THE FRONTIER OF INDIANA
To me, therefore, this region was holy Ganges—Mecca, Medina—the blessed
isles of the West. In approaching Bowling Green, Ohio, I was saying to
myself how strange it will be to see H—— again, should he chance to be
there! What an interesting talk I will have with him! And after Bowling
Green how interesting to pass through Grand Rapids, even though there
was not a soul whom I would wish to greet again! Toledo was too far
north to bother about.
When we entered Bowling Green, however, by a smooth macadam road under a
blazing sun, it was really not interesting at all; indeed it was most
disappointing. The houses were small and low and everything was still,
and after one sees town after town for eight hundred or a thousand
miles, all more or less alike, one town must be different and possessed
of some intrinsic merit not previously encountered to attract attention.
I persuaded Franklin to stop at the office of the principal newspaper,
in order that I might make inquiry as to the present whereabouts of H——.
He had written me, about for years before, to say that he was connected
with a paper here. He wanted me to teach him how to write short stories!
It was a dull room or store, facing the principal street, like a bank.
In it were a young, reporterish looking boy, very trig and brisk and
curious as to his glance, and a middle aged man, bald, red faced,
roundly constructed like a pigeon, and about as active.
“Do you happen to recall a man by the name of H—— who used to work here
in Bowling Green?” I inquired of the elder, not willing to believe that
he had controlled a paper, though I had understood from someone that he
had.
“B—— H——?” he replied, looking me over.
“Yes, that’s the man.”
“He did work here on the other paper for a while,” he replied with what
seemed to me a faint look of contempt, though it may not have been. “He
hasn’t been here for four or five years at the least. He’s up in
Michigan now, I believe—Battle Creek, or Sheboygan, or some such place
as that. They might tell you over at the other office.” He waved his
hand toward some outside institution—the other paper.
“You didn’t happen to know him personally, I presume?”
“No, I saw him a few times. He was their general utility man, I
believe.”
I went out, uncertain whether to bother any more or not. Twentythree
years is a long time. I had not seen him in all of that. I started to
walk toward the other newspaper office, but the sight of the bare
street, with a buggy or two and an automobile, and the low, quiet store
buildings, deterred me.
“What’s the use?” I asked myself. “This is a stale, impossible
atmosphere. There isn’t an idea above hay and feed in the whole place.”
I climbed back in the car and we fled.
It was not much better for some distance beyond here until we began to
draw near Napoleon, Ohio. The country for at least twenty miles was
dreadfully flat and uninteresting—houses with low fences and prominent
chicken coops, orchards laden with apples of a still greenish yellow
color, fields of yellowing wheat or green corn—oh, so very flat. Not a
spire of an interesting church anywhere, not a respectable piece of
architecture, nothing. Outside of one town, where we stopped for a glass
of water, we did encounter a brick and plaster mausoleum—the adjunct, I
believe, of a crematory—set down at the junction of two macadam
crossroads, and enclosed by a most offensive wooden fence. Although
there were some wide fields and some patches of woods, which might have
been utilized to give an institution of this kind a little grace—it had
none, not the faintest trace. The ground was grassless, or only patched
in spots with it. The stained glass windows which ornamented its four
sides were botches—done by some wholesale stained-glass window company,
very likely of Peoria, Illinois.
“Kind heaven,” I exclaimed, on sight of it, “what is the matter with a
country where such things can be? What’s the trouble with their minds
anyhow? What a deadly yearning for the commonplace and crude and
offensive possesses them!”
“Yes, and they slave to do it,” replied Franklin. “You haven’t any idea
how people will toil for years under a hot sun or in cold or snow to be
able to build a thing like that”—and he pointed to a new yellow house of
the most repulsive design.
“You’re right! You’re right!” I replied.
“This country isn’t so bad, perhaps, but the intellectual or
temperamental condition of the people spoils it—their point of view. I
feel a kind of chicken raising mind to be dominant here. If another kind
of creature lived on this soil it would be lovely, I’m sure of it.”
We sank into a deep silence. The car raced on. Once Franklin, seeing
some fine apples on a tree, stopped the car, climbed a fence, and helped
himself to a dozen. They were better to look at than to eat.
It was only when we reached the region of the Maumee that things began
to brighten up again. We were entering a much fairer land—a region
extending from the Maumee here at Grand Rapids, Ohio, to Fort Wayne,
Warsaw and North Manchester, Indiana, and indeed, nearly all the rest of
our journey. We were leaving the manufacturing section of Ohio and the
East, and entering the grain growing, rural life loving middle West. The
Maumee, when we reached it again, revivified all my earliest and best
impressions of it. It was a beautiful stream, dimpling smoothly between
raised banks of dark earth and fringed for the most of the way by lines
of poplar, willow, and sycamore. Great patches of the parasite gold
thread flourished here—more gold thread than I ever saw in my life
before—looking like flames of light on a grey day, and covering whole
small islands and steep banks for distances of thirty or forty feet or
more at a stretch. We might have ridden into and through Grand Rapids,
but I thought it scarcely worth while. What would I see anyhow? Another
town like Bowling Green, only smaller, and the farm of H——'s parents,
perhaps, if I could find it. All this would take time, and would it be
worth while? I decided not. The Maumee, once we began to skirt its
banks, was so poetic that I knew it could not be better nor more
reminiscent of those older days, even though I followed it into Toledo.
But truly, this section, now that we were out of the cruder, coarser
manufacturing and farming region which lay to the east of it, appealed
to me mightily. I was beginning to feel as if I were in good company
again—better company than we had been in for some time. Perhaps the
people were not so pushing, so manufacturing,—for which heaven be
praised. We encountered three towns, Napoleon, Defiance and Hicksville,
before nightfall, which revived all the happiest days and ideals of my
youth. Indeed, Napoleon was Warsaw over again, with its stone and red
brick courthouse,—surmounted by a statute of Napoleon Bonaparte
(gosh!)—and its O. N. G. Armory, and its pretty red brick Methodist and
brown stone Presbyterian Churches and its iron bridges over the Maumee.
The river here was as wide and shallow a thing as had been the
Tippecanoe at home, at its best, with a few small boat houses at one
place, and lawns or gardens which came down to the water’s edge at
others. The principal street was crowded with ramshackle buggies and
very good automobiles (exceedingly fancy ones, in many instances) and
farmers and idlers in patched brown coats and baggy, shapeless
trousers—delightful pictures, every one of them. We eventually agreed to
stop, and got out and hung about, while Speed went back to a garage
which we had seen and treated himself to oil and gas.
Truly, if I were a poet, I would now attempt a “Rubaiyat of a Middle
West Town,” or I would compose “The Ballad of Napoleon, Ohio,” or
“Verses on Hicksville,” or “Rondels of Warsaw.” You have no idea what a
charm these places have—what a song they sing—to one who has ever been
of them and then gone out into the world and changed and cannot see life
any more through the medium—the stained glass medium, if you will—of the
time and the mood which we call our youth.
Here, as at Warsaw, the railroad station of an older day was hidden away
in a side street, where possibly six trains a day may have stopped. At
Warsaw we had the village bus, which took passengers to the one hotel.
Here they had a Ford, by heck!
“None o' your cheap busses for us any more!”
And in the plain red brick business street was this motley and yet
charming collection of people. I have indicated farmers and farmers'
wives in (the equivalent of) homespun and linen. Behold, now, your town
dandy, bustling into the bank or bookstore at two P. M. of this fine
afternoon, a veritable village Beau Brummell, very conscious of his
charms. He is between twentyone and twentythree, and very likely papar
owns the book or the clothing store and is proud of his son’s
appearance. In my day son would have had a smart runabout, with red or
yellow wheels, in which he would have arrived, picking up a very pretty
girl by the way. Now he has an automobile—even if it is only a Buick—and
he feels himself to be the most perfect of youths.
And here come three girls, arm in arm, village belles, so pretty in
their bright, summery washdresses. Do you think New York can teach them
anything—or Paris? Tush! Not so fast. Look at our skirts, scarcely below
the knees, with pointed ruffles, and flaring flounces, and our bright
grey kid slippers, and the delicate frills about our necks, and the soft
bloomy gaiety of our “sport” hats. New York teach us anything? We teach
New York, rather! We are down for mail, or stationery, or an ice cream
soda, and to see and be seen. Perhaps Beau Brummell will drive us home
in his car, or we may refuse and just laugh at him.
And, if you please, here is one of the town’s young scarlet women. No
companionship for her. She is dressed like the others, only more so, but
to emphasize the difference she is rouged as to cheeks and lips. Those
eager, seeking eyes! No woman will openly look at her, nor any girl. But
the men—these farmers and lawyers and town politicians! Which one of
them will seek her out first tonight, do you suppose—the lawyer, the
doctor, or the storekeeper?
How good it all tasted after New York! And what a spell it cast. I can
scarcely make you understand, I fear. Indiana is a world all unto
itself, and this extreme western portion of Ohio is a part of it, not by
official, but rather by natural arrangement. The air felt different—the
sky and trees and streets here were sweeter. They really were. The
intervening years frizzled away and once more I saw myself quite clearly
in this region, with the ideas and moods of my youth still dominant. I
was a “kid” again, and these streets and stores were as familiar to me
as though I had lived in them all my life.
Franklin and I were looking in at the window of the one combined music
and piano store, to see what they sold. All the popular songs were
there—"I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be a Soldier," “It’s a Long, Long Way to
Tipperary,” “He’s a Devil in His Own Home Town,” and others such as
“Goodbye, Goodbye” and “Though We Should Never Meet Again.” As I looked
at these things, so redolent of small town love affairs and of calling
Wednesdays and Saturdays, my mind went back to all the similar matters I
had known (not my own—I never had any) and the condition of the
attractive girl and the average young men in a town like this. How
careful is their upbringing—supposedly. How earnestly is the Sunday
School and the precept and the maxim invoked, and how persistently so
many of them go their own way. They do not know what it is all about,
all this talk about religion and morality and duty. In their blood is a
certain something which responds to the light of the sun and the blue of
the sky.
Did you ever read “The Ballad of the Nun,” by John Davidson? See if this
doesn’t suggest what I’m talking about:
"The adventurous sun took heaven by storm,
Clouds scattered largesses of rain,
The sounding cities, rich and warm,
Smouldered and glittered in the plain.
"Sometimes it was a wandering wind,
Sometimes the fragrance of the pine,
Sometimes the thought how others sinned,
That turned her sweet blood into wine.
"Sometimes she heard a serenade,
Complaining, sweetly, far away.
She said, ‘A young man woos a maid’;
And dreamt of love till break of day.
. . . . .
“For still night’s starry scroll unfurled,
And still the day came like a flood:
It was the greatness of the world
That made her long to use her blood.”
Somehow this region suggested this poem.
But, oh, these youngsters, the object of so much attention and
solicitation, once they break away from these sheltering confines and
precepts and enter the great world outside—then what? Do they fulfil any
or all of the ideals here dreamed for them? I often think of them in the
springtime going forth to the towns and the cities, their eyes lit with
the sheen of new life. Ninetynine per cent. of them, as you and I know,
end in the most humdrum fashion—not desperately or dramatically—just
humdrum and nothing at all. Death, disease, the doldrums, small jobs,
smaller ideas claim the majority of them. They grow up thinking that to
be a drug clerk or a dentist or a shoe dealer is a great thing. Well,
maybe it is—I don’t know. Spinoza was a watch repairer. But in youth all
are so promising. They look so fine. And in a small town like this, they
buzz about so ecstatically, dreaming and planning.
Seeing young boys walking through the streets of Napoleon and greeting
each other and looking at the girls—sidewise or with a debonair
security—brought back all the boys of my youth—all those who had been so
promising and of such high hopes in my day. Where are they? Well, I do
not need to guess. In most cases I know. They would make gloomy or dull
tales. Why bother? In spring the sun-god breeds a new crop. Each autumn
a new class enters school. Each spring time, at school’s end, a group
break away to go to the city.
Oh bright young hopes! Oh visions! visions!—mirages of success that hang
so alluringly in amethyst skies!