Property:Has text
From Off the Road Database
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C
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<p>One way was an oyster pail factory, one way they made candy, one way paper boxes, strawboard cartons.
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<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.
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<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.
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<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.
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<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.
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<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.
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<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.
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<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.
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<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.
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<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!
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<p>My parents came from New York State to Michigan as early settlers before I was born, and Fred and his mother came West in a covered wagon to Colorado when he was a small boy, so I guess there must be pioneer blood in our veins; the "call of the road" won.
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<p>Everyone at the Detroit factory was jubilant over the climb, and we thought the trip was completed when Fred settled down to his garage work and selling cars.
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<p>In 1908 there was no transcontinental automobile highway. The Lincoln Highway was not started until 1913 and wasn't finished for more than a decade. It filled a great want, linking the East with the West and making it possible for travelers to locate towns and cities by calculating exact distances. This was especially valuable in sparsely populated areas. Previously, only the hardiest motorists ventured any distance from home base, and a cross-country pleasure trip was out of the question. A few factories sent cars on long trips for advertising purposes, but the danger and trouble they encountered made the ventures questionable.
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<p>That night we came to Silver Peak, a famous mining camp of early days, with hot springs and bath houses, but it was dark when we arrived and we did not discover them until morning when we were ready to leave. Around here, the ground was strewn with black rock, very much like soft coal or slag, which looked to us as if it had come from a volcano, but we had no idea we were near the truth. When I went outside in the morning, the first thing I saw was an extinct, gray-sided volcano looming high above the green mountains not far from the town. It looked like a big cup and was so old and menacing in a beautiful world it had not been able to destroy, that it fascinated me, and as we left in the morning I couldn't take my eyes from it until it was behind us, and then I was sorry to leave it.
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<p>When he reached Colorado Springs, he found good weather and no snow on Pike's Peak, so he telephoned a photographer friend in Denver and told him to meet him at the Springs next morning with his large camera, and ride up with him. Then he removed the running boards and fenders and had a sprag made to drag behind the car so as to hold it on steep grades if necessary when he stopped to speed up the engine.
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<p>PIKE'S PEAK CLIMB POSSIBLE FOR WE ARE AT THE SUMMIT.
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<p>In rural districts the populace usually was antagonistic to the automobile because it frightened horses and accidents resulted. Often, upon the approach of a horse, the motorist would stop his car and stand in front of it until the animal could be maneuvered past the evil-smelling contraption.
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<p>We saw no building or person all afternoon. Late in the day, when everything was going nicely, we came to a small, innocent-looking brook but the track had been cut down so deep by high-wheeled wagons that we dared not try to ford it. We walked up and down the stream, searching for a place we could cross safely. Finally we selected a spot with a sandy landing on the opposite side, though the steep bank must be cut down before we could drive into the road.
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<p>A man pointed down a road but it took us through a marshy field and we could find no way through, so we came back to Tacoma late in the afternoon for further directions, and the man said we should have turned but he had not told us, and there were no signs of any kind. It was late, but Montello was only seven miles away and we decided to continue that evening because we had lost so much time the day before, so we left Tacoma the second time.
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<p>What directions we could get were very vague but we expected to get information on the way from old stage drivers, teamsters, and livery stable men. We knew that at this time of year we must avoid the Sierra Nevada mountains through Reno and Truckee, Nevada, and Donner Lake, California, where the whole Donner party had perished in the early days in snow so deep that the tops of trees showed in the spring where the party had peeled off bark to eat in a desperate endeavor to keep alive.
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