Property:Has text
From Off the Road Database
This is a property of type Text.
C
<div class="poem">
<p>Civilization!<br />
Everybody kind and gentle, and men giving up<br />
their seats in the car for the women...<br />
What an ideal!<br />
How bracing!
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Away then, with soft ideals:<br />
Brace yourself with bitterness:<br />
A drink of that biting liquor, the Truth...
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p><span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Voices of dollars</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> And drops of blood</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> . . . . .</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Voices of broken hearts,</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> . . Voices singing, singing,</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> . . Silver voices, singing,</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Softer than the stars,</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Softer than the mist.</span>
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Now. . .<br />
. . Only stars and mist<br />
A lonely policeman,<br />
Two cabaret dancers,<br />
Stars and mist again,<br />
No more feet or wheels,<br />
No more dust and wagons.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Dust of the feet<br />
And dust of the wheels,<br />
Wagons and people going,<br />
All day feet and wheels.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>The look of their clean white curtains was the same as the rim of a nun's bonnet.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>New neighbors came to the corner house at Congress and Green streets.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Dust and the thundering trucks won—the barrages of the street wheels and the lawless wind took their way—was it five weeks or six the little mother, the new neighbors, battled and then took away the white prayers in the windows?
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>The warehouse trucks shook the dust of the ways loose and the wheels whirled dust—there was dust of hoof and wagon wheel and rubber tire— dust of police and fire wagons—dust of the winds that circled at midnights and noon listening to no prayers.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>"O mother, I know the heart of you," I sang passing the rim of a nun's bonnet—O white curtains—and people clean as the prayers of Jesus here in the faded ramshackle at Congress and Green.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>One way was an oyster pail factory, one way they made candy, one way paper boxes, strawboard cartons.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>We passed through Laramie before noon the next day and about 2 P.M. we stopped at a section house on the railroad and asked the only visible occupant, a woman, if she would serve us lunch. She prepared a meal and seemed glad to talk to us, being especially eloquent about her children, saying among other things that they had not been tardy or absent at school in the past year. I had seen no other building for miles so I asked where the schoolhouse was located and she naively replied, "Upstairs. We hire the teacher and the three children are the whole school." I gasped in astonishment at the wonderful record she thought they had made.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>The family was not at home but a Chinaman cooked us a late meal, breaking out every few minutes with a chuckling laugh. He was quite confused when he couldn't find the key to our room, so we just pushed the dresser across the door and forgot about it.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>I had to stay alone with the car while Fred walked to Montello for a team, if such a thing existed there. It was almost dusk, but I preferred no light on the car to call attention to me as I curled up on the seat with my revolver tucked under the robes. He started down the road for help. Evidently the little car was not going every foot of the way on its own power, even if we had good roads now. Indian campfires gleamed in the distance, coyotes yelped and answered each other from all sides, and the railroad might produce a tramp.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>This was the end in the west, and there was no way to show how dear the little grey car had become to us after carrying us across so many miles and through so many dangers. The chug of its one-cylinder engine had been the sweetest music in our ears during our month-long trip. I could only put my hand on the hood and choke back the tears.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>I made him take my place for a few hours and I sat down to watch the fire. When it got light enough to see, I went back to search for our lost propeller shaft key, a piece of steel a quarter inch square and four inches long. I found it some way back where the car had come to a stop, and it was imbedded in the sand where we had stepped on it while searching in the dark.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>We decided they thought our car would get stuck in the deep sand on the steep grade and they would have some fun pulling us out, but the car had crawled along slowly and steadily, spoiling their fun.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>To send his nightly telegram to the factory, Fred carried an identification card ordering all Western Union offices to accept messages, to be sent collect. I took shorthand notes each day and sent letters to the factory when I could find time to use a writing pad and pencil. Maps were hung in a window at the factory and at all dealers' stores and little cardboard cars were moved along our route each time they heard from us. People passing the showroom windows would stop each day to see how far we had gone.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>The odor of fried bacon led us to three loads of hay, with the wagon drivers camped by the roadside. They were on their way to the aqueduct workers with their teams, as trucks were rarely thought of then. The men aroused from their beds in the hay and waved us a greeting, evidently surprised to see the little car scampering across the hills in the dusk. This was a weird evening, passing tall cactus plants, yucca plants, and Joshua trees in the moonlight, coming down into a mountain-enclosed valley where cattle were so frightened at us we slowed to a snail's pace so they would not injure themselves, running away in panic. We found an exit where a river flowed out into another valley, and came to Onyx, which consisted of a store and post office with a southern California ranch house.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>We were wet with perspiration, so we put on warm wraps, never stopping for a morsel of food, and started on our way without knowing how far it was to a place we could stay overnight. What it would have meant to us to see just one road sign pointing some place!
</p>
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