Property:Has text
From Off the Road Database
This is a property of type Text.
T
<div class="poem">
<p>Gliding past meadows where the grass grows lush,<br />
By hamlets where the low-roofed houses stand,<br />
So let us dawdle tho’ we well might rush.<br />
‘Tis pleasant thus to idle through the land.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Go home, now, stranger, proud of your young stock,<br />
Stranger, turn back again, frustrate and vexed:<br />
This land, cut off, will not communicate,<br />
Be no accessory content to one<br />
Aimless for faces rather there than here.<br />
Beams from your car may cross a bedroom wall,<br />
They wake no sleeper; you may hear the wind<br />
Arriving driven from the ignorant sea<br />
To hurt itself on pane, on bark of elm<br />
Where sap unbaffled rises, being Spring;<br />
But seldom this. Near you, taller than grass,<br />
Ears poise before decision, scenting danger.
</p>
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M
<div class="poem">
<p>God be thanked for the Milky Way that runs across the sky,<br />
That's the path that my feet would tread whenever I have to die.<br />
Some folks call it a Silver Sword, and some a Pearly Crown,<br />
But the only thing I think it is, is Main Street, Heaventown.
</p>
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W
<div class="poem">
<p>God made all things to live by pair,<br />
The beasts of field and birds of air<br />
He made to make no bad mistakes,<br />
But man he left to make some breaks.
</p>
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S
<div class="poem">
<p>Golf came in for a share of discussion,<br />
There’s nothing in golf to cause any fussin’,<br />
If business was good or if it was bad,<br />
They tackled the matter and never got mad.
</p>
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A
<div class="poem">
<p>Got upon the road 7:40 A.M. Reached Rio Vista and two miles further on to "Old River" at 8:40. Go east on the levee road, which is of adobe formation with steep descending banks on both sides. On the left side is the river; the opposite bank runs down to a thicket, beyond which are orchards. Slide off the treacherous road on either side and nothing short of a derrick and wrecking crew could serve to a practical and satisfactory end.
</p>
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F
<div class="poem">
<p>Greet naïvely—yet intrepidly<br />
New soothings, new amazements<br />
That cornets introduce at every turn—<br />
And you may fall downstairs with me<br />
With perfect grace and equanimity.<br />
Or, plaintively scud past shores<br />
Where, by strange harmonic laws<br />
All relatives, serene and cool,<br />
Sit rocked in patent armchairs.
</p>
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C
<div class="poem">
<p>HOSPITALITY SHORTENS A LONG WAIT
</p>
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R
<div class="poem">
<p>Had we the balance of our life raised only Belgian hare,<br />
In years a few, at best, our cupboard would be bare.<br />
A bankrupt we would turn to be and die a debtor slave,<br />
Rabbits beat the world to eat a man into his grave.
</p>
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Q
<div class="poem">
<p>Hark to the song where spheral voices blend:<br />
"There's no beginning, never will be end."<br />
It makes us nutty; hang the astral chimes!<br />
The table's spread; come, let us dine, my friend.
</p>
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X
<div class="poem">
<p>Have things gone too far already? Are we done for? Must we wait <br />
Hearing doom’s approaching footsteps regular down miles of straight;
</p>
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G
<div class="poem">
<p>Have things gone too far already? Are we done for? Must we wait <br />
Hearing doom’s approaching footsteps regular down miles of straight;
</p>
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A
<div class="poem">
<p>Having been with Mr. Winton on this trip, I saw and experienced things the like of which automobile drivers in every civilized portion of the North American continent know not of, nor can an active imagination be brought to picture the terrible abuse the machine had to take, or the hardships its riders endured in forcing and fighting the way from San Francisco to that point in Nevada where the project was abandoned—where Mr. Winton had forced upon him the positive conviction that to put an automobile across the sand hills of the Nevada desert was an utter impossibility under existing conditions.
</p>
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F
<div class="poem">
<p>Having come in to Elizabethtown through a hole we went out over a cloud. There are no other ways. The mountains surround it. The Indians call this pass “arrow stick in pole," it is so steep. Once at the summit, twisting and bending like a floundering whale, the car coasted down to the irrigated plain of Taos, where Indians, resting on their hoes, eyed us silently, and Mexicans saluted gracefully. Three miles beyond we swooped suddenly down upon the settlement of five-story, terraced houses of the Red Willow Indians. In their gaudy blankets they swarmed to the earthen housetops and watched us silently. But when, after much coaxing, we crowded the car with redskins and sent it dashing up and down at breakneck speed there were such war-whoops as city dwellers never hear.
</p>
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C
<div class="poem">
<p>He built a box on the back of the car which would carry oil, ax, tools, tires, rope, block and tackle, suitcases, spare parts, and the like. Then he put endless interliners in each tire so we could wear the tire through to them, then take them out and put them into new tires. Once we cut one tire badly on a rock, exposing the interliner and making a tire change necessary, but the other three went all the way to San Francisco with Denver air in them.
</p>
</div> +
S
<div class="poem">
<p>He has two ears with which he hears,<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> And tail to scare the flies,</span><br />
Sometimes he balks but never talks,<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> By eating he survives.</span><br />
Some are bay and some are gray,<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> And some of color muggy,</span><br />
The big and tall look best of all,<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> In a Studebaker buggy.</span>
</p>
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B
<div class="poem">
<p>He never let the lantern drop.<br />
And some exclaimed who saw afar<br />
The figures he described with it,<br />
“I wonder what those signals are
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>He reeled, he lurched, he bobbed, he checked;<br />
He fell and made the lantern rattle<br />
(But saved the light from going out.)<br />
So half-way down he fought the battle
</p>
</div> +
C
<div class="poem">
<p>He said the road down the mountain was good but narrow and steep, and that we would find good accommodations in the valley. We took it slowly, because it seemed the rocks reared their bulk to oppose us in the dark, but as we came to them, there always was a good road around them, though I found myself bracing my feet for a bump that never came. We realized that this passage was never meant for an automobile and that more than once the Brush Runabout had rushed in where a long-wheelbase car would have feared to tread. We reached a railroad at Big Pine in Independence Valley, where much later all the traffic went that way, the road having been built through and the man who had made his living towing autos through the sand at the edge of Death Valley had moved away, there being no business. Years later we learned that the Brush was the first car to go from Tonopah, Nevada, to Big Pine, California, on that road.
</p>
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T
<div class="poem">
<p>He said, "I's read de Good Book thro',<br />
I's fahmiliar with all de ol' an' new.<br />
Now you's all bette' believe in dis story,<br />
If you's a gonna get yo' a home in glory."
</p>
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