Pedal and Path: Across the Continent Awheel and Afoot

by George B. Thayer

Across the Missouri.

Cyclones are getting to be so common in this Western country that the people are endeavoring to guard against them as they do against fire, but with this difference: they do not try to protect their property against the cyclone; it is useless; they simply wish to save their lives, that is all. Insurance on property against loss by wind is now customary all over the country, but if these cyclones increase in frequency as they have in the past few years, it is only a question of time when life insurance companies will consider it an extra risk to live in this Western country. I experienced a feeling of nearness to the cyclone that was sufficient when I read the accounts of the terrible destruction of life and property in Ohio a few weeks ago, for I had a delightful journey only a few days before through some of the towns that were so soon afterwards swept away in a twinkling. But my stay in Grinnell, of a couple of weeks, was like living on an old battle-field. The dead, of course, have gone from sight, but the wounded are to be seen on all sides. I went out calling and met an old lady still suffering from an injury received four years ago. I saw another go limping by and heard she had a hip broken at the same time, and, while riding, I met a lady whose head was so crushed during that terrible storm that she now has frequent spells of insanity. I began to wonder if any one in Grinnell had escaped uninjured. Let the clouds even now gather, black and threatening, and the people live the awful experience of that night over again. The streets are soon filled with women and children, carrying what few valuables they can, all hurrying to some cave for safety. I crawled into one of these caves one day. It was in the cellar of a fine residence, and is a room not larger than six by eight feet, and not over four feet high, with strong brick walls on the sides and heavy timbers overhead, and amply ventilated, and into this small hole, not long ago, twenty-four women and children huddled for two or three hours one night, some praying, others crying, and all suffering from mortal fear as long as the storm lasted. Almost every house in Grinnell that has a cellar has a cave of some kind in it, a room boarded up and covered over thick with earth to protect the occupants from falling bricks and timbers. Not only here but all through the West a cave is now considered an essential part to every dwelling. But think of the mental suffering the people of these Western States endure whenever there is a severe storm or even indications of one. If those Eastern people could see the photographic views that I have seen of the destruction wrought by a Western cyclone, they would never assign, as a cause of their complete demolition, the flimsy manner in which the houses are built. If they could have seen the two college buildings, one built of stone, the other of brick, each as large and as solidly built as any Eastern edifice, if they could have seen these two buildings demolished and crushed like so many eggshells—in less than two minutes—what would they think of the superior safety of our Eastern houses? How many frame houses would stand such a blow? Everything was as calm and still as death that terrible night when, without any premonitory roar or warning, the cyclone struck the town like the report of a cannon, and in less than five minutes it had finished its work, ending it as easily with the two college buildings as it commenced it with the small frame houses. Although it was early in the evening, fifty-eight persons were instantly killed and many more wounded; but let it come again, day or night, it will never catch Grinnell people unawares. They watch the clouds to this day, as they would some fell demon hovering over them, and the more timid ones early rush to their caves. Many outlandish lies have been written about the power of the cyclone, but the cold fact, the bare truth is more wonderful than any stories man can invent. One only needs to come here and talk with the people about the cyclone to be convinced that their experience for a few minutes was as terrible as that of a great battle, and I was as fascinated with their stories as I ever was talking with old soldiers.

“I should know you were an Easterner from your talk,” is a remark I hear on all sides, and so I have tried to learn what there is about the talk of a native of New England that distinguishes him from people west of there. It is not because he speaks so flat, for through New York every one spoke more so than I could. I pronounced the town of Fonda just as it is spelled, and yet every one there called it “Fundy.” Utica was “Utiky,” Lima was “Limy,” and everything else was pronounced in the same flat manner. I supposed this to be a peculiarity of New Englanders, but New Yorkers rather excel in that style of speech. Out here in Iowa, where friends have an unflinching frankness quite remarkable, they tell me whenever I say anything particularly flat my nose flies up into the air to emphasize it. That may be a trait peculiar to myself, but it is some comfort to know that people outside of New England have lingual peculiarities as marked as those coming from the Eastern States. In Ohio and Indiana I met a great many persons who never pronounce the personal pronoun “I” as we do. It is always “Ah” instead of “I.” “Ah thought so,” “Ah heard so.” I supposed that was more Southern than Western; but if so, many of Southern birth are now living in these States. The farther West I go the more I notice the way they roll their R’s. That letter is brought out with a peculiar force in every word in which it occurs. Here, there, however, harvest, horses, father, mother, and all such words are spoken as if there were two or three r’s in them instead of one. Whenever they accost me it is “O, George,” while in the East it would be, “Say, George.” Then two short grunts are very often used out here instead of yes or no. Emphasize the first grunt and it means no; emphasize the second, with a slightly rising accent, and it means yes. This is a common form of expression, with colored people everywhere, I think, but here, with white children, it is the most common way of saying yes or no, and many older persons use it.

They have no brooks or streams here, but everything is called a “crick,” pronounced very short, too. That name is applied sometimes to good-sized rivers. These peculiarities of speech do not seem to be acquired by persons living here, who were born and brought up in the East, but their children acquire them readily, and everywhere on the trip, going and coming, I noticed these peculiarities more in the talk of the women and children than in the men. I could only account for this from the fact that men go out into the world more and come in contact and consequently talk more with persons using fewer provincialisms.

The students at the Iowa College in Grinnell had a field-day while I was there, and during the games and races I could but notice the striking difference between the features of these students and those of Eastern young men. These Iowa boys have heads large and well shaped enough, but their features are disproportionately large. Their eyebrows are large and overhanging, their cheek bones are prominent, their noses are heavy, mouths large, and under jaw bones strong and marked. There is nothing brutal or exactly coarse about their faces, but everything about them is large and heavy. I hardly saw a small-featured, clean-cut, really refined face among the one hundred and fifty young men.

The attendance at church in Grinnell is larger in proportion than in any place in the East, probably. With a population of 3,500 the regular attendance at the Congregational Church alone is eight or nine hundred.

When I left Grinnell, two members of their bicycle club, Messrs. Lee Taylor and Geo. Lewis, accompanied me for twenty miles or more, and although I was very glad of their company, the frequent tumbles they took coasting, made me sorry they had undertaken the ride, with the thermometer up in the nineties.

Iowa roads are decidedly better than those through Illinois. Although there is the same system of repairing the highways in both States—the ancient system of farmers working out their road tax where they choose—yet Iowa farmers not only scrape their roads, but in many places they were laying tiles along up the worst hills in order that the roads might be drained in the spring. I saw more work done on the roads the first afternoon in Iowa than I saw the whole week in Illinois. And there is another thing to be said in favor of these Western clay roads, roads that for hundreds of miles have been as rough as any cobble street in a New England city (it is simply just to give the devil his due), a rider can go within half an inch of a clay rut and yet his wheel will not slide down into the rut. This has saved me many a tumble.

Another thing: during dry spells, such as we are having throughout the West now, the dust gets very fine but never very deep. The clay is so tough it does not get cut up as much as our Eastern roads do during a drought. But the coasting in Iowa, of which I expected so much, for the country is a rolling prairie, was simply dangerous. The hills are so full of hard hummocks, “dive holes” the wheelmen here call them, that it shakes a fellow up terribly. Once I went off, going down a steep hill at such a rate that my hands and knees struck the ground simultaneously, and the knapsack tunked me on the back of the head at about the same time, as if to remind me of man’s fallen estate.

In almost every Western State the towns are just six miles square and the roads cross each other at right angles at intervals of one mile; consequently in traveling across the country diagonally, as I have most of the time, it was necessary to travel much farther than if the roads had been left as they were before the towns and counties were laid out. Through Iowa the old stage road followed the “divide” (what we call a ridge in the East) in many places, but when the towns were laid out the road was made straight across the country, up and down some very steep hills, in the western part of the State. The log barns, pig pens, and corn cribs, so common in Ohio and Indiana, disappear almost entirely in Illinois and Iowa, and instead appear thatched barns and sheds. Poles are set in the ground and a cheap frame fastened to them, the sides are perhaps covered with rough sheathing boards and the roof thatched with hay; that constitutes the most common barn to be seen in this part of the West. It is no wonder so many cattle perish here during the severe winters. Heavy timber is very scarce, which accounts for the lack of log cabins and other log buildings.