CHAPTER XXVII

A SUMMER STORM AND SOME COMMENTS ON THE PICTURE POSTCARD

Shortly after leaving Ashtabula we ran into a storm—one of those fine, windy, dusty, tree-groaning rains that come up simply and magnificently and make you feel that you are going to be blown into kingdom come and struck by lightning en route. As we sped through great aisles of trees and through little towns all bare to our view through their open doors, as though they had not a thing to conceal or a marauder to fear, the wind began to rise and the trees to swish and whistle, and by the glare of our own powerful headlight we saw clouds of dust rolling toward us. A few heavy drops of water hit my head and face and someone, I suppose Franklin (let me put all the blame I can on him in this story—what else are hosts for?), suggested that we put up the top.

Now I, for one, vote automobile tops a nuisance. They are a crime, really. Here was a fine electric storm, with the heavens torn with great poles of light and the woods and the fields and distant little cottages revealed every few seconds with startling definiteness—and we had to put up the top. Why? Well, there were bags and coats and a camera and I know not what else, and these things had to be protected. My own glasses began to drip and my chin and my hair were very wet. So up went the top.

But, worse than that, the sides had to go up, for now the wind was driving the rain sidewise and we were all getting soaked anyhow—so up went the sides. Then, thus protected and with all the real beauty of the night shut out, we rattled along, I pressing my nose to the isinglass windows and wishing that I might see it all. I cursed God and man and close, stuffy automobiles. I snuggled down in my corner and began to dream again when presently, say one hour later, or two or three (it must have been two or three, now that I think of it), another enormous bridge such as that we had seen at Nicholsen, Pennsylvania, hove into view, down a curve which our lamps illuminated with amazing clearness.

“Whoa!” I called to Speed, as though he were a horse.

“You’re right,” commented Franklin, without further observation on my part. “That is interesting, isn’t it?” Though it was still raining, we opened those storm curtains and clambered out, walking on ahead of the car to stand and look at it. As we did a train came from somewhere—a long, brightly lighted passenger train—and sped over it as noiselessly as if it had been on solid ground. A large arch rose before us, an enormous thing, with another following in the distance and bridging a stream.

“Think I’d better sketch that?” queried Franklin.

“Indeed I do,” I replied, “if it interests you. It’s wonderful to me.”

We wandered on down the curve and under it, through a great arch. A second bridge came into view—this time of iron—the one over which our road ran, and beyond that a third, of iron or steel also, much higher than either of the others. This last was a trolley bridge, and as we stood here a trolley car approached and sped over it. At the same time another train glided over the great stone arch.

“What is this—Bridge Centre?” I inquired.

“Transportationsburg,” replied Franklin. “Can’t you see?”

We fell to discussing lights and shadows and the best angle at which to make the drawing.

But there was no umbrella between us—useless things, umbrellas—and so I had to lay my mackintosh on Franklin’s head and hold it out in front of him like an awning, while he peered under it and sketched and I played porch posts. Sketching so, we talked of the great walls of Europe—Spain and Italy—old Roman walls—and how these new things being built here in this fashion must endure—long after we were gone—and leave traces of what a wonderful nation we were, we Americans (German-Americans, Austro-Americans, Greek-Americans, Italian-Americans, French-Americans, English-Americans, Hindu-Americans).

“Just think, Franklin,” I chortled, “you and I may be remembered for thousands and thousands of years as having stood here tonight and sketched this very bridge.”

“Uh, huh,” he commented.

"It may be written that 'In A. D. 1915, Theodore Dreiser, accompanied by one Franklin Booth, an artist, visited the site of this bridge, which was then in perfect condition, and made a sketch of it, preserved now in that famous volume entitled “A Hoosier Holiday,” by Theodore Dreiser.'"

“You know how to advertise your own wares, don’t you?” he said. “Who made the sketch?”

“Why, Franklin Booth, of course.”

“But you didn’t say so.”

“Why didn’t I?”

“Because you didn’t.”

“Oh, well. We’ll correct all little errors like that in the proof. You’ll be safe enough.”

“Will I?”

“Surely you will.”

“Well, in that case I’ll finish the sketch. For a moment I thought I wouldn’t. But now that I’m sure to be preserved for posterity——”

He went scratching on.

The lights we saw ahead of us were those of Painesville, Ohio, another manufacturing and trans-shipping city like Conneaut and Ashtabula, and this was the Grand River we were crossing, a rather modest stream, it seemed to me, for so large a name. (I learned its title from a picture postcard later in the city.)

One should be impressed with the development of this picture postcard business in American towns. What is there to photograph, you might ask, of any of these places, large or small? Well, waterworks and soldiers' monuments and the residences of principal citizens, and so on and so forth. When I was a boy in Warsaw and earlier in Evansville and Sullivan, there wasn’t a single picture postcard of this kind—only those highly colored “panoramas” or group views of the principal cities, like New York and Chicago, which sold for a quarter or at least fifteen cents. Of the smaller towns there was nothing, literally nothing. No small American town of that date would have presumed to suppose that it had anything of interest to photograph, yet on this trip there was scarcely a village that did not contain a rack somewhere of local views, if no more than of clouds and rills and cattle standing in water near an old bridge. By hunting out the leading drug store first, we could almost invariably discover all there was to know about a town in a scenic way, or nearly all. It was most gratifying.

This change in the number and character of our national facilities as they affect the very small towns had been impressing me all the way. When I was from eight to sixteen years of age, there was not a telephone or a trolley car or an ice cream soda fountain (in the modern sense of that treasure) or a roller-skating rink or a roller skate or a bicycle, or an automobile or phonograph, or a moving picture theatre, or indeed anything like the number of interesting and new things we have now—flying machines and submarines, for instance. It is true that just about that time—1880-1886—when I left Warsaw for the world outside, I was beginning to encounter the first or some solitary examples of these things. Thus the first picture postcards I ever found were in Chicago in 1896 or thereabouts, several years after I had visited the principal eastern cities, and I would have seen them if there had been any. The first electric light I ever saw was in Evansville, Indiana, in 1882, where to my youthful delight and amazement they were erecting tall, thin skeleton towers of steel, not less than one hundred and twentyfive feet high, and only about four feet in diameter—(you may still see them in Fort Wayne, Indiana)—and carrying four arc lights each at the top. Fifty such towers were supposed to light the whole city of Evansville, a place of between forty and fifty thousand, and they did, in a dim, mooney way. I remember as a boy of twelve standing in wonder, watching them being put up. Evansville seemed such a great city to me then. These towers were more interesting as a spectacle than useful as a lighting system, however, and were subsequently taken down.

The first telephone I ever saw was one being installed in the Central Fire Station at Vincennes, Indiana, in 1880 or thereabouts. At the time my mother was paying the enforced visit, later to be mentioned, to the wife of the captain of this particular institution, a girl who had worked for her as a seamstress years before. I was no more than eight at the time, and full of a natural curiosity, and I remember distinctly staring at the peculiar instrument which was being hung on a post in the centre of the fire station, and how the various firemen and citizens stood about and gaped. There was much excitement among the men because of the peculiar powers of the strange novelty. I think, from the way they stared at it, while Frank Bellett, the Captain, first talked through it to some other office in the little city, they felt there must be something spooky about it—some legerdemain by which the person talking at the other end made himself small and came along the wire, or that there was some sprite with a voice inside the box which as an intermediary did all the talking for both parties. I know I felt that there must be some such supernatural arrangement about it, and for this reason I too looked with awe and wonder. As days passed, however, and considerable talking was done through it, and my own mother, putting the receiver to her ear, listened while her friend, the wife, called from somewhere outside, my awe, if not the wonder, wore off. For years, though, perhaps because I never used one until nearly ten years later, the mystic character of the thing stuck in my mind.

[Illustration: THE BRIDGE THAT IS TO MAKE FRANKLIN FAMOUS]

It was much the same thing with the trolley car and the roller skate and the bicycle. I never saw a trolley car until I was seventeen or eighteen years of age, and then only an experimental one conducted on a mile of track laid on North Avenue, Chicago, by the late Charles T. Yerkes, at that time the principal traction magnate of Chicago. He was endeavoring to find out whether the underground trolley was a feasible thing for use in Chicago or not and had laid a short experimental section, or had had it laid for him. I was greatly astonished, when I first saw it, to think it would go without any visible means of propulsion—and that in spite of the fact that I had already seen the second cable road built in America running in State Street, Chicago, as early as 1884. At that time, our family having come to Chicago for the summer, I ran an errand for a West Madison Street confectioner which took me to a candy manufacturer’s basement in State Street. There, through a window in the front of the store, underground, I saw great engines going, and a cable on wheels spinning by. Every now and then the grip of a car would appear and disappear past an opening under the track, which was here. It was most astonishing, and gave me a sense of vast inexplicable mystery which is just as lively today as it ever was, and as warranted.

In regard to the bicycle, the first one I ever saw was in Warsaw in 1884—a high-wheeled one, not a safety!—and the first pair of roller skates I ever saw was in the same place in 1885, when some adventurous amusement provider came there and opened a roller-skating parlor. It was a great craze for a while, and my brother Ed became an expert, though I never learned. There were various storms in our family over the fact that he was so eager for it, staying out late and running away, and because my mother, sympathetic soul, aided and abetted him, so keen was her sympathy with childhood and play, whereas my father, stern disciplinarian that he was, objected. Often have I seen Ed hanging about my mother’s skirts, and she, distressed and puzzled, finally giving him a quarter out of her hard earned store to enjoy himself. He ought certainly to have the most tender memories of her.

The first ice cream soda fountain I ever saw, or the first ice cream soda I ever tasted, was served to me in Warsaw, Indiana, at the corner book store, opposite the courthouse, subsequently destroyed. That was in 1885. It was called to my attention by a boy named Judson Morris, whose father owned the store, and it served as an introduction and a basis for future friendship, our family having newly moved to Warsaw. It had just succeeded a drink known as the milk shake, which had attained great popularity everywhere the preceding year. But ice cream soda! By my troth, how pale and watery milk shake seemed in comparison! I fell, a giddy victim, and have never since recovered myself or become as enthusiastic over any other beverage.

And so I could continue—leaving Franklin and Speed waiting patiently in Painesville, Ohio, in the rain, but I won’t. We hastened in after Franklin made his sketch, and, owing to some extraordinary rush of business which had filled the principal hotel, were compelled to take refuge in a rickety barn of a house known as “The Annex”—an annex to this other and much better one.