Property:Has text
From Off the Road Database
This is a property of type Text.
F
<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--
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<div class="poem">
<p>She had had to put the car at that hole. It dropped, far down, and it stayed down. The engine stalled. She started it, but the back wheels spun merrily round and round, without traction. She did not make one inch. When she again killed the blatting motor, she let it stay dead. She peered at her father.
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<div class="poem">
<p>She had ten more minutes of it before she reached a combination of bridge and culvert, with a plank platform above a big tile drain. With this solid plank bottom, she could stop. Silence came roaring down as she turned the switch. The bubbling water in the radiator steamed about the cap. Claire was conscious of tautness of the cords of her neck in front; of a pain at the base of her brain. Her father glanced at her curiously. "I must be a wreck. I'm sure my hair is frightful," she thought, but forgot it as she looked at him. His face was unusually pale. In the tumult of activity he had been betrayed into letting the old despondent look blur his eyes and sag his mouth. "Must get on," she determined.
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T
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<p>She led the way up the mahogany and white staircase to the dainty little guest room at the rear of the second story, a boudoir such as any girl would love, furnished in cream-colored painted furniture, with pink floral decorations and pink and cream curtains at the windows. Ethel admired it profusely.<br />
“And did you work that bed-spread yourself?” she asked, examining closely the applique work in a flower design, upon unbleached muslin. “It’s simply too pretty to sleep on.”<br />
“Oh, it will wash!” laughed Doris. “Yes, I did make it myself. I love to do fancy-work.” Then, in the same breath, “Now tell us all about the trip. I’m tremendously interested.”<br />
“I’m afraid I don’t know a whole lot myself—just the bare facts that you know. But wait till Marj and Alice get here—they’ll tell us everything. By the way, is everybody coming?”<br />
“Everybody but Mae,” replied Doris. “You could hardly expect so recent a bride. In fact,” she added, “I didn’t even invite her. I knew it would be of no use.”<br />
“And she’s too far away-way out there in Ohio,” said Ethel. “I’m afraid we won’t see much of her any more.”<br />
They descended the staircase just in time to see, through the glass door, a taxi stop in front of the house. A moment later five merry, laughing girls jumped out of the machine and skipped up the porch steps. Marjorie Wilkinson, the last to enter the house on account of the delay in paying the driver, decided to make up for lost time, and seized Ethel, Doris, and Marie Louise all at once in one inclusive hug.
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F
<div class="poem">
<p>She tiptoed to the tool-box and took out a folding canvas bucket. She edged down to the trickling stream below. She was miserably conscious of a pastoral scene all gone to mildew--cows beneath willows by the creek, milkweeds dripping, dried mullein weed stalks no longer dry. The bank of the stream was so slippery that she shot down two feet, and nearly went sprawling. Her knee did touch the bank, and the skirt of her gray sports-suit showed a smear of yellow earth.
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<div class="poem">
<p>She was battling to hold the car in the principal rut. She snatched the windshield open, and concentrated on that left rut. She felt that she was keeping the wheel from climbing those high sides of the rut, those six-inch walls of mud, sparkling with tiny grits. Her mind snarled at her arms, "Let the ruts do the steering. You're just fighting against them." It worked. Once she let the wheels alone they comfortably followed the furrows, and for three seconds she had that delightful belief of every motorist after every mishap, "Now that this particular disagreeableness is over, I'll never, never have any trouble again!"
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<div class="poem">
<p>She was very tired. She wondered if she might not stop for a moment. Then she came to an upslope. The car faltered; felt indecisive beneath her. She jabbed down the accelerator. Her hands pushed at the steering wheel as though she were pushing the car. The engine picked up, sulkily kept going. To the eye, there was merely a rise in the rolling ground, but to her anxiety it was a mountain up which she--not the engine, but herself--pulled this bulky mass, till she had reached the top, and was safe again--for a second. Still there was no visible end of the mud.
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X
<div class="poem">
<p>Shut up talking, charming in the best suits to be had in town, <br />
Lecturing on navigation while the ship is going down.
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G
<div class="poem">
<p>Shut up talking, charming in the best suits to be had in town, <br />
Lecturing on navigation while the ship is going down.
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A
<div class="poem">
<p>Since the day in the snow banks, I have called it to Mr. Winton's mind. He says that the frightful experiences of that day, the abuse and hardship to which the machine was subjected, stay in his mind like the remembrance of an ugly nightmare. During the entire day, working up there among the clouds, we were cold and drenched. When it did not rain, it snowed or hailed.
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O
<div class="poem">
<p>Since the foregoing paragraph was first published (1915) the good work has gone steadily on and despite the sharp check that the World War administered to public enterprises, Los Angeles County has materially added to and improved her already extensive mileage of modern roads. A new boulevard connects the beach towns between Redondo and Venice; a marvelous scenic road replaces the old-time trail in Topango Canyon and the new Hollywood Mountain Road is one of the most notable achievements of highway engineering in all California. Many new laterals have been completed in the level section about Downey and Artesia and numerous boulevards opened in the foothill region. Besides all this the main highways have been improved and in some cases—as of Long Beach Boulevard—entirely rebuilt. In the city itself there has been vast improvement and extension of the streets and boulevards so that more than ever this favored section deserves to be termed the paradise of the motorist.
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T
<div class="poem">
<p>Singing and spinning with joy of power,<br />
Roaring up hills and winding through ravines<br />
Is surely to be happy for an hour;<br />
How else can one grasp half so many scenes?
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W
<div class="poem">
<p>Sleep-walking city!<br />
Who are the wide-eyed prowlers in the night?<br />
What nightmare-ridden cars move through their own far thunder?<br />
What living death of the wind rises, crackling the drowsy twigs?
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O
<div class="poem">
<p>Slow their floating step, but tireless, terraced down the great Plateau. <br />
Towards our ways of steam and wireless, silver-paced the brook-beds go. <br />
Past the ladder-walled Pueblos, past the orchards, pear and quince, <br />
Where the back-locked river’s ebb flows, miles and miles the valley glints, <br />
Shining backwards, singing downwards, towards horizons blue and bay. <br />
All the roofs the roads ensconce so dream of visions far away— <br />
Santa Cruz and Ildefonso, Santa Clara, Santa Fé. <br />
Ancient, sacred fears and faiths, ancient, sacred faiths and fears— <br />
Some were real, some were wraiths—Indian, Franciscan years, <br />
Built the Khivas, swung the bells; while the wind sang plain and free, <br />
"Turn your eyes from visioned hells!—look as far as you can see!" <br />
In the Santa Clara Valley, far away and far away, <br />
Dying dreams divide and dally, crystal-terraced waters sally— <br />
Linger towards another day, far and far away—far away.
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X
<div class="poem">
<p>Smokeless chimneys, damaged bridges, rotting wharves and choked canals, <br />
Tramlines buckled, smashed trucks lying on their side across the rails;
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G
<div class="poem">
<p>Smokeless chimneys, damaged bridges, rotting wharves and choked canals, <br />
Tramlines buckled, smashed trucks lying on their side across the rails;
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C
<div class="poem">
<p>So Fred accepted Briscoe's proposition and persuaded me to go along as observer, wiring Briscoe to that effect. The answer was,
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<div class="poem">
<p>So I had good news for Fred when he awoke. After breakfast he put the car into commission and made the only tire change on the trip. We were just ready to start when a covered wagon appeared carrying three young men going prospecting. They stopped to find out what we were doing there and after hearing our story, one of them said that evidently the man at Lucin didn't believe our car could climb the hill and we would have to come back, when he would have the laugh on us and then put us on the right road in the valley. The young man said there was nothing, not even water, for more than a hundred miles the way we were going, and that probably we would have lost our lives.
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<div class="poem">
<p>So he built a new city,<br />
ah can we believe, not ironically<br />
but for new splendour<br />
constructed new people<br />
to lift through slow growth<br />
to a beauty unrivalled yet—<br />
and created new cells,<br />
hideous first, hideous now—<br />
spread larve across them,<br />
not honey but seething life.
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R
<div class="poem">
<p>So we bought at fancy price a hundred for a start,<br />
We’d show the rabbit men that we were very smart.<br />
We saw them grow and multiply, built castles in the air,<br />
Figured what we’d also buy from raising Belgian hare.
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