A SUMMER STORM AND SOME COMMENTS ON THE PICTURE POSTCARD
Shortly after leaving Ashtabula we ran into a storm—one of those fine,
windy, dusty, tree-groaning rains that come up simply and magnificently
and make you feel that you are going to be blown into kingdom come and
struck by lightning en route. As we sped through great aisles of trees
and through little towns all bare to our view through their open doors,
as though they had not a thing to conceal or a marauder to fear, the
wind began to rise and the trees to swish and whistle, and by the glare
of our own powerful headlight we saw clouds of dust rolling toward us. A
few heavy drops of water hit my head and face and someone, I suppose
Franklin (let me put all the blame I can on him in this story—what else
are hosts for?), suggested that we put up the top.
Now I, for one, vote automobile tops a nuisance. They are a crime,
really. Here was a fine electric storm, with the heavens torn with great
poles of light and the woods and the fields and distant little cottages
revealed every few seconds with startling definiteness—and we had to put
up the top. Why? Well, there were bags and coats and a camera and I know
not what else, and these things had to be protected. My own glasses
began to drip and my chin and my hair were very wet. So up went the top.
But, worse than that, the sides had to go up, for now the wind was
driving the rain sidewise and we were all getting soaked anyhow—so up
went the sides. Then, thus protected and with all the real beauty of the
night shut out, we rattled along, I pressing my nose to the isinglass
windows and wishing that I might see it all. I cursed God and man and
close, stuffy automobiles. I snuggled down in my corner and began to
dream again when presently, say one hour later, or two or three (it must
have been two or three, now that I think of it), another enormous bridge
such as that we had seen at Nicholsen, Pennsylvania, hove into view,
down a curve which our lamps illuminated with amazing clearness.
“Whoa!” I called to Speed, as though he were a horse.
“You’re right,” commented Franklin, without further observation on my
part. “That is interesting, isn’t it?” Though it was still raining, we
opened those storm curtains and clambered out, walking on ahead of the
car to stand and look at it. As we did a train came from somewhere—a
long, brightly lighted passenger train—and sped over it as noiselessly
as if it had been on solid ground. A large arch rose before us, an
enormous thing, with another following in the distance and bridging a
stream.
“Think I’d better sketch that?” queried Franklin.
“Indeed I do,” I replied, “if it interests you. It’s wonderful to me.”
We wandered on down the curve and under it, through a great arch. A
second bridge came into view—this time of iron—the one over which our
road ran, and beyond that a third, of iron or steel also, much higher
than either of the others. This last was a trolley bridge, and as we
stood here a trolley car approached and sped over it. At the same time
another train glided over the great stone arch.
“What is this—Bridge Centre?” I inquired.
“Transportationsburg,” replied Franklin. “Can’t you see?”
We fell to discussing lights and shadows and the best angle at which to
make the drawing.
But there was no umbrella between us—useless things, umbrellas—and so I
had to lay my mackintosh on Franklin’s head and hold it out in front of
him like an awning, while he peered under it and sketched and I played
porch posts. Sketching so, we talked of the great walls of Europe—Spain
and Italy—old Roman walls—and how these new things being built here in
this fashion must endure—long after we were gone—and leave traces of
what a wonderful nation we were, we Americans (German-Americans,
Austro-Americans, Greek-Americans, Italian-Americans, French-Americans,
English-Americans, Hindu-Americans).
“Just think, Franklin,” I chortled, “you and I may be remembered for
thousands and thousands of years as having stood here tonight and
sketched this very bridge.”
“Uh, huh,” he commented.
"It may be written that 'In A. D. 1915, Theodore Dreiser, accompanied by
one Franklin Booth, an artist, visited the site of this bridge, which
was then in perfect condition, and made a sketch of it, preserved now in
that famous volume entitled “A Hoosier Holiday,” by Theodore Dreiser.'"
“You know how to advertise your own wares, don’t you?” he said. “Who
made the sketch?”
“Why, Franklin Booth, of course.”
“But you didn’t say so.”
“Why didn’t I?”
“Because you didn’t.”
“Oh, well. We’ll correct all little errors like that in the proof.
You’ll be safe enough.”
“Will I?”
“Surely you will.”
“Well, in that case I’ll finish the sketch. For a moment I thought I
wouldn’t. But now that I’m sure to be preserved for posterity——”
He went scratching on.
The lights we saw ahead of us were those of Painesville, Ohio, another
manufacturing and trans-shipping city like Conneaut and Ashtabula, and
this was the Grand River we were crossing, a rather modest stream, it
seemed to me, for so large a name. (I learned its title from a picture
postcard later in the city.)
One should be impressed with the development of this picture postcard
business in American towns. What is there to photograph, you might ask,
of any of these places, large or small? Well, waterworks and soldiers'
monuments and the residences of principal citizens, and so on and so
forth. When I was a boy in Warsaw and earlier in Evansville and
Sullivan, there wasn’t a single picture postcard of this kind—only those
highly colored “panoramas” or group views of the principal cities, like
New York and Chicago, which sold for a quarter or at least fifteen
cents. Of the smaller towns there was nothing, literally nothing. No
small American town of that date would have presumed to suppose that it
had anything of interest to photograph, yet on this trip there was
scarcely a village that did not contain a rack somewhere of local views,
if no more than of clouds and rills and cattle standing in water near an
old bridge. By hunting out the leading drug store first, we could almost
invariably discover all there was to know about a town in a scenic way,
or nearly all. It was most gratifying.
This change in the number and character of our national facilities as
they affect the very small towns had been impressing me all the way.
When I was from eight to sixteen years of age, there was not a telephone
or a trolley car or an ice cream soda fountain (in the modern sense of
that treasure) or a roller-skating rink or a roller skate or a bicycle,
or an automobile or phonograph, or a moving picture theatre, or indeed
anything like the number of interesting and new things we have
now—flying machines and submarines, for instance. It is true that just
about that time—1880-1886—when I left Warsaw for the world outside, I
was beginning to encounter the first or some solitary examples of these
things. Thus the first picture postcards I ever found were in Chicago in
1896 or thereabouts, several years after I had visited the principal
eastern cities, and I would have seen them if there had been any. The
first electric light I ever saw was in Evansville, Indiana, in 1882,
where to my youthful delight and amazement they were erecting tall, thin
skeleton towers of steel, not less than one hundred and twentyfive feet
high, and only about four feet in diameter—(you may still see them in
Fort Wayne, Indiana)—and carrying four arc lights each at the top. Fifty
such towers were supposed to light the whole city of Evansville, a place
of between forty and fifty thousand, and they did, in a dim, mooney way.
I remember as a boy of twelve standing in wonder, watching them being
put up. Evansville seemed such a great city to me then. These towers
were more interesting as a spectacle than useful as a lighting system,
however, and were subsequently taken down.
The first telephone I ever saw was one being installed in the Central
Fire Station at Vincennes, Indiana, in 1880 or thereabouts. At the time
my mother was paying the enforced visit, later to be mentioned, to the
wife of the captain of this particular institution, a girl who had
worked for her as a seamstress years before. I was no more than eight at
the time, and full of a natural curiosity, and I remember distinctly
staring at the peculiar instrument which was being hung on a post in the
centre of the fire station, and how the various firemen and citizens
stood about and gaped. There was much excitement among the men because
of the peculiar powers of the strange novelty. I think, from the way
they stared at it, while Frank Bellett, the Captain, first talked
through it to some other office in the little city, they felt there must
be something spooky about it—some legerdemain by which the person
talking at the other end made himself small and came along the wire, or
that there was some sprite with a voice inside the box which as an
intermediary did all the talking for both parties. I know I felt that
there must be some such supernatural arrangement about it, and for this
reason I too looked with awe and wonder. As days passed, however, and
considerable talking was done through it, and my own mother, putting the
receiver to her ear, listened while her friend, the wife, called from
somewhere outside, my awe, if not the wonder, wore off. For years,
though, perhaps because I never used one until nearly ten years later,
the mystic character of the thing stuck in my mind.
[Illustration: THE BRIDGE THAT IS TO MAKE FRANKLIN FAMOUS]
It was much the same thing with the trolley car and the roller skate and
the bicycle. I never saw a trolley car until I was seventeen or eighteen
years of age, and then only an experimental one conducted on a mile of
track laid on North Avenue, Chicago, by the late Charles T. Yerkes, at
that time the principal traction magnate of Chicago. He was endeavoring
to find out whether the underground trolley was a feasible thing for use
in Chicago or not and had laid a short experimental section, or had had
it laid for him. I was greatly astonished, when I first saw it, to think
it would go without any visible means of propulsion—and that in spite of
the fact that I had already seen the second cable road built in America
running in State Street, Chicago, as early as 1884. At that time, our
family having come to Chicago for the summer, I ran an errand for a West
Madison Street confectioner which took me to a candy manufacturer’s
basement in State Street. There, through a window in the front of the
store, underground, I saw great engines going, and a cable on wheels
spinning by. Every now and then the grip of a car would appear and
disappear past an opening under the track, which was here. It was most
astonishing, and gave me a sense of vast inexplicable mystery which is
just as lively today as it ever was, and as warranted.
In regard to the bicycle, the first one I ever saw was in Warsaw in
1884—a high-wheeled one, not a safety!—and the first pair of roller
skates I ever saw was in the same place in 1885, when some adventurous
amusement provider came there and opened a roller-skating parlor. It was
a great craze for a while, and my brother Ed became an expert, though I
never learned. There were various storms in our family over the fact
that he was so eager for it, staying out late and running away, and
because my mother, sympathetic soul, aided and abetted him, so keen was
her sympathy with childhood and play, whereas my father, stern
disciplinarian that he was, objected. Often have I seen Ed hanging about
my mother’s skirts, and she, distressed and puzzled, finally giving him
a quarter out of her hard earned store to enjoy himself. He ought
certainly to have the most tender memories of her.
The first ice cream soda fountain I ever saw, or the first ice cream
soda I ever tasted, was served to me in Warsaw, Indiana, at the corner
book store, opposite the courthouse, subsequently destroyed. That was in
1885. It was called to my attention by a boy named Judson Morris, whose
father owned the store, and it served as an introduction and a basis for
future friendship, our family having newly moved to Warsaw. It had just
succeeded a drink known as the milk shake, which had attained great
popularity everywhere the preceding year. But ice cream soda! By my
troth, how pale and watery milk shake seemed in comparison! I fell, a
giddy victim, and have never since recovered myself or become as
enthusiastic over any other beverage.
And so I could continue—leaving Franklin and Speed waiting patiently in
Painesville, Ohio, in the rain, but I won’t. We hastened in after
Franklin made his sketch, and, owing to some extraordinary rush of
business which had filled the principal hotel, were compelled to take
refuge in a rickety barn of a house known as “The Annex”—an annex to
this other and much better one.