NIBBLING AT THE MAP OF TEXAS
Visiting an ostrich farm is as thrilling as going in wading, but to
be thorough, we did our duty by San Antonio’s plumed and gawky giants
before starting again on our well-nigh hopeless task of making an
impression on the State of Texas.
When we looked at our mileage record we were encouraged, only to be
cast down again by a glance at the map, whose south-west corner we
had only begun to nibble at in six days’ faithful plodding. It was
an incentive to an early start. We filled our tank with gas at the
tiled station near the Alamo, rejoicing in the moderate price. In one
respect, at least, Texas is the motorists’s paradise. Gasoline is
cheap, oil is cheap, storage for the night ranges from “two bits” to
half a dollar, while clear weather and local honesty make it possible
to avoid even that expense by leaving the car overnight in the Garage
of the Blue Sky. Tires are mended and changed for a quarter, and in
some places for nothing. And garage-keepers are honest,--except when,
yielding to local patriotism, they describe the state of the roads.
For three miles we meandered through San Antonio’s “Cabbage Patch,”
steering around tin cans, Mexican babies, and goats taking the freedom
of the city, until we came to a fine broad macadam in good repair,--our
first real road since the ill-fated stretch outside Houston. Mexicans
hung outside their little shops, whose festoons of onions and peppers
painted Italy into the landscape. Overhead, we counted dozens of
airplanes, some from the government school, others from Katharine
Stinson’s modest hangars, making the most of the weather. One coquetted
with us, following us for several miles. We leaned out and waved, but
at that, it was a most impersonal form of flirtation. Not a quiver of
the great wings, not a swoop through the blue, rewarded our abandon.
I wish I might record otherwise, for a moment later a rusty nail had
flattened our back tire, and we were left alone on the prairie to solve
the problem of changing the heavy rims, which our combined strength
could hardly lift. How romantic and happy a touch could be added to
this narrative if at this point I could state that the airman fluttered
to our feet, saluted, changed the tire, and then circled back to the
blue. But, doubtless himself from Boston, he did no such thing. He kept
steadily on his course, till he was only a speck in our lives. If the
cautious man reads this, let him know he is forgiven the tire, but not
the climax.
We had been airy, at home, when they mentioned the tires. There were,
nevertheless, internal doubts. Massachusetts is too crowded with
garages to furnish much practice in wayside repairing, and I had been
lucky. But now came the test. Theoretically, we understood the process,
but jacks go up when they should go down, nuts rust, and rims warp. We
searched the horizon for help, found none, pulled out the tools, and
got down in the mud.
Our jack was the kind whose advertisements show an immaculate young
lady in white daintily propelling a handle at arm’s length, while
the car rises easily in the air. Admitting she has the patience of
Job, the strength of Samson, and the ingenuity of the devil, I should
like to meet her just long enough to ask her if she stood off at arm’s
length while she put the jack in place, rescued it as it toppled over,
searched vainly for a solid spot in which the jack would not sink,
pulled it out of the mud again, pushed the car off as it rolled back on
her, hunted for stones to prop it up, and a place in the axles where
the arm would fit, and then had the latch give way and be obliged to do
it all over again. And, with no reflections on the veracity of the lady
or her inspired advertiser, I should demand the address of her pastor
and her laundress.
We worked half an hour jacking up the car. No sooner had we got it
where it should be, than the car’s weight sank it in the mud, and
we had to begin again our snail process. To my delight, Toby was
fascinated by the thing, and from that hour claimed it as her own.
We mutually divided the labor as our tastes and talents dictated. It
seemed that Toby revelled in handling tools, which dropped from my
inept grasp, while my sense of mechanics and experience surpassed hers.
I was to be the diagnostician, she the surgeon. In other words, I
bossed the job, while she did the work.
While Toby struggled with the jack a Mexican on a flea-bitten cayuse
slouched on the horizon. He was black and hairy, and one “six-gun” in
his teeth would have signed his portrait as Captain of the Bandits.
I stopped him and asked him to lend us his brute strength, which he
smilingly did, pleased as a child at being initiated into the sacred
mysteries of motoring. When I allowed him to propel the socket-wrench
his cup ran over. He did everything backward, but he furnished
horse-sense, which we lacked, and when we attempted to lift heavy
weights, he courteously supplanted us. The three of us invented a
lingua franca in Mexican, Italian, French and musical terms.
“Tire,--avanti!” Gesture of lifting. Groan,--signifying great weight.
“Troppo,--troppo! Largo, largo! Ne faites pas ça! Ah-h, si, si,--bono
hombre, multo, multo bono hombre!”
Thus encouraged, he worked willingly and faithfully, and at the end of
a half hour’s toil, waved aside our thanks, untied his weary cayuse,
and raised his sombrero. He had not robbed us nor beaten us, but had
acted as one Christian to another. I ran after him saying fluently, as
if I had known the language all my life, “Multo, multo, beaucoup bono
hombre.” He showed his brilliant teeth. I offered him money, which he
at first refused. “Bono hombre,” I insisted, “Cigarettos!” And so he
took it, much pleased. He thoroughly enjoyed the episode. I hope his
boss did, when he arrived an hour late. Toby enjoyed the episode, too,
and persisted in sending home postcards, on which she spoke of being
rescued by a Mexican bandit.
During the morning several little towns,--all alike, flitted by
us,--Sabinal, Hondo, Dunlay. At Hondo, where the mud was thickest,
we stopped at a little general store for lunch. The proprietor, a
tall, vague man, discussed earnestly, as one connoisseur to another,
the merits of the various tinned goods he submitted, and after a
leisurely chat and several purchases, in which the matter of trade
became secondary, he urged on us several painted sticks of candy, a
new kind which he said he enjoyed sucking during his solitary guard at
the store. After the customary, “You’re a long ways from home,” he bade
us goodbye, hopefully but sadly, as one would a consumptive great-aunt
about to take a trip to the North Pole, and watched us bump out of
sight.
We had twenty miles of such luxuriant mud that we stopped to photograph
it. It is only slight exaggeration to say that the ruts came to the
camera’s level. Then we forded the Neuces River, a stream woven into
early Texan history, and began to climb out of the land of cotton into
the grazing country. The herds and herds of sheep and white angora
goats we now encountered made a charming landscape but an irritating
episode. A large flock of silly sheep rambled halfway to our car, then,
frightened, fled in the other direction, turning again with those they
met, who also faced and fled, baa-ing; no militia could clear the
traffic they disorganized. Each herd we met meant a wasted half hour.
Their herders sat their horses in grim patience, with the infinite
contempt shepherds get for their charges and for life in general. Out
here, “being the goat” takes a new and dignified meaning--for a goat
is placed with each hundred sheep to steer the brainless mass, act as
leaders in danger, and furnish the one brain of the herd.
These pastoral happenings delayed us, until toward night we climbed
dark dunes into a clear golden sunset. Through a gate we entered what
seemed to be a cattle track through a large ranch, but was in fact the
main highway to El Paso. The roads in this part of the country cut
through large holdings, and the pestiferous cattle gate begins to bar
the road, necessitating stopping, crossing, shutting the gate again,
several times a mile. And let me warn the traveling Easterner that not
to leave a gate as you find it is in truth a crime against hospitality,
for one is often on private property.
Queer blunt mesas rose on all sides of us, and when dark came upon us
we had entered a small canyon, and were winding to the top and down
again out of the hills. The cattlegates and rocky road made going slow,
and as Venus, frosty and brilliant, came out, we were imprisoned in
this weirdly gloomy spot, on the top of the world. A quaver in Toby’s
usually stalwart voice made me wonder if she were remembering her
mother’s last words,--“Don’t drive at night.” This is no reflection
on Toby’s staunchness; the immensity of the West, after dark, when
first it looms above one used to the coziness of ordered streets, must
always seem portentous and awful. We hastened on, winding down through
one enchanting glade after another, till we met the highway again.
Toby took the wheel, and we hummed along. Suddenly a stone struck the
engine, and a deafening roar like that of an express train frightened
us. Something vital, by its clatter, had been shattered, and we again
faced the possibility of delay and frustration--even retreat. We got
out and searched for the trouble. Luckily we had that day unpacked
our flash-light, for Venus, though she looked near enough to pick out
of the sky, furnished poor illumination for engine troubles. Search
revealed an important looking pipe beneath the car broken in two, with
a jagged fracture. Should we chance driving on, or camp till morning?
We were tired and our pick-up lunch of deviled ham and crackers seemed
long ago. After a hard day’s run, the difficulties of making camp
in the dark, with our equipment still unpacked, and going cold and
supperless to bed loomed large. Besides, there could not have been
worse camping ground in the world. Soggy cotton fields under water
on both sides gave us the choice of sleeping in the middle of the
road or on the back seat piled high with baggage. The engine, though
roaring like a wounded lioness, still ran steadily. I knew just enough
to realize we had broken the exhaust pipe, but hardly enough to know
whether running the car under such conditions would maim it for life.
But though hunger won out, the real mechanic’s love for his engine was
born in us, and feeling like parents who submit their only child to
a major operation, we drove painfully at eight miles an hour the ten
miles into B----, the town echoing to our coming.
The village was a mere cross-roads, a most unlikely place for a night’s
stop, picturesque and Mexican, with low ’dobe houses, yellow and pink,
the noise of a phonograph from each corner, and lighted doorways filled
with slouching Mexicans and trig American doughboys from a nearby
camp,--and everywhere else, Rembrantian gloom. At a new tin garage with
the universal Henry’s name over the door we were relieved to learn we
had done no damage. Most of the cars in town had, in fact, broken their
exhaust pipes on loose stones, and ran chugging, as we had.
It is not usual for garage helpers to aid strange ladies in hunting a
night’s lodging, but ours willingly let themselves be commandeered for
the purpose, and the chase began. The town had a “hotel”;--which, in
the South, may be a one-story café, or something less ambitious. This
one, kept by a negro woman, was more than dubious looking, but when the
proprietor said it was “full up,” our hearts sank. We wearily made the
rounds of the village, guided by rumors of a vacant room here or there,
only to find the houses, four-roomed cottages at best, filled with
army wives. Our needs reduced us to Bolshevism. Passing an imposing
white house, neat as wax, and two stories high, we sent our cicerone
to demand for us lodging for the night. Had it been the official White
House we should have done no less, and as the residence of the owner
of the garage where our cripple was stored it gave us a claim on his
hospitality no right-minded citizen could deny. Alas, we learned that
Mr. V’s eleven hostages to fortune, rather than civic pride, accounted
for the size of his house. The owner sent us a cordially regretful
message that his bedrooms teemed with little V’s, but thought his
brother’s daughter might take the strangers in, as her parents were
away and their room vacant.
A little figure in a nightgown opened the door a crack when we knocked
at their cottage.
“Who is it?” asked a Southern voice, timidly.
“Two ladies from Boston, who would like a room for the night.” We threw
as much respectable matronliness as possible into our own voices. The
magic word “Boston” reassured. Boston may be a dishonored prophet in
Cambridge and Brookline, but to the South and West it remains autocrat
of the breakfast table. I know our prospective hostess, from the
respect and relief in her tones, visualized Louisa May Alcott and Julia
Ward Howe waiting on her doorstep, and she hastened to throw open the
door to what we saw was her bedroom, saying “Come in! You’re a long
ways----”
Boston, your stay-at-homes never realize how distant, how remote and
fabulous your rock-bound shores seem to the Other Half west of the
Mississippi!
It was a German Lutheran household into which we stepped. Two little
tow-headed boys were curled up asleep in their sister’s room, and we
tip-toed past to the parents’ vacated bedroom, ours for the night, with
its mottoes, its lithographed Christ on the wall, its stove and tightly
shut windows. This German family had brought over old-world peasant
habits, and curiously contrasted against its bareness, promiscuity and
not over scrupulous cleanliness was the American daughter who needed
but a little more polish to be ready for any rung in the social ladder.
She was a real little lady, as hospitable as though we had been really
invited.
Supperless, footsore and weary, we tumbled into the sheets vacated by
the elder V’s that morning, too grateful for shelter and the softness
of the feather bed to feel squeamish. We waked in the sunshine of next
morning to smell coffee brewing on our bedroom stove, and hear cautious
whispers of two sturdy little Deutschers tip-toeing back and forth
through our room to the wash-shed beyond, stealing awed glances at the
Boston ladies in their mother’s bed. In a stage whisper one called to
his sister to learn where “the comb” was. She answered that Pa had
taken it to San Anton’, but after some search found them “the brush”
hidden near father’s notary stamp, on the bureau,--for the father was
the local judge and a man much respected in the community.
When the little boys departed for school, she brought us coffee in the
best china, apologizing for not offering us breakfast. She explained
that she was to be married in three days, and was following her
family to San Anton’ for the wedding. She showed us her ring, and her
trousseau, all in pink, to her joy, and told us of her fiancé, who had
been a second lieutenant in France. Though she seemed a child, she had
refused to marry him when he left, because she believed haste at such
times imprudent. And now she was all excitement over the great event,
yet not too much to show a welcome as simple as it was beautiful to the
midnight intruders from Boston.
As usual, our desire to pay for our lodging met a firm, almost shocked
refusal. We only felt more nearly even when at El Paso we sent her
something deliciously pink for her trousseau.
In Texas, overnight promises are to be discounted. Or is it not,
perhaps, a universal law of the “night man” to pass on no information
to the “day man?” Has the order taken a vow of silence more binding and
terrible than the Dominican friars? It must be so, for never in ten
years’ experience with night men, have I known one to break the seal of
secrecy which prevents them letting your confidence in the matter of
flat tires and empty tanks go any further. Their delicacy in keeping
all news of such infirmities from the ears of the day man is universal.
Nor was there any exception next morning, when we visited our garage,
hopeful of an early start. The exhaust pipe was still unwelded, and our
spare tire still flat. Furthermore, we were half an hour in the garage
before anyone thought to mention that the resources of the place were
inadequate to mend the pipe. They had trusted to our divining the fact,
as the day wore on,--a more tactful way of breaking the news than
coming out bluntly with the truth.
At last, a passing stranger suggested we take the car to the nearby
Fort, where a new welding machine had recently been installed. We
chugged up the hill, attracting the notice of several soldiers from
East Boston, on whom our Massachusetts number produced a wave of
nostalgia. By this time, so used were we to being beneficiaries of
entire strangers that before hailing anyone likely to offer to do us a
favor, we fixed smiles fairly dripping with saccharine on our faces.
A sergeant, hearing sympathetically our story, sent us to a lieutenant.
He wavered.
“I hate not to oblige a lady, ma’am, but this is government property,
and we aint allowed to do outside work.”
Looking at his stern face, we decided it would take at least an hour to
win him over. Without moving a muscle he continued----
“But, seein’ as you’re a lady and a long ways from home, and can’t git
accommodated otherwise, you run your car back to the garage and I’ll
send a sergeant down to get the part, and he’ll have it welded for you
in a couple of hours.”
Two hours later not only the sergeant but the lieutenant were at
the garage to see that the part went back properly into the engine.
Meanwhile, doubting the ethics of letting Uncle Sam be our mechanic, we
had provided two boxes of Camels for our benefactors, having learned
that cigarettes will often be acceptable where money will not. The
part was perfectly welded, the sergeant replaced it with military
efficiency, and then we exchanged confidences. The lieutenant told us
he was a “long-horn,” but had been, before the war, a foreman in the
very factory which had built our car. Which explained his cordiality,
if explanation were needed in a land where everyone is cordial. We
found that respect for the sterling worth of our car helped us along
our way appreciably,--people everywhere approved it as “a good car,”
and extended their approval to its inmates. The lieutenant nonplused us
by refusing both pay and tobacco, but indicated that we might bestow
both on the sergeant. He asked us to let him know when we came again to
Texas, and we promised willingly, thanked Uncle Sam for his chivalry by
proxy, and were quickly on our way to Del Rio. Texas had not yet failed
us.