But this summer we allowed we all would get in the car and take a big
trip out West--go right into some of the parks, if nothing happened.
We borrowed our tent from the Hickory Bend Outing Club that Paw belongs
to back home. The poles go along the fenders and stick out a good way
behind. I could always cook without a stove, from experience at picnics
when I was younger. The dishes goes in a box. Paw nailed a rack on top
of the fenders, and we carry a lot of stuff that way. Cynthy always has
her suitcase on the outside because it's the newest one. The other girls
set on the bedding on the rear seat, and I ride in front with Paw. We
mostly wear overalls.
Yes, times has changed, says Maw.
As a dispassionate observer in one of our national parks, expressing the
belief in modern speech, I'll say they have. I have met Maw this
summer, ninety thousand of her, concentrated on a piece of mountain
scenery about fifty miles square--Maw on her first vacation in a life of
sixty years. Dear old Maw!
Ninety thousand replicas of Maw cause the rest of us to eat copiously of
alkaline dust and to shiver each time we approach a turn on the roads of
Yellowstone Park, which were laid out on a curling iron. You cannot
escape seeing Paw and Maw, and Cynthy in her pants, and Hattie and
Roweny in overalls and putties. I have seen their camp fire rising on
every remaining spot of grass on all that busy fifty miles. I have
photographed Maw and Cynthy and the other girls, and Cynthy has
photographed me because I looked funny. Bless them all, the whole ninety
thousand of them--I would not have missed them on their vacation this
summer for all the world. They are, I suppose, what we call the new
people of America, who never have been out like this before. They've
been at home. Maw has been getting the Sunday dinner. Paw has been
plowing, paying the taxes which this Government has spent for him. But
now Paw pays income tax also; and both he and Maw construe this fact to
mean that they can at last read their title clear to a rest, and a car,
and a vacation. So they have swung out from the lane at last, after
forty years of work, and on to the roads that lead to the
transcontinental highway. They have crossed the prairies and come up
into the foothills--the price of gas increasing day by day, and Paw
kicking but paying cash--and so they have at last arrived among the
great mountains of which Maw has dreamed all her long life of cooking
and washing and ironing.