“Y’ c’n have dinner,” he said as though he was obliged against his inclination to live up to his advertisement.
E. M. was drawing water out of the well to fill the radiator tank. Celia and I began wiping off the plates and forks on the corners of the tablecloth.
At the table nearest us were four men and a woman. One of the men kept hugging the woman, who paid no attention to him. Two of the others went continually back and forth to the bar, while the fourth was occupied solely with his food. At another table was a family motoring party, and at the third, a second family, with a baby that cried without stopping and a little child who screamed from time to time in chorus.
Our chicken dinner proved to be some greasy fried fish, cold bluish potatoes, sliced raw onions, pickled gherkins, bread and coffee.
We ate some bread and drank the coffee. If we had been blindfolded it wouldn’t have been so bad.
There is one consoling feature in such an incident, that although it is not especially enjoyable at the time, it is just such experiences and disappointments, of course, that make the high spots of a whole motor trip in looking back upon it. It is your troubles on the road, your bad meals in queer places, your unexpected stops at people’s houses; in short, your misadventures that afterwards become your most treasured memories. In fact, after years of touring, I have in a vague, ragged sort of way tried to hold to what might be called a motor philosophy. Anyway, I have found it a splendid idea when things go very uncomfortably to remember—if I can—what a very charming diplomat, who was also a great traveler, once told me: that in motoring, as in life, since trouble gives character, obstacles and misadventures are really necessary to give the trip character! The peaceful motorist who has no motor trouble or weather trouble or road trouble has a pleasant enough time, but after all he gets the least out of it in the way of recollections. Not that our one disappointment about our chicken dinner is meant to serve as a backbone of character for this trip, neither do I hope we shall run into any serious misadventure, but I really quite honestly hope that everything will not be so easy as to be entirely colorless.
One of the Exciting Things in Motoring Is Wondering What Sort of a Hotel You Will Arrive at for the Night
I was turning these thoughts over in my mind as we sped on to Chicago and they suggested a most discouraging possibility, which I immediately confided to Celia: