With Poppy’s pa doing the general-manager stuff in the new factory, my chum and I had merrily set forth on a hitch-hike as a sort of vacation. This, too, was Poppy’s idea. A hitch-hike, as every kid knows, is a sort of free automobile tour. You start walking down the concrete in the direction you want to go, and when a motor car to your liking comes alone you wigwag the driver to stop and give you a lift. Sometimes you get it and sometimes you don’t. But if you limp a little bit, and act tired, that helps.
Poppy, of course, was all hip-hip-hurray over his hitch-hike idea. That’s his way. Our most violent exercise, he spread around, seeing nothing but joy and sugar buns ahead, would be lifting our travel-weary frames into soft-cushioned Cadillacs and Packards. Once comfortably seated, we would glide along swiftly and inexpensively. No gasoline bills to pay. No new tires to buy. Everything free, including the scenery. Some automobiles would carry us ten miles, others would carry us a hundred miles. “We might even average around three hundred miles a day,” was some more of his line, “and still have time each night to stop at a farmhouse and do chores for our supper and breakfast.” If we slept in the farmer’s barn, that would be free, too. Our trip would cost us scarcely anything, though it would be wise, the leader tacked on at the tail end, to carry twenty dollars in small bills for emergencies.
I fell for the scheme, of course. For Poppy never has any trouble getting me to do what he wants me to do. Not that I haven’t a mind of my own. But I’ve found out that in going along with him I usually learn something worth while, and have a whale of a lot of fun doing it, too.
Having won our parents’ consent to the trip, we had set forth that morning in high feather. But in poor luck we now were held up on a closed road, though why the road had been suddenly shut off was a mystery to us.
With a final look up and down the long stretch of concrete, Poppy came over to where I was and dropped down beside me in the hot sand.
“Still not a sign of a car,” says he.
“Not even a flivver, huh?” I suffered with him.
“I can’t understand it,” says he, puzzled. “We saw a few cars after we left Pardyville. But the road’s completely empty now, and has been for hours.”
I saw a chance to have some fun with him.
“‘And our most violent exercise,’” I quoted glibly, “‘will be lifting our travel-weary frames into soft-cushioned cattle racks and pant hards.’ Say, Poppy,” I grinned, “was that last cattle rack we rode in a four-legged wheelbarrow or another gnash?”