It was about two o’clock when the north road left the cornfields and
reached the hill crests above the city. How the highway descended
over cliffs and retraced itself on ridges and wound into hollows to
get to the streets! At the foot of the first incline I met a lame cat
creeping, panic-stricken, out of town.
Oil City is an ugly, confused kind of place. There are thousands like
it in the United States.
I reached the post-office at last. _There was no letter for me at the
general delivery. I was expecting a missive._ And now my blistered
heels, and my breaking the rule to avoid the towns, and my detour of
half a day were all in vain.
Oil City, in her better suburbs, as a collection of worthy families in
comfortable homes, may have much to say for herself. But as a corporate
soul she has no excuse. The dominant, shoddy architecture is as
eloquent as the red nose of a drunkard. I do not need to take pains to
work her into my allegory. The name she has chosen makes her a symbol.
No doubt others reach the very heart of her only to find it empty as
the post-office was to me. Baffling as this may be, there is another
risk. Escape is not easy.
Almost out of town at last, I sat down by the fence, determined not to
stir till morning. I said, “I can sleep with my back against this post.”
I had just overtaken the lame cat, and she now moved past me over the
ridge to the cornfields. She seemed most unhappy. I looked back to that
oil metropolis. _I wondered how many had lived and died there when they
would have preferred some other place._