CHIVALRY VS. GUMBO
A guide, who at the age of twelve had in disgust left his native state,
once epitomized it to me.
“Texas is a hell of a state. Chock full of socialists, horse-thieves
and Baptists.”
Socialists and horse-thieves we did not encounter; it must have been
the Baptists, then, who were responsible for the law putting citizens
who purchase gasoline on Sunday in the criminal class. Unluckily
the easy-going garage man who obligingly gave us all other possible
information neglected to tell us of this restriction on Saturday
night. Accordingly, when we started on Sunday morning, we had only
five gallons and a hundred odd miles to go. We had no desire to meet
Houston’s judiciary again.
A little group of advisers gathered to discuss our problem. The road
our New York optimist had routed for us as “splendid going all the
way” was a sea of mud. Four mule teams could not pull us out, we were
told. Three months of steady rain had reduced the State of Texas to
a state of “gumbo.” Each man had a tale of encounter and defeat for
each road suggested. Each declared the alternatives suggested by the
others impossible. But, at last, came one who had “got through” by the
Sugarland road the day before. He voiced the definition of a good road
in Texas, a definition which we frequently encountered afterward.
“The road’s all right, ef yo’ don’t boag, otherwise you’ll find it
kinder rough.”
With this dubious encouragement we started, at nine in the morning,
hoping the Baptists further out in the country would grow lenient in
the matter of gasoline, as the square of their distance from Houston.
It was a heavenly day, the sun hot and the vibrant blue sky belying
the sodden fields and brimming ditches. The country, brown and faintly
rolling, under the warmth of the Southern springtime was reminiscent of
the Roman Campagna. Song sparrows filled the air with abrupt showers of
music, and now and then a bald and black-winged buzzard thudded down
into a nearby field. For miles on both sides of the road we saw only
black soil soaked and muddy, with rivers for furrows, and only a few
brown stalks standing from last year’s cotton or rice crop. The eternal
flatness of the country suggested a reason for the astounding height
of the loose-jointed Texans we had seen; they had to be tall to make
any impression on the landscape. It accounted, too, for their mild,
easy-going, unhurried and unhurriable ways. What is the use of haste,
when as much landscape as ever still stretches out before one?
Before we reached Sugarland, a lonesome group of houses on what had
once been a huge sugar plantation, our misgivings began. Mud in Texas
has a different meaning from mud in Massachusetts; it means gumbo,
morasses, Sargasso Seas, broken axles, abandoned cars. From the
reiteration of the words, “Yo’ may git through, but I think yo’ll boag”
we began to realize that it was easier to get into Texas, even through
the eye of the police court, than to get out of it.
At Sugarland we took on illicit gasoline and a passenger. He was bound
for a barbecue, but volunteered to steer us through a particularly bad
spot a mile further. We roused his gloom by a reference to the Blue
Laws of Texas.
“Ef this legislatin’ keeps on,” he said, “a man’ll have to git a permit
to live with his wife. Texas aint what it used to be. This yere’s a
dry, non-gambling county, but this yere town’s the best town in the
state.”
We followed his gesture wonderingly toward the lonely cluster of
houses, a warehouse, a store, an ex-saloon with the sign badly painted
out, and “refreshments” painted in, and the usual group of busy loafers
at the store.
“Yes ma’am. It’s a good town. Twice a year on Gawge Washin’ton’s
birthday and the Fo’th we hold a barbecue an’ everyone in the county
comes. I’m right sorry I cain’t take yo’ ladies along; I’m sure I could
show yo’ a good time. Whiskey flows like water, we roast a dozen oxen,
and sometimes as much as fifteen thousand dollars will change hands at
one crap game. We whoop it up for a week, and then we settle down, and
mind the law again.”
Under the guidance of our kindly passenger, we learned a new technique
in driving. In first gear, avoiding the deceptively smooth but slimy
roadside, we made for the deepest ruts, racing the engine till it
left a trail of thick white smoke behind, clinging to the steering
wheel, while the heavy car rocked and creaked in the tyrannical grip
of the ruts like a ship in the trough of the waves. Without our
friend, we never should have got through. He walked ahead, selected
the impassable places from those which merely looked so, and beamed,
when rocked and bruised from the wheel I steered the good car to
comparatively dry land. A little further, where the barbecue began, he
bade us a regretful farewell, and requested us to look him up when next
we came to Texas.
“I sure would ’a liked to have went to Boston,” he added, “but I aint
sure ef I had ’a went theah, whetheh I could ’a understood their
brogue.”
Since Houston we had learned the full meaning of Texas optimism. “Roads
are splendid, ma’am. I think you’ll git through,” we mentally labeled
as “probably passable.” But when we heard, in the same soft, gentle
monotone, “Pretty poor roads, ma’am; I think yo’ll boag,” we knew we
should “boag”--bog to the hubs in a plaster of Paris cast. At Richmond,
where they told us that the roads which Houston had described as
“splendid” were quite impassable, we sadly learned that to a Texan, any
road twenty miles away is a “splendid road,” ten miles away is “pretty
fair,” but at five, “you’ll sure boag.”
Again we faced the probability of progressing only a few miles further
on Texas soil, but the town flocked to our aid, told us of two
alternate roads, and promptly split into two factions, each claiming
we should “boag” if we took the road advised by the other. A friendly
soda clerk gained our confidence by asserting he never advised any
road he had not traveled personally. He was such a unique change from
the rest of Texas that we took his advice and the East Bernard road
to Eagle Lake. It was only the fourth change from our original route
planned when overlooking the asphalt of New York, and each detour
decreased our chances of getting back to the highways. But there was
no alternative. The soda clerk as he served us diluted ginger ale,
reassured us. “It’s a pretty good road, and ef yo’ don’t boag, I think
yo’ll git through.”
We bogged. We came, quite suddenly to a tell-tale stretch of black,
spotting the red-brown road, and knew we were in for it. At each foot,
we wondered if we should bog in the next. Eliza must have felt the
same way, crossing the ice, especially when a cake slipped from under
her. As directed, I kept to the ruts. Sometimes they expanded to a
three-foot hole, into which the car descended with a heart-rending
thump. Once in a rut, it was impossible to get out. The mud, of the
consistency of modeling clay, would have made the fortune of a dealer
in art supplies. At last, a wrong choice of ruts pulled us into this
stiff mass to our hubs, almost wrenching the differential from the car,
and we found ourselves stopping. As soon as we stopped, we were done
for. We sank deeper and deeper.
We got out, sinking ourselves halfway to the knees in gumbo. We were on
a lonely road in an absolutely flat country, with not a house on the
horizon. We had no ropes, and no shovel. We looked at the poor car,
foundered to her knees in sculptor’s clay, and wondered how many dismal
days we must wait before the morass dried.
And then came the first manifestation of a peculiar luck which followed
us on our entire trip. Never saving us from catastrophe, it rescued us
in the most unlikely fashion, soon after disaster.
Along rode a boy--on horseback--the first person we had seen for hours.
We stopped him, and inquired where we could find a mule, a rope and
a man. Having started out to make the trip without masculine aid, it
chagrined us to have to resort to it at our first difficulty, but we
were not foolish enough to believe we could extricate the car unaided
from its bed of sticky clay. The boy looked at us, looked at the
imprisoned machine, and silently spat. Texas must have a law requiring
that rite, with penalties for infringement thereof. We never saw it
broken.
The formality over, he replied, “I don’t know.” We suggested
planks,--he knew of none. We put him down, bitterly, as an ill-natured
dolt. But, as we learned later, Texans move slowly, but their hearts
are in the right place. He was only warming up. Finally he spat again,
lighted a cigarette, got off his horse, silently untied a rope from
his saddle, and bound it about our back wheel, disregarding calmly the
mire sucking at his boots. I started the engine. No results. All three
watched the fettered Gulliver helplessly. Then, while Toby and I lifted
out heavy suitcases and boxes from the seat which held the chains, he
watched us, with the mild patience of an ox.
Reinforcements came, a moment later, from a decrepit buggy, containing
a boy and two girls. They consulted, on seeing our plight, and the
girls, hearty country lasses in bare feet and sunbonnets, urged their
escort, apparently to his relief, to stay the Sunday courtship and give
us aid. Of more agile fettle than our first knight, he galvanized him
into a semblance of motion. Together they gathered brush, and, denuding
their horses for the purpose, tied bits of rope to the rear wheels. The
engine started, stalled, and started again a dozen times. At last the
car stirred a bit from her lethargy, the two boys put their country
strength against her broad back and pushed; the engine roared like a
man-eating tiger--and we got out.
But we still had to conquer a black stretch of about one hundred yards,
in which one of our rescuers had broken an axle, so he cheerfully
told us, only yesterday. We were faced with the problem to advance or
retreat? Either way was mud. We might get caught between two morasses,
and starve to death before the sun dried the roads. We might turn back,
but why return to conditions we had worked two hours to escape? We
decided to advance boldly, and, if need be, gloriously break an axle.
“Race her for all she’s worth,” counseled the livelier of our rescuers,
from the running board where he acted as pilot. I raced her, though it
nearly broke my heart to mistreat the engine so cruelly. We wavered,
struck a rut, and were gripped in it, as in the bonds of matrimony, for
better or worse. It led us to a gruesome mass of “soup,” with a yawning
hole at the bottom.
“Here’s where I broke my axle,” shouted my pilot. To break the shock
meant to stick; to race ahead might mean a shattered car. There was no
time to think it over. I pushed down on the gas. A fearful bump, and
we went on, the mud sucking at the tires with every inch we advanced.
Cheering, the others picked their way to us. Our friends piled our
baggage into the tonneau. Toby and I looked at each other, worried by
the same problem,--the problem that never ceased to bother us until we
reached Chicago;--to tip or not to tip?
They were such nice lads; we already seemed like old friends. Yet
they were strangers who had scratched their hands and muddied their
clothes, and relinquished cheerfully the Sunday society of their
ladies on our behalf. Too much to offer pay for, it seemed too much
to accept without offering to pay. We learned then that such an offer
outrages neither Western independence nor Southern chivalry when
made in frank gratitude and good-fellowship. The first suggestion of
payment invariably meets an off-hand but polite refusal, which tact may
sometimes change to acceptance. If accepted, it is never as a tip, but
as a return for services; offer it as a tip, and you offer an insult to
a friend. We found it a good rule, as Americans dealing with Americans,
to be graceful enough to play the more difficult role of recipient when
we decently could, and in the spirit of the West, “pass it on to the
next fellow.”
Eagle Lake seemed as difficult to attain as the treasure beyond
seven rivers of fire and seven mountains of glass. An hour’s clear
sailing over roads no worse than ploughed fields brought it nearly
in sight,--seven miles to go, under a pink sky lighted by a silver
crescent. And then Toby, seeing a grassy lake on the side of the road,
forsook two tried and trusty mud-holes for it, and ditched us again!
Nearby was a farmhouse, with two men and a Ford standing in the
driveway. Hardly had we “boaged,” our wheels churning a pool deep
enough to bathe in, when we saw them loading shovels and tools into
the car, and driving to our aid. They came with foreboding haste. They
greeted us cheerfully--too cheerfully, we thought; joked about the
hole, and admitted they spent most of their time shovelling people
out. They knew their job--we had to admit that. They wrestled with
the jack, setting it on a shovel to keep it from sinking in the swamp;
profanely cheerful, fussed over the chains, which we later guiltily
discovered were too short for our over-sized tires, backed their car
to ours, tied a rope to it, and pulled. We sank deeper. They shoveled,
jacked, chopped sage-brush, and commandeered every passing man and car.
The leader of the wreckers was a Mr. Poole, a typical Westerner of the
old school,--long, flowing gray whiskers, sombrero, and keen watchful
face. He had also a delightful sense of humor,--was in fact so cheerful
that we became more and more gloomy as we noted the array of Fords and
men clustered about. It looked to us like a professional mud-hole.
They hitched two Fords to the car, while eight men pushed from the
back, but nothing came of the effort. A fine looking man named
Sinclair, with gentle manners, was elected by the crowd to go for his
mule team, “the finest pair in the county.” An hour later he came back.
He had gone two miles, changed to overalls, and hitched up his mules in
the meantime, returning astride the off beast.
At sight of the fallen car, the mules gave a gently ironic side-glance,
stepped into place, waited quietly, and at the word of command, stepped
forward nonchalantly, while I started the car simultaneously. It took
them exactly five minutes to do what eight men, two women, two Fords
and a Cadillac had failed to do in two hours’ hard work. For days
after, when we passed a mule, we offered him silent homage.
While Toby, looking and acting like a guilty wretch, piled the baggage
into the car, I approached Mr. Sinclair and Mr. Poole, who stood
watching the rescued leviathan with eyes gleaming satisfaction, and
put the usual timid question.
“Will you tell me what I can offer all these people for helping us out?”
Mr. Sinclair, owner of the stalwart mules, smiled and said: “I
shouldn’t offer them a thing. We all get into trouble one time or
another, and have to be helped out. Just you tell them ‘thank you’ and
I reckon that’ll be all the pay they want.”
And before we could turn around to carry out his injunction, half the
crowd had melted away!
To all motorists who become “boaged,” I beg to recommend the mud-hole
of my friends, Mr. Poole and Mr. Sinclair, of Lissie, Texas.