Pedal and Path: Across the Continent Awheel and Afoot

by George B. Thayer

Chapter XXVI.

Through Kentucky.

I took the train from St. Louis, after receiving some road routes kindly given by Mr. Harry L. Swartz, to Louisville, Ky. My recollection of the Illinois dirt roads, after a lapse of five months, was too vivid. The result of my encounter with one hundred and twenty-five miles of clay ruts and lumps, had left too many scars behind, and my indignation had not sufficiently subsided from the boiling point, to make me care to wheel across that State a second time; so, after making the acquaintance of a few wheelmen in Louisville, among them Messrs. Thompson, Adams, Allison, and Huber, I started out over the Shelbyville pike.

The pikes in Kentucky are macadamized, the rock used for that purpose being hauled and dumped alongside the road where it is broken up by negroes. It was no uncommon sight to see four or five “niggers,” as they are always spoken of there, seated in rows by the roadside in the scorching sun pounding these rocks into small pieces. From twenty to twenty-five cents a perch is the price paid for this rock, and five perch is a very good day’s work. The riding, as a general thing was very good, and there was plenty of coasting interspersed, but the many loose stones in the road would not allow very lively work.

Although I did not go through the finest portion of the blue-grass region, it was a very pretty country to ride over, plenty of trees, cool-looking groves, and fine-looking farm-houses set back quite a distance from the road on a knoll, a winding driveway leading to them. Sometimes these farm-houses would have a cluster of tumble-down shanties near them, a reminder of ante-bellum times. All the houses, unless of the recent build, had the chimneys on the outside.

Besides enjoying the ride through this fertile, beautiful-looking country, it was quite refreshing to be able to pass a group of children, quite mature ones, sometimes, without being the object of such facetious remarks as “Get up there, Levi,” “Let her go, Gallagher,” and so on, words that are always on the tip of the tongue of every white young American all through the West as well as in the East. But no such remarks ever fell from the lips of the colored children. They would open their eyes wide, and grin perhaps, but not a word was said, unless, as it sometimes happened, it was “Good mornin’,” or “How de do.” Much as I had to regret the ignorance of the colored people—for they hardly ever gave a satisfactory answer to an inquiry about roads and streets—still they never tried to say something smart as I passed by, a compliment that cannot be paid to the white people of Kentucky, or anywhere else.

The first night out I stopped at a farm-house with a widow and a lazy son. The husband had been killed in the rebel army. The next morning at the breakfast table the old lady asked me what kind of bread I had to eat in California. I replied, “Very good, both home-made and baker’s.” “Well,” said she, “my daughter has been visiting in California, and she says they make their bread there in this way: The women take a mouthful of water and squirt it over the flour, and then take another mouthful and do the same, and in this way mix it up. I don’t want to eat any of their bread.” I explained how the Chinese laundrymen sprinkle their clothes, and suggested that perhaps there was some mistake, but it was no use trying to enlighten a mind that probably, until the war, believed the Yankees had horns and tails.

The bicycle is not in favor in Kentucky. I was obliged to make more dismounts on account of frightened horses than in any section of this country through which I have passed. And not only do the horses and their drivers dislike them, but the women express themselves very forcibly about them. A saddle-horse, left unhitched in front of a house, ran away down the road at my approach, but was easily caught. “I don’t wonder he was afraid of the thing. They had not ought to be allowed in the road,” said a female voice, with emphasis. The sound came from the inside of the house somewhere, I did not look to see where. Meeting a carriage, in which were two persons, I dismounted, as the horse showed some signs of fright, but it was needless, and as they drove leisurely by the man smiled and bowed to me. “Don’t bow to him. I would not be seen bow—”, was what I heard issuing in a piping voice from the inside of the dilapidated vehicle. She evidently belonged to the aristocracy—to the same liberal class of females that spat upon Union soldiers during the rebellion.