The Car That Went Abroad: Motoring Through the Golden Age

by Albert Bigelow Paine

Here and there on the slopes were flocks and herds, attended by grave-faced women, who were knitting as they slowly walked. They barely noticed us or their charges. They never sat down, but followed along, knitting, knitting, as though they were patterning the fates of men. Sometimes we met or passed a woman on the road, always knitting, like the others. It was uncanny. Probably for every human being there is somewhere among those dark mountains a weird woman, knitting the pattern of his life. That night at Thones, a forgotten hamlet, lost there in the Haute-Savoie, a storm broke, the wind tore about our little inn, the rain dashed fearsomely, all of which was the work of those knitting women, beyond doubt.

But the sun came up fresh and bright, and we took the road for Geneva. For a time it would be our last day in France. All the forenoon we were among the mountain peaks, skirting precipices that one did not care to look over without holding firmly to something. But there were no steep grades and the brinks were protected by solid little walls.

At the bottom of a long slope a soldier stepped out of a box of a house and presented arms. I dodged, but his intent was not sanguinary. He wanted to see our papers—we were at the frontier—so I produced our customs receipts, called triptyques, our T. C. de F. membership card, our car license, our driving license, and was feeling in my pocket for yet other things when he protested, "Pas nécessaire, pas nécessaire" and handed all back but the French triptyque, which he took to his bureau, where, with two other military attachés, he examined, discussed, finally signed and witnessed it, and waved us on our way.

So we were not passing the Swiss customs yet, but only leaving the French outpost. The ordeal of the Swiss douane was still somewhere ahead; we had entered the neutral strip. We wished we might reach the Swiss post pretty soon and have the matter over with. We had visions of a fierce person looking us through, while he fired a volley of French questions, pulled our baggage to pieces, and weighed the car, only to find that the result did not tally with the figures on our triple-folded sheet. I had supplied most of those figures from memory, and I doubted their accuracy. I had heard that of all countries except Russia, Switzerland was about the most particular. So we went on and on through that lofty scenery, expecting almost anything at every turn.

But nothing happened—nothing except that at one place the engine seemed to be running rather poorly. I thought at first that there was some obstruction in the gasoline tube, and my impulse was to light a match and look into the tank to see what it might be. On second thought I concluded to omit the match. I remembered reading of a man who had done that, and almost immediately his heirs had been obliged to get a new car.

We passed villages, but no douane. Then all at once we were in the outskirts of a city. Why, this was surely Geneva, and as we were driving leisurely along a fat little man in uniform came out and lifted his hand. We stopped. Here it was, then, at last.

For a moment I felt a slight attack of weakness, not in the heart, but about the knees. However, the little man seemed friendly. He held out his hand and I shook it cordially. But it was the papers he was after, our Swiss triptyque. I said to myself, "A minute more and we probably shall be on the scales, and the next in trouble." But he only said, "Numero de moteur." I jerked open the hood, scrubbed off the grease, and showed it to him. He compared it, smiled, and handed back our paper. Then he waved me to a bureau across the street. Now it was coming; he had doubtless discovered something wrong at a glance.

There was an efficient-looking, sinister-looking person in the office who took the triptyque, glanced at it, and threw something down before me. I thought it was a warrant, but it proved to be a copy of the Swiss law and driving regulations, with a fine road map of Switzerland, and all information needed by motorists; "Price, 2 Frs." stamped on the cover. I judged that I was required to buy this, but I should have done it, anyway. It was worth the money, and I wished to oblige that man. He accepted my two francs, and I began to feel better. Then he made a few entries in something, handed me my triptyque, said "Bonjour, et bon voyage," and I was done.

I could hardly believe it. I saw then what a nice face he had, while the little fat man across the street was manifestly a lovely soul. He had demanded not a thing but the number of the motor. Not even the number of the car had interested him. As for the weight, the bore of the cylinders, the number of the chassis, and all those other statistics said to be required, they were as nonexistent to him as to me. Why, he had not even asked us to unstrap our baggage. It was with feelings akin to tenderness that we waved him good-by and glided across the imaginary line of his frontier into Switzerland.

We glided very leisurely, however. "Everybody gets arrested in Switzerland"—every stranger, that is—for breaking the speed laws. This, at least, was our New York information. So we crept along, and I kept my eye on the speedometer all the way through Geneva, for we were not going to stop there at present, and when we had crossed our old friend, the Rhone, variously bridged here, skirted the gay water-front and were on the shore road of that loveliest of all lakes—Lake Léman, with its blue water, its snow-capped mountains, its terraced vineyards, we still loafed and watched the gendarmes to see if they were timing us, and came almost to a stop whenever an official of any kind hove in sight. Also we used the mellow horn, for our book said that horns of the Klaxon type are not allowed in Switzerland.