gets up excitedly. "We'd get along a lot better without one or two human
calliopes--" he begins.
"Set down, set down," says old Dobbs from the coils of his tuba. "Let
'em fight. They know it all between pieces--"
"Who asked you to horn in?" says Ed Smith, getting up preparatory to
going home with his baritone horn and leaving a broken and forlorn world
to grieve his loss.
Of course this is a crisis. But we never bust up. The Paynesville Band
busts up about twice a year over the division of profits and the color
of their new uniforms and the old question of whether the cornets or
trombones shall march in front. But we never go entirely to pieces. This
is largely because of Sam Green. He is our peacemaker and most faithful
player. He has played second alto in the band for thirty-five years
without a promotion, and is by all odds the worst player I ever saw,
being only entirely at home in the key of C; and he can't play
three-four time to save his soul. But his devotion is marvelous. He is
always the first man down to practice. He lights the lamps, builds the
fires, and when necessary goes out to Ed Smith's home and persuades him
to come back into the band for just this night. And whenever the dispute
between the factions gets to the point where Ed Smith begins gathering
up his doll things, Sam interferes.
"Come on now, boys," he pleads, "we've got to get this piece worked up.
You're all good players. Why, if Paynesville had you fellows, she'd
have a band. That was my fault that time. I'll get this here thing right
sometime. I'll sit out in the trio now and you fellows take it."
And pretty soon, as he argues, Ed's proud heart softens, and he comes
back with a glare at Cooney. Then Sim Askinson raps on his music rack
and says: "Gentlemen and trombone players," as he has for a quarter of a
century; and a minute later the band is tumbling eagerly through its
piece once more, all feuds suspended in the desperate effort to come out
even at the end with no surplus bars to be played by some floundering
horn.
Some time during the evening, as a rule, the various sections get
together on some passage and swim grandly through, every horn in perfect
time, and the parts blending like Mocha and Java. All differences are
forgotten, and the band breaks up with friendly words, Ed Smith and
Cooney going home together. Music has charms to soothe the savage beast,
and it also has a wonderful power of taking the temper out of the grocer
and the painter and the mahout of the waterwork's gasoline engine.
I never stepped so high or felt so grand as I did the first time I
marched out with the boys and went down the street in the back row of
the band next to the drums, a member in good standing, and dodging every
time I passed under a telephone wire to keep from scraping my cap off. I
never expect to feel that grand again. But I have an ambition. If ever I
should become so famous and successful that when I went back to Homeburg
to visit my proud and happy parents and stepped off of the 4:11 train, I
would find the Homeburg Marine Band there to meet me, I would know that
I had made good, and I would be content. The only thing that encourages
me in my ambition is that the band didn't come down to play when I went
away. Do you know, Jim, it's the funniest thing--the fellows we played
out-of-town in a blaze of glory never happened to be the chaps we came
down to the train to meet afterward, somehow. But I imagine we weren't
the only poor guessers in the world.
IX
THE AUTO GAME IN HOMEBURG
_It has Driven out Politics as a Subject of Debate_
Wait a minute, Jim. I want to look at this automobile.... Yes, I know it
is the sixth machine I've walked around in seven blocks, but what's time
to a New Yorker on Saturday afternoon? This nifty little mile-eater has
an electric gear shift, and I want to ask the chauffeur how he likes it.
Promised Ad Summers I would.
... Says it hangs a little if his voltage is low. That's what I'd be
afraid of--Gee! there's a new Jacksnipe with a center searchlight. Never
would do for rutty roads. How do you like the wire wheels, Jim? Bad for
side strains, I should think. Look at those foxy inset lamps. Listen to
that engine purr--two cycle, I'll bet. Say, Fifth Avenue is certainly
one great street! I could walk up and down here for a month. There's a
new Battleax--wonder if those two speed differentials are going to work
out.
All right, Jim, I'll reluctantly shut up and focus my attention on the
salmon-colored cloaks and green stockings for a while. I forgot that you
don't take any deep, abiding interest in automobiles. All they mean to
you is something to ride in, but to me they're as interesting as a new
magazine. I've spent about four days in the sales-rooms since I've been
here, and when I get home I'll be the center of breathless attention
until I've passed around all the information I've dug up. I could go
back without any information about the new shows, or the city campaign,
but if I were to come back without a bale of automobile gossip, I'd be
fired for gross incompetency from the League of Amateur Advisers at
Gayley's garage.
You thought I said I didn't own a machine? I did say it and I can prove
it. But do you suppose that makes any difference in Homeburg? Here the
other fellow's car is his own business. But in Homeburg an automobile is
every one's business. It's like the weekly newspaper, or the new
minister, or the latest wedding--it's common property. Since gasoline
has been domesticated we're all enthusiasts, whether we are customers or
not. The man who can't talk automobile is as lonely as the chap who
can't play golf at a country club. About all there is left for him to do
is to hunt up Postmaster Flint and talk politics. Flint has to talk all
our politics; it's what he's paid for, but it's mighty hard on him
because he just bought a new machine last spring himself.
No, you guessed wrong, Jim. Automobiles aren't a curiosity in Homeburg.
How many are there in New York? Say eighty thousand. One for every sixty
people. Homeburg has twenty-five hundred people and one hundred
machines, counting Sim Askinson's old one-lunger and Red Nolan's refined
corn sheller, which he built out of the bone-yard back of Gayley's
garage. That's one for every twenty-five people. Figure that out. It
only gives each auto five members of the family and twenty citizens to
haul around. We're about up to the limit. Of course another one hundred
people could buy machines, I suppose; but that would only allow twelve
and a half passengers, admirers, guests, and advisers for each car. That
isn't anywhere near enough. Why, it wouldn't be worth while owning a
machine! As it is, we are all busy. I've ridden in twenty new machines
this year and passed my opinion on them. It has taken a good deal of my
spare time. I've thought sometimes of buying one myself, but I don't
believe it would be right. If I had a car myself, I would have to
neglect all the others. It wouldn't do. Besides, I like to be peculiar.
Is every one in Homeburg a millionaire? Goodness, no! Our brag is that
we have less people per automobile than any other town, but then that's
the ordinary brag with an Illinois small town. We're not much ahead of
the others. Automobiles don't stand for riches out our way. Blamed if I
know what they do represent. Mechanical ingenuity, I guess. Country town
people pick up automobiles as easily as poor people do twins. And they
seem to support them about as inexpensively. If you were to take a trip
around Homeburg at seven A.M. on a Sunday morning, you would find about
eighty-seven automobile owners out in the back yard over, under, or
wrapped around their machines.
In the city you can only tell a car owner these days by his silk socks;
but in the country town the grimy hand is still the badge of the order.
The automobile owner does his own work, like his wife, and on Sunday
morning, instead of hustling for the golf links, he inserts himself into
his overalls and spends a couple of hours trying to persuade the
carbureter to use more air and less gasoline. The interest our
automobile owners take in the internals of their cars is intense. That
is the only thing which mars the pleasure of the professional guest,
such as myself. More than once I've sat in the sun twenty miles from
home while some host of mine has taken his engine down clear to the bed
plate, just because he had the time to do it and wanted to see how the
bearings were standing up.
I've lived in Homeburg all my life, but I haven't yet solved the mystery
of how some of our citizens own machines. It's a bigger mystery than
yours because our automobile owners pay their bills, and the mortgage
records don't tell us anything. There's Wilcox, the telegraph operator.
He makes seventy-five dollars a month. He works nights to earn it, and
he spends his days driving around the country in his runabout. He's
thirty years old, and I think he invested in an auto instead of a wife.
You can get a good meal in our local restaurant for twenty-five cents,
and when some painstaking plutocrat comes in and tries to spend a dollar
there, he has to be removed by kindly hands in a state of fatal
distension before the job is finished. A thousand dollars would buy
stock, fixtures, and good will. But a thousand wouldn't buy the
restaurant owner's automobile. He began with two hundred and fifty
dollars' worth of rubbish and a monkey wrench four years ago, and has
pottered and tinkered and traded and progressed until he now owns a last
year's model, staggering under labor-saving devices.
Our oculist, who does business in a tiny corner in a shoe-store and
never overcharged any one in his life, was our pioneer automobile owner.
He bought a homemade machine and a mule at the same time, and by
judiciously combining the two he got a good deal of mileage out of both.
He would work all morning getting the automobile down-town and all
afternoon getting the mule to haul it back. He has had three machines
since then, and the one he owns now is only third-hand.
For years Mrs. Strawn washed clothes for the town from morning till
night, two washings a day and all garments returned intact. Her boys
used to call at our house for the wash with a wheelbarrow. They come in
an automobile now. She bought it. It was a hopeless invalid at the time,
but they nursed it back to health, and I hear that next spring they are
going to trade it in for a new machine.... Why do I say machine? Because
that's what an automobile is out our way. It's a machine, and we treat
it as such. Most of our people couldn't take a lobster to pieces to save
their lives, but you ought to see them go through the shell of an auto.
Too many Americans buy portable parlors with sixty-seven coats of
varnish, and are then shocked and grieved to discover when too late that
said parlors have gizzards just like any other automobile and that they
should have been looked after.
I said there were one hundred automobiles in Homeburg. I was mistaken.
There are ninety-nine automobiles and one car. The Payleys own the car.
They bought it in New York, paid six thousand dollars for it, with a
chauffeur thrown in to drive them home, and they have been under his
thumb ever since. He was the only chauffeur who had ever been brought
alive in captivity to Homeburg, and the whole town inspected him with
the utmost care. He was the best stationary chauffeur I ever saw. He
seemed to regard that car as a monument and was shocked at the idea of
moving it around from place to place.
It was too high-priced a car to be touched by Sam Gayley, our local auto
doc., and somehow the chauffeur never seemed to be able to keep it in
running order long enough to get up to the Payley residence and take the
family out. He ran around the country a good deal, however, tuning it up
and trying it out, and as he was a sociable cuss, some of us always went
with him. In fact, about every one rode in the Payley car that summer
except the Payleys. Wert Payley used to stop me and ask if I could fix
it up to take him along sometime when I went riding with his chauffeur,
but I never would risk it. Besides, it would be imposing on the boy's
generosity to lug a friend along when you went riding.
The most of our machines vary from the one thousand, five hundred dollar
touring car to the five hundred dollar little fellows; and since they
have come, life in Homeburg is twice as interesting. They are our
dissipation, our excitement, our amusement, and the focus of our town
pride. The Checker Club disbanded last winter because the members got to
quarreling over self-starters, and I understand that in the Women's
Missionary Societies and the afternoon clubs the comparative riding
qualities of the various tonneaus about the city have about driven out
teething and styles as a subject of debate. For a while during the
Wilson campaign, it looked as if politics was going to get a foothold in
the town, but some enthusiast organized a flying squadron of automobiles
to propagate Democratic gospel, and then it was all off. Everybody
rushed into the squadron, and the trips around the district became
reliability runs, with a lone orator addressing the freeborn citizens
upon the tariff at each stop, and said freeborn citizens discussing
magnetos, springs, and tires with great earnestness and vehemence during
the speech.
Business always suspends for half a day whenever a new automobile comes
to town. There may be a dozen of the same make already, but that doesn't
make any difference. We are experts, trained to notice the finer shades
of perfection, and until we have seen each new machine put up the clay
hill four miles south of town and have ridden in it over the Q. B. & C.
crossing and the other places which show up bad springs, we can't fix
our minds on our work. Time was when a new baby could come into Homeburg
and hold the attention of the town for a week. Now a baby is lucky if
its birth notice isn't crowded out of the _Democrat_ to make room for
the list of new machines.
As for those of us who haven't automobiles, life is pleasant and without
responsibilities. We ride in every new automobile, and, what is more, we
go over it as carefully as a farmer does a new horse. We open its hood
and pry into its internal economy. We crank it to test its
compression--half the Homeburg men who have achieved broken wrists by
the crank route haven't autos at all. We denounce the owner's judgment
on oils and take his machine violently away from him in order to prove
that it will pull better uphill with the spark retarded. At night,
during the summer, we hurry through supper and then go out on the front
porch to wait for a chance to act as ballast.
No automobile owner in the dirt roads belt will go out without a full
tonneau if he can help it--makes riding easier--and this means permanent
employment during the evenings for about three hundred friends all
summer long. In fact the demand for ballast is often greater than the
supply. As a result, we have become hideously spoiled. I have passed up
as many as six automobiles in an evening on various captious pretexts,
waiting all the time for Sim Bone's car, whose tonneau is long and
exactly fits my legs. Once or twice Sim has failed to come around after
I have waved the rest of the procession by, and we have had to stay at
home. I have spoken to him severely about this, and he is more careful
now.
Because of our great interest in automobiles, vicarious or otherwise,
there is no class-hatred in Homeburg. If a man were to stop by the
roadside and begin to denounce the automobile as an oppressor of the
pedestrian, he would in all probability be kidnaped by some acquaintance
before he was half through and carried forty miles away for company's
sake. About the only Homeburg resident who doesn't ride is old Auntie
Morley, who broke her leg in a bobsled sixty years ago and has had a
holy horror of speed ever since.
In fact the only classes we have are the privileged class who merely
ride in automobiles and the oppressed class who ride and have to pay for
them, too. Lately the latter class has begun to feel itself abused and
has been grumbling a little, but we overlook it. No appeal to prejudice
and jealousy can move us. Of course, I don't think that an automobile
owner should be expected to leave his wife at home in order to
accommodate his neighbors, and there may be some just complaint when an
owner is called up late at night and asked to haul friends home from a
party to which he hasn't been invited. But on the whole the automobile
owners are very well treated. Suppose we spectators should band together
and refuse to ride in the things or talk about them! The market would
be glutted with second-hand cars in a month.
We have no trouble with the speed limit in Homeburg either. This may be
due partly to our good sense, but it is mostly due to our peculiar
crossings. Homeburg is paved with rich black dirt, and in order to keep
the populace out of the bosom of the soil in the muddy seasons, the
brick crossings are built high and solid, forming a series of
impregnable "thank-ye-marms" all over the town. One of our great
diversions during the tourist season is to watch the reckless strangers
from some other State dash madly into town at forty miles an hour and
hit the crossing at the head of Main Street. There is a crash and a
scream as the occupants of the tonneau soar gracefully into the top.
There is another crash and more screams at the other side of the street,
and before the driver has diagnosed the case, he has hit the Exchange
Street crossing, which sticks out like the Reef of Norman's Woe. When
he has landed on the other side of this crossing, he slows down and goes
meekly out of town at ten miles an hour, while we saunter forth and pick
up small objects of value such as wrenches, luncheon baskets, hairpins,
hats, and passengers.
Last summer we picked up an oldish man who had been thrown out of an
unusually jambangsome touring car. He had been traveling in the tonneau
alone, and even before he met our town he had not been enjoying himself.
The driver and his accomplice had not noticed their loss, and when we
had brushed off and restored the old gentleman, he said "Thank God!" and
went firmly over to the depot, where he took the next train for home,
leaving no word behind in case his friends should return--which they did
that afternoon and searched mournfully at a snail's pace for over twenty
miles on both sides of our town.
Since the automobile has begun to rage in our midst, the garage is the
center of our city life. The machine owners stop each day for
lubricating oil and news and conversation; the non-owners stroll over to
inspect the visiting cars and give advice when necessary; and the
loafers have abandoned the implement store, Emerson's restaurant, and
the back of McMuggins' drug store in favor of the garage, because they
find about seven times as much there to talk about. The city garage
can't compare with ours for adventure and news. I have spent a few hours
in your most prominent car-nurseries and I haven't heard anything but
profanity on the part of the owners and Broadway talk among the
chauffeurs.
In the country it's different. Take a busy day at Gayley's, for
instance. It usually opens about three A.M., when Gayley crawls out of
bed in response to a cataract of woe over the telephone and goes out
nine miles hither or yon to haul in some foundered brother. Gayley has a
soft heart and is always going out over the country at night to reason
with some erring engine; but since last April first, when he traveled
six miles at two A.M. in response to a call and found a toy automobile
lying bottom-side up in the road, he has become suspicious and
embittered, and has raised his prices.
At six A.M. Worley Gates, who farms eight miles south, comes in to catch
an early train and delivers the first bulletin. The roads to the south
are drying fast, but he went down the clay hill sidewise and had to go
through the bottom on low. At seven, Wimble Horn and Colonel Ackley and
Sim Bone drop in while waiting for breakfast. Bone thinks he'll drive to
Millford, but doesn't think he can get in an hour's business and get
back by noon.
This starts the first debate of the day, Colonel Ackley contending that
he has done the distance easily in an hour-ten, and Sim being frankly
incredulous. Experts decide that it can be done with good roads. Colonel
says he can do it in mud and can take the hills on high; says he never
goes into low for anything. Bill Elwin, one of our gasless experts,
reminds him of the time he couldn't get up Foster's Hill on second and
was passed by three automobiles and fourteen road roaches. This is a
distinct breach of etiquette on Bill's part, for he was riding with
Colonel at the time and should have upheld him. The discussion is just
getting good when Ackley's wife calls him home to breakfast over the
'phone, and the first tourist of the day comes in.
He has come from the west and has had heavy weather. He asks about the
roads east. Gibb Ogle, our leading pessimist, hastens to inform him that
very likely the roads are impassable, because the Highway Commissioners
have been improving them. Out our way road improvement consists of
tearing the roads out with a scraper and heaping them up in the middle.
It takes a road almost a year to recover from a good, thorough case of
improvement.
The stranger goes on dejectedly, and about nine A.M. young Andy Link
roars in with his father's car, which he has taken away from the old man
and converted into a racer by the simple process of taking off the
muffler and increasing the noise to one hundred miles per hour. Andy
declares that there has been no rain to the northwest and that he has
done sixty miles already this morning, but can't get his carbureter to
working properly, as usual. By this time several owners and a dozen
critics have assembled, and the morning debate on gasoline versus motor
spirit takes place. It ends a tie and both sides badly winded, when
Pelty Amthorne drives in, very mad. He has been over to Paynesville and
back. This is only twenty miles, but owing to the juicy and elusive
condition of the roads, his rear wheels have traveled upward of two
thousand miles in negotiating the distance and he has worn out two rear
casings.
Right here I wish to state that Homeburg roads are not always muddy. We
average three months of beautiful, smooth, resilient and joltless roads
each year. The remaining nine months, however, I mention with pain.
Illinois boosters say our beautiful rich black soil averages ten feet in
depth, but I think this understates the case--at least our beautiful
black dirt roads seem to be deeper than that in the spring. What we need
in the spring in Illinois are locks and harbor lights, and the man who
invents an automobile buoyant enough to float on its stomach and paddle
its way swiftly to and fro on the heaving bosom of our April roads will
be a public benefactor.
Pelty is justly indignant, because he had hoped to get another thousand
miles of actual travel out of his tires. We sympathize with him, but in
the middle of his grief Chet Frazier drives up. When he sees his ancient
enemy, he climbs out of his car, comes hastily over to where Pelty is
erupting, and starts trading autos with him.
Did you ever hear a couple of seasoned horse traders discussing each
other's wares? Horse traders are considerate and tender of each other's
feelings compared with two rural automobile owners who are talking swap
with any enthusiasm.
"Hello, Pelty," says Chet. "Separator busted again?"
Everybody laughs, and Chet walks all around the machine. "Why, it ain't
a separator at all," he finally says. "What is it, Pelty?"
"If you'd ever owned an automobile you'd know," grunts Amthorne,
hauling off a tire. "What's become of that tinware exhibit you used to
block up traffic with?"
Chet gets the laugh this time.
"That tinware exhibit stepped over from Jenniesburg in thirty minutes
flat this morning," says Chet. "Lucky you weren't on the road. I'd have
thrown mud on your wind shield."
"Say!" Pelty shouts. "Your machine couldn't fall ten miles in thirty
minutes. Why don't you get a real automobile? What will you give me to
boot for mine?"
They are off, and business in the vicinity suspends.
"I'll trade with you, Pelty," says Chet calmly--quite calmly. "Let me
look it over."
He walks carefully around the auto, opens the hood and looks in. "Funny
engine, isn't it? I saw one like that at the World's Fair."