CHAPTER IITHE SCENIC ROUTE
It was a flash of all this that came to me when in the midst of the blathering and fol de rol of a gay evening Franklin suddenly approached me and said, quite apropos of nothing: “How would you like to go out to Indiana in my car?”
“I’ll tell you what, Franklin,” I answered, “all my life I’ve been thinking of making a return trip to Indiana and writing a book about it. I was born in Terre Haute, down in the southwest there below you, and I was brought up in Sullivan and Evansville in the southern part of the state and in Warsaw up north. Agree to take me to all those places after we get there, and I’ll go. What’s more, you can illustrate the book if you will.”
“I’ll do that,” he said. “Warsaw is only about two hours north of our place. Terre Haute is seventyfive miles away. Evansville is a hundred and fifty. We’ll make a oneday trip to the northern part and a three-day trip to the southern. I stipulate but one thing. If we ruin many tires, we split the cost.”
To this I agreed.
Franklin’s home was really central for all places. It was at Carmel, fifteen miles north of Indianapolis. His plan, once the trip was over, was to camp there in his country studio, and paint during the autumn. Mine was to return direct to New York.
We were to go up the Hudson to Albany and via various perfect state roads to Buffalo. There we were to follow other smooth roads along the shore of Lake Erie to Cleveland and Toledo, and possibly Detroit. There we were to cut southwest to Indianapolis—so close to Carmel. It had not occurred to either of us yet togo direct to Warsaw from Toledo or thereabouts, and thence south to Carmel. That was to come as an afterthought.
But this Hudson-Albany-State-road route irritated me from the very first. Everyone traveling in an automobile seemed inclined to travel that way. I had a vision of thousands of cars which we would have to trail, consuming their dust, or meet and pass, coming toward us. By now the Hudson River was a chestnut. Having traveled by the Pennsylvania and the Central over and over to the west, all this mid-New York and southern Pennsylvania territory was wearisome to think of. Give me the poor, undernourished routes which the dull, imitative rabble shun, and where, because of this very fact, you have some peace and quiet. I traveled all the way uptown the next day to voice my preference in regard to this matter.
“I’d like to make a book out of this,” I explained, “if the material is interesting enough, and there isn’t a thing that you can say about the Hudson River or the central part of New York State that hasn’t been said a thousand times before. Poughkeepsie, Albany, Troy, Syracuse, Rochester—all ghastly manufacturing towns. Why don’t we cut due west and see how we make out? This is the nicest, dryest time of the year. Let’s go west to the Water Gap, and straight from there through Pennsylvania to some point in Ohio, then on to Indianapolis.” A vision of quaint, wild, unexpected regions in Pennsylvania came to me.
“Very good,” he replied genially. He was playing with a cheerful, pop-eyed French bull. “Perhaps that would be better. The other would have the best roads, but we’re not going for roads exactly. Do you know the country out through there?”
“No,” I replied. “But we can find out. I suppose the Automobile Club of America ought to help us. I might go round there and see what I can discover.”
“Do that,” he applauded, and I was making to departwhen Franklin’s brother and his chauffeur entered. The latter he introduced as “Speed.”
“Speed,” he said, “this is Mr. Dreiser, who is going with us. He wants to ride directly west across Pennsylvania to Ohio and so on to Indianapolis. Do you think you can take us through that way?”
A blond, lithe, gangling youth with an eerie farmerlike look and smile ambled across the room and took my hand. He seemed half mechanic, half street-car conductor, half mentor, guide and friend.
“Sure,” he replied, with a kind of childish smile that won instantly—a little girl smile, really. “If there are any roads, I can. We can go anywhere the car’ll go.”
I liked him thoroughly. All the time I was trying to think where I had seen Speed before. Suddenly it came to me. There had been a car conductor in a recent comedy. This was the stage character to life. Besides he reeked of Indiana—the real Hoosier. If you have ever seen one, you’ll know what I mean.
“Very good,” I said. “Fine. Are you as swift as your name indicates, Speed?”
“I’m pretty swift,” he said, with the same glance that a collie will give you at times—a gay, innocent light of the eyes!
A little while later Franklin was saying to me that he had no real complaint against Speed except this: “If you drive up to the St. Regis and go in for half an hour, when you come out the sidewalk is all covered with tools and the engine dismantled—that is, if the police have not interfered.”
“Just the same,” put in Fred Booth, “he is one of the chauffeurs who led the procession of cars from New York over the Alleghanies and Rockies to the coast, laying out the Lincoln Highway.” (Afterwards I saw testimonials and autographed plates which proved this.) “He can take a car anywhere she’ll go.”
Then I proceeded to the great automobile club for information.
“Are you a member?” asked the smug attendant, a polite, airy, bufferish character.
“No, only the temporary possessor of a car for a tour.”
“Then we can do nothing for you. Only members are provided with information.”
On the table by which I was standing lay an automobile monthly. In its pages, which I had been idly thumbing as I waited, were a dozen maps of tours, those deceptive things gotten up by associated roadhouses and hotels in their own interest. One was labeled “The Scenic Route,” and showed a broad black line extending from New York via the Water Gap, Stroudsburg, Wilkes-Barré, Scranton, Binghamton, and a place called Watkins Glen, to Buffalo and Niagara Falls. This interested me. These places are in the heart of the Alleghanies and of the anthracite coal region. Visions of green hills, deep valleys, winding rivers, glistering cataracts and the like leaped before my mind.
“The Scenic Route!” I ventured. “Here’s a map that seems to cover what I want. What number is this?”
“Take it, take it!” replied the lofty attendant, as if to shoo me out of the place. “You are welcome.”
“May I pay you?”
“No, no, you’re welcome to it.”
I bowed myself humbly away.
“Well, auto club or no auto club, here is something, a real route,” I said to myself. “Anyhow it will do to get us as far as Wilkes-Barré or Scranton. After that we’ll just cut west if we have to.”
On the way home I mooned over such names as Tobyhanna, Meshoppen, Blossburg, and Roaring Branch. What sort of places were they? Oh, to be speeding along in this fine warm August weather! To be looking at the odd places, seeing mountains, going back to Warsaw and Sullivan and Terre Haute and Evansville!