Property:Has text
From Off the Road Database
This is a property of type Text.
F
<div class="poem">
<p>The father of Milt Daggett was the Old Doctor, born in Maine, coming to this frontier in the day when Chippewas camped in your dooryard, and came in to help themselves to coffee, which you made of roasted corn. The Old Doctor bucked northwest blizzards, read Dickens and Byron, pulled people through typhoid, and left to Milt his shabby old medicine case and thousands of dollars—in uncollectible accounts. Mrs. Daggett had long since folded her crinkly hands in quiet death.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>In the humping tin-covered tail of the bug was a good deal of room, and this he filled with motor extras, a shotgun and shells, a pair of skates, and all his camping kit as used on his annual duck-hunting trip to Man Trap Lake.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>"—and if I could help you get a job, though of course—— Being a<br />
stranger out here—— Seems strange to me, though," Mr. Boltwood<br />
struggled on, "that a strong fellow like you should be utterly destitute, when I see all these farmers able to have cars——"
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>She also remembered how jolly and agreeably heroic the accounts of their mishaps had sounded—a week after they were over.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>He was streaking down the road, and Claire was sobbing, "Oh, the lamb, the darling thing! Fretting about his slang, when he wasn't afraid in that horrible nightmare. If we could just do something for him!"
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>"Begone, ye unworthy and punk-looking raiment. I know ye! Ye werst a bargain and two pairs for two bits. But even as Adolph Zolzac and an agent for flivver accessories are ye become in my eyes, ye generation of vipers, ye clumsy, bag-footed, wrinkle-sided gunny-sacking ye!"
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>In the larger towns in Minnesota and Dakota, after evening movies, before slipping out to his roadside camp Milt inserted himself into a circle of traveling men in large leather chairs, and ventured, "Saw a Gomez-Dep with a New York license down the line today."
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Before she sent it she held council with her father. She sat on the foot of his bed and tried to sound dutiful. "I don't want to do anything that's bad for you, daddy. But isn't it taking your mind away from business?"
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>"I don't know whether the woman is insane or ignorant. I wish I could tell whether she was trying to make me angry for the benefit of those horrid unshaven men, or merely for her private edification."
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Being rootedly of Brooklyn Heights, Claire didn't know much about the West. She thought that Milwaukee was the capital of Minnesota. She was not so uninformed as some of her friends, however. She had heard that in Dakota wheat was to be viewed in vast tracts—maybe a hundred acres.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Now she seemed to breathe deeper, see farther. Again she came from unbroken prairie into wheat country and large towns.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>"Oh, it's a sweet morning! Sweet! We will go on! I'm terribly excited!" she laughed.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>As she climbed out of the car and put a hand on the smart bags strapped on a running-board, the accumulated weariness struck her in a shock. She could have driven on for hours, but the instant the car was safe for the night, she went to pieces. Her ears rang, her eyes were soaked in fire, her mouth was dry, the back of her neck pinched. It was her father who took the lead as they rambled to the one tolerable hotel in the town.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>"Gee, did I touch you, girlie? Why, that's a shame!" he drawled, his cracked broad lips turning up in a grin.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>After lunch, it was sometimes an agony to Claire to keep awake. Her eyes felt greasy from the food, or smarted with the sun-glare. In the still air, after the morning breeze had been burnt out, the heat from the engine was a torment about her feet; and if there was another car ahead, the trail of dust sifted into her throat. Unless there was traffic to keep her awake, she nodded at the wheel; she was merely a part of a machine that ran on without seeming to make any impression on the prairie's endlessness.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>"All right, boss. Say, you haven't got a cartwheel instead of this wrapping paper, have you? I like to feel my money in my pocket."
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>She again followed the swastika tread. To avoid a hole in the road ahead, the unknown driver had swung over to the side of the road, and taken to the intensely black earth of the edge of an unfenced cornfield. Flashing at Claire came the sight of a deep, water-filled hole, scattered straw and brush, débris of a battlefield, which made her gaspingly realize that her swastikaed leader had been stuck and--
</p>
</div> +
