellow shoe,
the American moving picture, “Stein-Koop” clothes, “Dreamland,” the
popular song, the automobile, the jitney. They are completely undone by
our perfections. Instead of throwing bombs or lowering our social level,
all bogies of the sociologist, they would rather stand on our street
corners, go to the nearest moving pictures, smoke cigarettes, wear high
white collars and braided yellow vests and yearn over the girls who know
exactly how to handle them, or work to some day own an automobile and
break the speed laws. They are really not so bad as we seem to want them
to be. They are simple, gauche, de jeune, “the limit.” In other words,
they are fast becoming Americans.
I think it was during this evening at Scranton that it first dawned on
me what an agency for the transmission of information and a certain kind
of railway station gossip the modern garage has become. In the old days,
when railroads were new or the post road was still in force, the depot
or the inn was always the centre for a kind of gay travelers' atmosphere
or way station exchange for gossip, where strangers alighted, refreshed
themselves and did a little talking to pass the time. Today the garage
has become a third and even more notable agency for this sort of
exchange, automobile travelers being for the most part a genial company
and constantly reaching out for information. Anyone who knows anything
about the roads of his native town and country is always in demand, for
he can fall into long conversation with chauffeurs or tourists in
general, who will occasionally close the conversation with an offer of a
drink or a cigar, or, if he is going in their direction, take him for a
part of the way at least as a guide.
Having found Scranton so dull that we could not make up our minds to
remain overnight, we returned to the garage we were patronizing and
found it crowded to the doors with cars of all descriptions and
constantly being invaded by some others in search of something. Here
were a group of those typical American hangers-on or loafers or city
gossips or chair warmers—one scarcely knows what to call them—who, like
the Roman frequenters of the Forum or the Greek “sitters at the place of
customs,” gather to pass the time by watching the activity and the
enthusiasm of others. Personally my heart rather yearns over that
peculiar temperament, common enough to all the abodes of men, which for
lack of spirit or strength or opportunity in itself to get up and do, is
still so moved by the spectacle of life that it longs to be where others
are doing. Here they were, seven or eight of them, leaning against
handsome machines, talking, gesticulating and proffering information to
all and sundry who would have it. Owing to the assertion of the
proprietor’s helper (who was eager, naturally enough, to have the car
housed here for the night, as he would get a dollar for it) that the
roads were bad between here and Binghamton, a distance of sixtynine
miles, we were a little uncertain whether to go on or no. But this
charge of a dollar was an irritation, for in most garages, as Speed
informed us, the night charge was only fifty cents. Besides, the same
youth was foolish enough to confess, after Speed questioned him, that
the regular charge to local patrons was only fifty cents.
Something in the youth’s description of the difficulties of the road
between here and Binghamton caused me to feel that he was certainly
laying it on a little thick. According to him, there had been terrible
rains in the last few weeks. The road in spots was all but impassable.
There were great hills, impossible ravines, and deadly railroad
crossings. I am not so much of an enthusiast for night riding as to want
to go in the face of difficulties—indeed I would much rather ride by
day, when the beauties of the landscape can be seen,—still this attempt
to frighten us irritated me.
[Illustration: FRANKLIN STUDIES AN OBLITERATED SIGN]
And then the hangers-on joined in. Obviously they were friends of the
owner and, like a Greek chorus, were brought on at critical moments to
emphasize the tragedy or the terror or the joy, as the case might be.
Instantly we were assailed with new exaggerations—there were dreadful,
unguarded railway crossings, a number of robberies had been committed
recently, one bridge somewhere was weak.
This finished me.
“They are just talking to get that dollar,” I whispered to Franklin.
“Sure,” he replied; “it’s as plain as anything. I think we might as well
go on.”
“By all means,” I urged. “We’ve climbed higher hills and traversed worse
or as bad roads today as we will anywhere else. I don’t like Scranton
very well anyhow.”
My opposition was complete. Speed looked a little tired and I think
would have preferred to stay. But my feeling was that at least we could
run on to some small inn or country town hotel where the air would be
fresher and the noises less offensive. After a long year spent in the
heart of New York, I was sick of the city—any city.
So we climbed in and were off again.
It was not so long after dark. The road lay north, through summery
crowded streets for a time and then out under the stars. A cool wind was
blowing. One old working man whom we had met and of whom we had asked
the way had given us something to jest over.
“Which way to Dalton?” we called. This was the next town on our road.
“Over the viderdock,” he replied, with a wave of his arm, and thereafter
all viaducts became “viderdocks” for us. We sank into the deep leather
cushions and, encountering no bad roads, went comfortably on. The trees
in places hung low and seemed to make arched green arbors through which
we were speeding, so powerful were our lamps. At one place we came upon
a brilliantly lighted amusement resort and there we could not resist
stopping. There was music and dancing and all the young clerks and beaus
for miles around were here with their girls. I was so entranced that I
wanted to stay on, hoping that some young girl might talk to me, but not
one gave me even so much as a smile. Then we came to a country inn—an
enticing looking thing among great trees—but we were awake now, enjoying
the ride, and Speed was smoking a cigarette—why quit now? So on and on,
up hills and down dale, and now and then we seemed to be skirting the
Susquehanna. At other times we seemed to be off in side hills where
there were no towns of any size. A railroad train came into view and
disappeared; a trolley track joined us and disappeared; a toll road made
us pay fifteen cents—and disappeared. At last as it neared unto midnight
I began to get sleepy and then I argued that, whatever town came next,
we should pause there for the night.
“All right,” said Franklin genially, and then more aisles and more
streams and more stores—and then in the distance some manufactories came
into view, brightly lighted windows reflected in some water.
“Here we are,” I sighed sleepily, but we weren’t, not quite. This was a
crossroad somewhere—a dividing of the ways—but the readable signs to say
which way were not visible. We got out and struck matches to make the
words more intelligible. They had been obliterated by rust. I saw a
light in a house and went there. A tall, spare man of fifty came out on
the porch and directed us. This was Factoryville or near it, he
said—another mile on we would find an inn. We were something like
twentyfive miles from Scranton. If you stop and look at electric parks
and watch the dancers, you can’t expect to make very good time. In
Factoryville, as dark and silent as a small sleeping town may be, we
found one light—or Franklin did—and behind it the village barber reading
a novel. In the shadow of his doorway Franklin entered into a long and
intimate discussion with him—about heaven only knows what. I had already
noted of Franklin that he could take up more time securing seeming
information than any human being I had ever known. It was astounding how
he could stand and gossip, coming back finally with such a simple
statement as, “He says turn to the right,” or “We go north.” But why a
week to discover this, I used to think. Finally, almost arm in arm with
the barber, they disappeared around a corner. A weary string of moments
rolled past before Franklin strolled back to say there was no real
inn—no hotel that had a license—but there was a man who kept a “kind of
a hotel” and he had a barn or shed, which would do as a garage.
“Better stay, eh?” he suggested.
“Well, rather,” I answered.
When we had unslung our bags and coats, Speed took the car to the barn
in the rear and up we went into a typical American papier mâché room.
The least step, the least movement, and wooden floors and partitions
seemed to shout. But there were two large rooms with three beds and,
what was more, a porch with a wooden swing. There was a large porcelain
bath in a room at the rear and pictures of all the proprietor’s
relatives done in crayon.
How we slept! There were plenty of windows, with a fresh breeze blowing
and no noises, except some katydids sawing lustily. I caught the perfume
of country woods and fields and, afar off, as I stretched on an easy
bed, I could hear a train whistling and rumbling faintly—that far off
Ooh!—ooh!—oo!—oo!
I lay there thinking what a fine thing it was to motor in this haphazard
fashion—how pleasant it was not to know where you were going or where
you would be tomorrow, exactly. Franklin’s car was so good, Speed so
careful. Then I seemed to be borne somewhere on great wings, until the
dawn coming in at the window awakened me. The birds were singing.
“Oh, yes, Factoryville,” I sighed. “That’s where we are. We’re motoring
to Indiana.”
And I turned over and slept another hour.