Two Thousand Miles on an Automobile Part 3

The sport may not be pretty and graceful; it lacks the sanction of convention, the halo of tradition. It does not admit of smart gowns and gay trappings; it is the last product of a mechanical age, the triumph of mechanical ingenuity, the harnessing of mechanical forces for pleasure instead of profit,--the automobile is the mechanical horse, and, while not as graceful, is infinitely more powerful, capricious, and dangerous than the ancient beast.

CHAPTER THREE THE START THE RAILROAD SPIKE

A five o'clock call, though quite in accordance with orders, was received with some resentment and responded to reluctantly, the Professor remarking that it seemed but fair to give the slow-going sun a reasonable start as against the automobile.

About fifty minutes were given to a thorough examination of the machine. Beyond the tightening of perhaps six or eight nuts there was nothing to do, everything was in good shape. But there is hardly a screw or nut on a new automobile that will not require tightening after a little hard usage; this is quite in the nature of things, and not a fault. It is only under work that every part of the machine settles into place. It is of vital importance during the first few days of a long tour to go over every screw, nut, and bolt, however firm and tight they may appear.

In time many of the screws and nuts will rust and corrode in place so as to require no more attention, but all that are subjected to great vibration will work loose, soon or late. The addition of one or two extra nuts, if there is room, helps somewhat; but where it is practical, rivet or upset the bolt with a few blows of the hammer; or with a punch, cold chisel, or even screw-driver jam the threads near the nut,--these destructive measures to be adopted only at points where it is rarely necessary to remove the bolts, and where possibilities of trouble from loosening are greater than any trouble that may be caused by destroying the threads.

We left Kendallville at ten minutes past seven; a light rain was falling which laid the dust for the first two miles. With top, side curtains, and boot we were perfectly dry, but the air was uncomfortably cool.

At Butler, an hour and a half later, the rain was coming down hard, and the roads were beginning to be slippery, with about two inches of mud and water.

We caught up with an old top buggy, curtains all on and down, a crate of ducks behind, the horse slowly jogging along at about three miles per hour. We wished to pa.s.s, but at each squawk of the horn the old lady inside simply put her hand through under the rear curtain and felt to see what was the matter with her ducks.

We were obliged to shout to attract her attention.

In the country the horn is not so good for attracting attention as a loud gong. The horn is mistaken for dinner-horns and distant sounds of farmyard life. One may travel for some distance behind a wagon-load of people, trying to attract their attention with blasts on the horn, and see them casually look from side to side to see whence the sound proceeds, apparently without suspecting it could come from the highway.

The gong, however, is a well-known means of warning, used by police and fire departments and by trolley lines, and it works well in the country.

For some miles the Professor had been drawing things about him, and as he b.u.t.toned a newspaper under his coat remarked, "The modern newspaper is admirably designed to keep people warm--both inside and out. Under circ.u.mstances such as these one can understand why it is sometimes referred to as a 'blanket sheet.'

The morning is almost cold enough for a 'yellow journal,'" and the Professor wandered on into an abstract dissertation upon journalism generally, winding up with the remark that, "It was the support of the yellow press which defeated Bryan;" but then the Professor is neither a politician nor the son of a politician --being a Scotchman, and therefore a philosopher and dogmatist. The pessimistic vein in his remarks was checked by the purchase of a reversible waterproof shooting-jacket at Butler, several sizes too large, but warm; and the Professor remarked, as he gathered its folds about him, "I was never much of a shot, but with this I think I'll make a hit."

"Strange how the thickness of a garment alters our views of things in general," I remarked.

"My dear fellow, philosophy is primarily a matter of food; secondarily, a matter of clothes: it does not concern the head at all."

At Butler we tightened the clutches, as the roads were becoming heavier.

At Edgerton the skies were clearing, the roads were so much better that the last three miles into Ridgeville were made in ten minutes.

At Napoleon some one advised the road through Bowling Green instead of what is known as the River road; in a moment of aberration we took the advice. For some miles the road was being repaired and almost impa.s.sable; farther on it seemed to be a succession of low, yellow sand-hills, which could only be surmounted by getting out, giving the machine all its power, and adding our own in the worst places.

Sand--deep, bottomless sand--is the one obstacle an automobile cannot overcome. It is possible to traverse roads so rough that the machine is well-nigh wrenched apart; to ride over timbers, stones, and boulders; plough through mud; but sand--deep, yielding sand--brings one to a stand-still. A reserve force of twenty or thirty horse-power will get through most places, but in dry weather every chauffeur dreads hearing the word sand, and anxiously inquires concerning the character of the sandy places.

Happily, when the people say the road is "sandy," they usually mean two or three inches of light soil, or gravelly sand over a firm foundation of some kind--that is all right; if there is a firm bottom, it does not matter much how deep the dust on top; the machine will go at nearly full speed over two or three inches of soft stuff; but if on cross-examination it is found that by sand they mean sand, and that ahead is a succession of sand ridges that are sand from base to summit, with no path, gra.s.s, or weeds upon which a wheel can find footing, then inquire for some way around and take it; it might be possible to plough through, but that is demoralizing on a hot day.

Happily, along most sandy roads and up most hills of sand there are firm spots along one side or the other, patches of weeds or gra.s.s which afford wheel-hold. Usually the surface of the sand is slightly firmer and the large automobile tires ride on it fairly well. As a rule, the softest, deepest, and most treacherous places in sand are the tracks where wagons travel--these are like quicksand.

The sun was hot, the sand was deep, and we had pushed and tugged until the silence was ominous; at length the lowering clouds of wrath broke, and the Professor said things that cannot be repeated.

By way of apology, he said, afterwards, while shaking the sand out of his shoes, "It is difficult to preserve the serenity of the cla.s.s-room under conditions so very dissimilar. I understand now why the golf-playing parson swears in a bunker. It is not right, but it is very human. It is the recrudescence of the old Adam, the response of humanity to emergency. Education and religion prepare us for the common-place; nature takes care of the extraordinary.

The Quaker hits back before he thinks. It is so much easier to repent than prevent. On the score of scarcity alone, an ounce of prevention is worth several tons of repentance; and--"

It was so apparent that the Professor was losing himself in abstractions, that I quietly let the clutches slip until the machine came to a stop, when the Professor looked anxiously down and said,--

"Is the blamed thing stuck again?"

We turned off the Bowling Green road to the River road, which is not only better, but more direct from Napoleon to Perrysburg. It was the road we originally intended to take; it was down on our itinerary, and in automobiling it is better to stick to first intentions.

The road follows the bank of the river up hill and down, through ravines and over creeks; it is hard, hilly, and picturesque; high speed was quite out of the question.

Not far from Three Rivers we came to a horse tethered among the trees by the road-side; of course, on hearing and seeing the automobile and while we were yet some distance away, it broke its tether and was off on a run up the road, which meant that unless some one intervened it would fly on ahead for miles. Happily, in this instance some men caught the animal after it had gone a mile or two, we, meanwhile, creeping on slowly so as not to frighten it more. Loose horses in the road make trouble. There is no one to look after them, and nine times out of ten they will go running ahead of the machine, like frightened deer, for miles. If the machine stops, they stop; if it starts, they start; it is impossible to get by. All one can do is to go on until they turn into a farmyard or down a cross-road.

The road led into Toledo, but we were told that by turning east at Perrysburg, some miles southwest of Toledo, we would have fifty miles or more of the finest road in the world,--the famous Perry's Pike.

All day long we lived in antic.i.p.ation of the treat to come; at each steep hill and when struggling in the sand we mentioned Perry's Pike as the promised land. When we viewed it, we felt with Moses that the sight was sufficient.

In its day it must have been one of the wonders of the West, it is so wide and straight. In the centre is a broad, perfectly flat, raised strip of half-broken limestone. The reckless sumptuousness of such a highway in early days must have been overpowering, but with time and weather this strip of stone has worn into an infinite number of little ruts and hollows, with stones the size of cocoanuts sticking up everywhere. A trolley-line along one side of this central stretch has not improved matters.

Perry's Pike is so bad people will not use it; a road alongside the fence has been made by travel, and in dry weather this road is good, barring the pipes which cross it from oil-wells, and the many stone culverts, at each of which it is necessary to swing up on to the pike. The turns from the side road on to the pike at these culverts are pretty sharp, and in swinging up one, while going at about twenty-five miles an hour, we narrowly escaped going over the low stone wall into the ditch below. On that and one other occasion the Professor took a firmer hold of the side of the machine, but, be it said to the credit of learning, at no time did he utter an exclamation, or show the slightest sign of losing his head and jumping--as he afterwards remarked, "What's the use?"

To any one by the roadside the danger of a smash-up seems to come and pa.s.s in an instant,--not so to the person driving the machine; to him the danger is perceptible a very appreciable length of time before the critical point is reached.

The secret of good driving lies in this early and complete appreciation of difficulties and dangers encountered. "Blind recklessness" is a most expressive phrase; it means all the words indicate, and is contra-distinguished from open-eyed or wise recklessness.

The timid man is never reckless, the wise man frequently is, the fool always; the recklessness of the last is blind; if he gets through all right he is lucky.

It is reckless to race sixty miles an hour over a highway; but the man who does it with his eyes wide open, with a perfect appreciation of all the dangers, is, in reality, less reckless than the man who blindly runs his machine, hit or miss, along the road at thirty miles an hour,--the latter leaves havoc in his train.

One must have a cool, quick, and accurate appreciation of the margin of safety under all circ.u.mstances; it is the utilization of this entire margin--to the very verge--that yields the largest results in the way of rapid progress.

Every situation presents its own problem,--a problem largely mechanical,--a matter of power, speed, and obstructions; the chauffeur will win out whose perception of the conditions affecting these several factors is quickest and clearest.

One man will go down a hill, or make a safe turn at a high rate of speed, where another will land in the ditch, simply because the former overlooks nothing, while the latter does. It is not so much a matter of experience as of natural bent and adaptability. Some men can drive machines with very little experience and no instructions; others cannot, however long they try and however much they are told.

Accidents on the road are due to Defects in the road, Defects in the machine, or Defects in the driver.

American roads are bad, but not so bad that they can, with justice, be held responsible for many of the troubles attributed to them.

The roads are as they are, a practically constant,--and, for some time to come,--an unchangeable quant.i.ty. The roads are like the hills and the mountains, obstacles which must be overcome, and machines must be constructed to overcome them.

Complaints against American roads by American manufacturers of automobiles are as irrelevant to the issue as would be complaints on the part of traction-engine builders or wagon makers. Any man who makes vehicles for a given country must make them to go under the conditions--good, bad, or indifferent--which prevail in that country. In building automobiles for America or Australia, the only pertinent question is, "What are the roads of America or Australia?" not what ought they to be.

The manufacturer who finds fault with the roads should go out of the business.

Roads will be improved, but in a country so vast and spa.r.s.ely settled as North America, it is not conceivable that within the next century a net-work of fine roads will cover the land; for generations to come there will be soft roads, sandy roads, rocky roads, hilly roads, muddy roads,--and the American automobile must be so constructed as to cover them as they are.

The manufacturer who waits for good roads everywhere should move his factory to the village of Falling Waters, and sleep in the Kaatskills.

Machines which give out on bad roads, simply because the roads are bad, are faultily constructed.

Defects in roads, to which mishaps may be fairly attributed, are only those unlooked for conditions which make trouble for all other vehicles, such as wash-outs, pit-holes, weak culverts, broken bridges,--in short, conditions which require repairs to restore the road to normal condition. The normal condition may be very bad; but whatever it is, the automobile must be constructed so as to travel thereon, else it is not adapted to that section of the country.

It may be discouraging to the driver for pleasure to find in rainy weather almost bottomless muck and mud on portions of the main travelled highway between New York and Buffalo, but that, for the present, is normal. The manufacturer may regret the condition and wish for better, but he cannot be heard to complain, and if the machine, with reasonably careful driving, gives out, it is the fault of the maker and not the roads.