Across the Continent by the Lincoln Highway Part 7

We had several days to wait for our machine to be repaired, so we were free to enjoy Boulder and to take the interurban electric car for Denver. Boulder has a most picturesque situation, and is a town of delightful homes and of fine State University buildings. I saw at Boulder the same soft sunset colors, the same delicate blues, pinks, and greys that one sees in an Australian sunset.

Later we drove to Denver in our own car and were free to enjoy the drives about the city. "The Shirley" is a very well kept European hotel, and if one wishes to take one's food elsewhere there is "Sell's" with its delicious rolls and excellent coffee, tea, and chocolate; and there is the Hoff-Stauffer Cafeteria, presided over by a woman and offering excellently cooked food to hosts of people.

Every traveler should view the sunset from Cheesman Park in Denver. One can drive there easily over the fine streets of the city. Beside the pavilion, modeled on cla.s.sic lines, one may sit in one's car and look off at one hundred and fifty miles of mountains, stretching from Pike's Peak on the south to Long's Peak on the north. It is a grand view and should be seen more than once to be fully appreciated. One may sit on the steps of the fine Capitol building just a mile above sea level, and enjoy the same view.

Or one may take a famous mountain drive, winding up and up a stiff mountain road until one has reached the summit and can look down on miles of plains and on the city of Denver in the distance.

CHAPTER X

Leaving Denver in the afternoon, we drove to Boulder; from Boulder to Plattville and from Plattville due north to Greeley. All along to the left, between Plattville and Greeley, we had fine views of the whole line of mountains, and particularly of Long's Peak. Again we were impressed by the fertility of the Colorado alfalfa fields and by the rich green of its meadows. Greeley is a very attractive town with wide streets and with pretty homes set in green lawns. It is well shaded, stands high, and looks off to the n.o.ble line of mountains to the south.

Early on July 15th we left Greeley, taking a last look at the glorious mountains to the south. We pa.s.sed through fields upon fields of alfalfa and of grain. Great stacks of alfalfa everywhere dotted the country. The greenness of the land was refreshing. Then we came into more rolling country, less cultivated. We were plainly in a new part of the country, in this northwest corner of the State. The houses were new, and often small. In some places new houses stood alongside the old ones, the earlier ones being made of tar paper and looking like little cigar boxes. Some houses had tents erected near them for use as barns. Some houses were made of sod. There were very few trees, most ranch houses looking bare and bald. We pa.s.sed quant.i.ties of a beautiful blue flower, growing sometimes in great patches. Its bell-shaped flowers, sometimes rose, sometimes lavender, grew on tall green stalks. We also saw a beautiful starry white flower growing along the roadside. At Sterling we had a particularly good luncheon at the Southern Hotel on the main street. We exhorted our host and hostess to put out a Lincoln Highway sign, so that none should miss their excellent table.

We saw our old friends, the Matilija poppies, growing along the roadside as we went along in the hot afternoon. This was one of the hottest days of driving that we had in all our tour, and in it we made our longest run, two hundred and eight miles. We took early supper at the Commercial Hotel at Julesburg. Not long after leaving Julesburg we came upon a flamboyant sign which announced that we were nineteen miles from Ogallala, Nebraska. The sign also informed us with particular emphasis that Ogallala was "a wet town." We had crossed the State line and had left behind us Colorado with its mountains, its green meadows, its wild yuccas, its Matilija poppies, and its dark ma.s.ses of pine trees.

As we drove along in the dusky twilight, little owls kept flying low in front of our car, attracted by its lights. Sometimes a rabbit sat in the middle of the road, blinking and bewildered. We always gave him time to recover himself and leap into the shadows of the roadside. We had had another exquisite sunset with the same soft pastel shades that I had seen at Boulder. During the day we had seen many meadow larks, red-winged blackbirds, and doves. We had seen, too, many sparrow hawks, sitting silent on the fence posts, waiting for the approach of evening.

In one place we saw a poor young meadow lark, hanging dead from a barbed wire fence. He had evidently in flying struck his throat full against one of the barbs and had hung there, impaled to death. At Ogallala we found a very comfortable lodging house, The Hollingsworth, built over a garage. We had a good room there, although it was impossible to find a cool spot on that broiling night.

The next morning, as we took breakfast at a nearby restaurant, we learned that Ogallala had had a grand contest and had "gone dry" two weeks before. An enthusiastic gentleman who had taken part in the conflict told us that already the town was wonderfully changed. We congratulated him and urged him to see to it that the sign nineteen miles to the west heralded Ogallala as a dry town rather than a wet one.

The next day was cooler. The mountains had disappeared, and only wide rolling fields, sometimes as level as a floor, lay before us. We were crossing Nebraska. We came by a rather poor road, really a gra.s.sy trail, to North Platte, where we had luncheon at the Vienna Cafe. As we were driving along between Ogallala and North Platte, the gra.s.s growing high in the road tracks, we came suddenly upon a bevy of fat quail walking in the road. As they flew somewhat heavily, I felt sure that our wheel had struck some of them. So I went back to see. Three of them lay dead in the road, having been unable to fly in time to avoid the wheels. The noise of our machine had been m.u.f.fled by the fact that that we were driving over a gra.s.sy road and they had not heard us until we were on them. We were sorry indeed to have killed the beautiful little brown creatures. All through California and Colorado we had seen them, as they were constantly flying up in front of the machine and running off to cover. All along, the killdeer were darting about, calling loudly and piercingly.

Beyond North Platte we came upon a country house which had been pre-empted by a jolly house party of girls from town. They had put out some facetious signs: "Fried Chicken Wanted" and "Votes for Women." We stopped to call upon them and told them of our trip across the country, while they insisted upon serving us with cake and lemonade.

Late in the day we pa.s.sed some groups of movers, their horses and cattle with them. We saw glorious fields of corn and of alfalfa, and we saw fields dotted with little mounds or c.o.c.ks of wheat and of millet. Four miles before coming into Kearney, we pa.s.sed the famous sign which marks the distance half-way between San Francisco and Boston. We had seen a print of this sign, pointing 1,733 miles West to Frisco and East 1,733 miles to Boston, on the cover of our Lincoln Highway guide, issued by the Packard Motor Car Company. We stopped now to take a photograph of it. A woman living in a farmhouse across the road was much interested in our halt. She said that almost every motor party pa.s.sing stopped to photograph the sign.

We heard from her of two young women who were walking from coast to coast, enjoying the country and its adventures. Somehow we missed them in making the detour from Laramie to Denver. We had seen their photographs on postcards which they were selling to help meet their expenses. They were sisters, and looked very striking and romantic in their walking dress. They wore broad-brimmed hats, loose blouses with rolling collars, and wide trousers, tucked into high laced boots such as engineers wear. Each carried a small revolver at her belt. We were sorry to have missed seeing them against the picturesque background of the Wyoming plains.

At Kearney we had supper at "Jack's Place," and went on in the twilight to Minden, where we proposed stopping at "The Humphrey." We pa.s.sed through long fields of corn and over lonely rolling prairies. The cornfields with their rows of ta.s.seled stalks were like the dark, silent ranks of a waiting army, caped and hooded, standing motionless until marching orders came. The air was clear and fine, and the electric lights of Minden shone from afar with the brilliance of stars.

From Minden, we came by way of Campbell to Red Cloud, where we had luncheon at the Royal Hotel.

We had made this detour to Minden and Red Cloud in order to call upon a friend who is enthusiastic over his fine ranch near Red Cloud. Galloway cattle are his specialty, and he finds the rolling plains of southern Nebraska a fine place to breed them. From Red Cloud we came on in the afternoon through Blue Hill to Hastings, and through Hastings to Fremont. We were en route for Lincoln, where we hoped to spend the night. Between Minden and Red Cloud the country is very rolling, and sweeps away from the eye in great undulations. High on some of these ridges were fine silhouettes outlined against the sky: loaded wagons bringing in the sheaves of grain; men standing high, feeding these sheaves to the insatiable maw of the threshing machine; a boy standing in the grain wagon as the thick yellow stream poured into it, leveling the grain with a spade; all these and many other pictures of the Idyl of Harvest. For two hundred miles of our run the smoke of the threshing machines rose in the clear sky.

Sometimes the fields were covered with stacks of wheat looking like great yellow bee-hives. Sometimes the wheat was in rounded mounds or c.o.c.ks. Surely we were seeing the bread of a nation on these vast Nebraska plains.

Along the roadsides were quant.i.ties of "snow on the mountain," its delicate grey-green leaves edged with a pure white border. Across the fields the killdeer were flying, and calling in their shrill, clear notes, which always seem to breathe of the sea. They were not out of place, flying above these long billows of brown earth. The farmhouses were marked by clumps of cottonwood trees, and as we moved Eastward a few low evergreens began to appear.

Around Blue Hill the country is very fine, being a great plateau stretching off into illimitable distances. As we climbed the hill to the little town we met a farmer in his wagon who had just despatched a bull snake, a thick, ugly-looking creature. We stopped to pa.s.s the time of day, and he told us that he came to Nebraska from Illinois in '79 in a covered wagon. He was enthusiastic over Nebraska.

We made another stop to watch at close range the operations of a threshing machine. It was a fine sight. Two yellow streams came from the spouts of the machine; a great stream of chaff which rapidly piled up in a yellow mountain, and another stream of the heavy grain, pouring thick and fast into a wagon. One of the men told us that they had threshed fourteen hundred bushels the day before, working fourteen hours in fine, clear weather.

Everywhere the lovely grey doves were flying. There were hundreds of young meadow larks, too, and great numbers of red-winged blackbirds. It was on the 17th of July that I saw brown thrushes for the first time. It is interesting to watch the movements of the birds as the machine approaches. The doves in the road fly promptly. They do not take chances on being struck by the car. The sparrows wait until the last moment and then neatly save themselves. I often wondered how they could escape with so narrow a margin. We thought that the redheaded woodp.e.c.k.e.rs must be rather clumsy, as we saw a number of them that had been struck by other cars, and thrown just off the road.

It was impossible to reach Lincoln that night, so we stopped at a country inn some miles away. Rising early, we drove into Lincoln for breakfast. After a run about the city and a look at the buildings of the State University, we drove on toward Omaha. Unfortunately we attempted to take a cross-cut and found ourselves in an odd situation. We were driving down an unfrequented hill road, in an attempt to cut across to the main road, marked by white bands on the telephone poles. We suddenly found ourselves hanging high and dry above the ruts of the road. The rain had worn them so deep and the middle of the road had remained so hard and dry, that on the hillside we were literally astride the ridge in the middle of the road. This meant a long journey on foot to a farmhouse to borrow a spade and a pick. It also meant much hacking and digging away at the hard earth under the body of the machine to release the axles and drop the wheels to the road. Finally it was accomplished.

We picked up the farmer's children who had come out to see the rescue and drove down the long hill to the farmhouse. There we left our implements and our hearty thanks. How hopeless it seems when one is hung up on the road! And how blissful it is to bowl along freely once more!

Still the doves flew about us by the hundred and the brown thrushes increased in number. We had more level country now, and it was only as we approached Omaha that it became hilly.

We left Omaha, after looking about the city, late in the afternoon and drove one hundred and eight miles to Carroll in Iowa. The first twenty miles out of Omaha the road was extremely poor and very dusty. The trees were much more numerous, black walnut, maple, ash, and catalpa being among them.

Just as we felt that one could find his way across Nevada by a trail of whiskey bottles so we began to feel that one could cross Iowa on a trail marked by dead fowls. I had never before seen so many chickens killed by motor cars. Perhaps the explanation lay in the fact that all along our one hundred and eight miles from Omaha to Carroll we pa.s.sed numbers of farmers driving Ford cars. As we approached Carroll, we came to a hill top from which we looked down on a valley of ta.s.seled corn fields. It was exactly like looking down on an immense, shining green rug, with yellow tufts thrown up over its green surface. We saw but few orchards.

This was a corn country.

Carroll is a pleasant little town, with fine street lamps, and with a green park around its Courthouse. We were surprised to find so good a hotel as Burke's Hotel in a small town. Its landlady and proprietor has recently made extensive improvements in it, and it is a place of vantage on the Highway. The country around Carroll is very fine, being rolling and beautifully cultivated.

We reached Carroll very late in the day and were obliged to take our supper at a restaurant near the hotel. We were interested in a party of four young people who were evidently out for a good time. The two young gentlemen, by a liberal use of twenty-five cent pieces, kept the mechanical piano pounding out music all through their meal. They were both guiltless of coats and waist-coats. We had seen all through the West men in all sorts of public a.s.semblies, more or less formal, wearing only their shirts and trousers. So we had become somewhat accustomed to what we called the shirt-waist habit.

Many customs of the West strike the eye of the Easterner with astonishment. This custom which permits men to be at ease in public places and in the presence of ladies without coat or waist-coat in hot weather; the custom which permits ladies to sit in church without their hats; these and others which belong to the free West, the Easterner has to become accustomed to and to take kindly. Several times in California, and in Nevada, when we asked a question we received the cheerful, if unconventional response, "You bet!" "Will you please bring me a gla.s.s of water?" "You bet!" "We're on the Lincoln Highway, are we not?" "You bet!" These somewhat startling responses simply indicated a most cheerful spirit and a hearty readiness to do you any favor possible.

Leaving Carroll, we come on through Ames, Jefferson, Marshalltown, and Belle Plain, into Cedar Rapids. Out from Carroll we have rather b.u.mpy roads for some time. Then the road improves and is excellent from Ames on until we near Cedar Rapids. But all along work is being done on the roads and their improvement is a matter of great local interest. We pa.s.s a point in Marshall County where they are working with a new machine for cutting down the road. I call it a dirt-eating machine. The commissioner is extremely proud of it, and calls our attention to the immense amount of work it can do, and to the huge mouthfuls of earth which it bites out from the bank, through which the wider road is to run. We are charmed with the lovely country around Marshalltown, and with the very beautiful country between Belle Plain and Cedar Rapids. We drive through the campus and past the buildings of the State Agricultural College at Ames as we come into the town.

We are pa.s.sing beautiful farms. Here we see a group of splendid dappled grey Percheron draught horses, the pride of a stock-farm. There we pa.s.s reddish-yellow shocks of oats. The country is more wooded now. We see maples, oaks, ash, willows, and black walnuts. Here and there are yellow wild flowers, somewhat like black-eyed Susans. One thing we remark in all these Middle Western farms. There seem to be almost no flowers around the farm houses. An English farmhouse or a French farmhouse would have a riot of flowers growing all about and making a ma.s.s of color. We miss this in our Western farms and wonder why it is that we see so little color. We see practically no orchards, and very few grape-vines.

This is the country of wheat and oats. We have left the orchards and the vineyards far behind us in lovely California.

Cedar Rapids is a busy city with several hotels. Leaving the city on the morning of July 21st, we drive first through quite heavily wooded country. Then the view opens out and we are once more driving over beautiful, undulating country with rich crops of oats and corn. The perfume of the corn, standing tall and green, is delicious. When we pa.s.s through Mt. Vernon, we take a look at the buildings of Wesleyan College, which stands on a high ridge commanding a fine view. All the way to Clinton the country is attractive. After luncheon at the pleasant town of Clinton, we cross the broad Mississippi, looking up and down its green sh.o.r.es with delight. We are in Illinois now, and find Sterling and Dixon attractive towns on the Rock River, a stream dotted with green islands. The country is very open, with long stretches of prairie, green with standing corn or red-yellow with shocks of oats. We spend the night in De Kalb at a funny old hotel, built, they tell us, by Mr. Glidden, the "barbed-wire king." The hotel is called "The Glidden." Its ceilings are twenty feet high and we feel ourselves to be in "a banquet hall deserted." From De Kalb we make a short detour into Chicago, returning to the Highway at Joliet.

Joliet is a smoky city, full of factories and busy with the world's work. It is late afternoon when we reach Joliet, and we drive on to Elkhart, where we put up at a beautiful hotel with every modern convenience. The Indiana roads are in excellent condition and take us through a lovely rolling country of oaks and beech forests, and of fields of grain breathing pastoral peace and prosperity.

All along through the Middle West we have been pleased to see the immense interest taken in the Lincoln Highway. Everywhere one sees the Lincoln Highway signs used in abundance on the streets through which the Highway pa.s.ses. The telephone poles, the garages, and sometimes the shops, all are marked with the familiar red, white, and blue. They tell us of a Western town whose citizens were so anxious to have their town on the Highway that they of their own responsibility painted red, white, and blue signs on the telephone poles leading into and through the town. Later they were reluctantly obliged to paint out these signs, as the Highway was not taken through their town.

The names of the farms in the Middle West are many of them very interesting; as "Rolling Prairie Farm," "Round Prairie Farm," "Burr Oak Valley Farm," "Hickory Grove Farm," and "Hill Brook Farm."

At the entrance to a farm in Illinois a farmer has nailed a shelf to a telephone pole near his gate, and on this shelf he has placed a small bust of Lincoln. I fancy this is a prophecy of many monuments that we shall see along the Lincoln Highway in days to come.

We come into Ohio through the pleasant town of Van Wert, and drive on through fields of corn and wheat to Lima; and here we leave the Lincoln Highway for the present. We are to make a detour into Logan County, and from there we plan to travel southeast into the Old Dominion.

We spend a number of days in Logan County, driving about over the hills and through the valleys. This, too, is rolling country. I know it well, for here I spent my childhood. I know these forests of oak and hickory, and these rich fields of corn and wheat. I know the delicious scent of clover fields in the warm summer twilights. I recall the names that my girlhood friend and I used to give to the farmhouses as we drove about; "The Potato House," "The Dinner Bell House," "The Little Red House," and others. They are all there, and but little changed, although the people who live in them have probably changed.

We are told by a friend, who is a motor enthusiast, that she recently killed a turkey on the road. In all my motoring experience I have never seen a turkey, a guinea fowl or a duck, killed by a motor. But my friend tells me that they found it impossible to escape this particular turkey, as he refused to get out of the way.

We pa.s.sed three little girls one day, all astride the same horse, driving the cows home from pasture. We asked them to stand while we took their picture. They were greatly distressed. "We have on our dirty clothes," said they. "Never mind," we said. "But our hair isn't combed!"

they exclaimed. "Never mind," we said again. "You will look all right in the picture." And so they do.

The devices and pennants with which motorists advertise themselves and express their enjoyment are very interesting. Some carry pennants with the names of the towns or the States from which they come. Others carry pennants with the names of all the princ.i.p.al towns which they have visited. Whole cl.u.s.ters of pennants are fastened about the car, and float gaily in the wind. Some carry a pennant across the rear of the tonneau, which reads, "Excuse my dust." Others carry a pennant in the same place which reads, "Thank you."

We infer that this must be by way of courtesy to those cars which turn out for them to pa.s.s and fly on ahead. We meet many tourists in the Middle West who have been for more or less extended tours in the States near their own.

CHAPTER XI

We were sorry to leave the wooded hills and the green valleys of Logan County and press on to the southeast. Driving through Delaware, Ohio, we stopped to see the campus and fine buildings of Ohio Wesleyan University, and then came on by way of Columbus to Granville. Leaving Columbus we found the road very wet and heavy from the recent rains, which had fallen after a drought of many weeks. We lost our way in coming into Granville, and had to inquire directions at the house of a farmer. He was so kindly that we were moved to express to him a hope that he might some day have a motor. "Well, I don't begrudge 'em to n.o.body even if I can't have one myself," said he cheerfully.