“That’s it,” said the man. “There ain’t no license in Hicksville.”
“Alas!” I exclaimed. “And we’re bound for Hicksville.”
“Well, tain’t too late,” said the man in front. “There’s Squiresburg right over there.”
“I’m afraid, I’m afraid,” I sighed, and yet the thought came to me what a fine thing it would be to turn aside here and loaf in Squiresburg in one of its loutish country saloons, say, until midnight, seeing what might happen. The Dutch inns of Jan Steen were somehow in my mind. But just the same we didn’t. Those things must be taken on the jump. An opportunity to be a success must provoke a spontaneous burst of enthusiasm. This suggestion of theirs, if it appealed to the others, provoked no vocal acquiescence. We smiled at them approvingly, and then rode on, only to comment later on what an adventure it might have proved—how rurally revealing.
HICKSVILLE
A Rembrandt effect
As we entered Hicksville the lamps were being trimmed in a cottage or two, and I got a sense once more of the epic that life is day after day, year after year, century after century, cycle after cycle. Poets may come and poets may go, a Gray, a Goldsmith, a Burns in every generation, but this thing which they seek to interpret remains forever. A Daubigny, a Corot, a Ruysdael, a Vermeer, all American born, might well interpret this from generation to generation. It would never tire. Passing up this simple village street, with its small cottages on every hand, I could not help thinking of what a Monticelli or an Inness would make it. The shadows at this hour were somewhat flamboyant, like those in “The Night Watch.” A sprinkling of people in the two blocks which comprised the heart of things was Rembrandtish in character. Positively, it was a comfort now to know that Franklin was with me, and that subsequently he would register this or something like it either in pen and ink or charcoal. It was so delightful to me in all its rural naïveté and crudity, that I wanted to sing about it or sit down in some corner somewhere and rhapsodize on paper. As it was, after exchanging a few words with a farmer who wanted to hear the story of our tour, we went to look for some picture postcards of Hicksville, and then to get something to eat.
It would seem at times as if life needed not so much action as atmosphere—certainly not action of any vigorous character—to make it transcendently pleasing. Insofar as I could see, there was no action in this town worthy of the name. Indeed, the people seemed to me to be of a lackadaisical turn, rurals of a very simple and unpretentious character, and, for the most part, as to the men, of an uncouth and workaday aspect. Many of them were of the stuff of which railroad hands are made, only here with the farm lands and the isolation of country life to fall back on, they were not so sophisticated.
The country lunch room which we encountered amused us all from one point of view and another. It was so typically your male center of rural life, swarming with all the wits and wags of the community and for miles around. Here raw yokels and noisy pretenders were eating, playing cards, pool, billiards, and indulging in rural wit, and we heard all the standard jests of country life. I gained the impression that the place had once been a barroom before the no-license limitation had descended upon it, and that many of its former patrons were making the best of the new conditions.
And here it was that for the first time in my life I tasted banana pie. Did you ever eat banana pie? Well! The piece I had here, in lieu of apple for which I inquired, a quarter section, with a larger layer of meringue on top, filled a long felt want and a void. It made up for the fact that I had to content myself with a ham sandwich and two fried eggs. It was thick—all of an inch and a half—and very pastryish. I asked the clerk (I cannot conscientiously call him a waiter) if he knew how to make it, but he did not. And I have been seeking ever since for a recipe as good as that from which this pie was made.