As we were talking, it began to rain, and we decided to drive on more speedily. A few miles back, after some cogitation at a crossroads, we had decided to take the road to Wilkes-Barré. I shall never feel grateful enough for our decision, though for a time it looked as though we had made a serious mistake. After a time the fine macadam road ended and we took to a poorer and finally a rutty dirt road. The grades became steeper and steeper—more difficult to ascend and descend. In a valley near a bounding stream—Stoddartsville the place was—we had another blowout—or something which caused a flat tire, in the same right rear wheel; and this time in a driving rain. We had to get out and help spread tools in the wet road and hunt leaks in the rubber rim. When this was repaired and the chains put on the wheels we proceeded, up hill and down dale, past miles of apparently tenantless woods and rocky fields—on and on in search of Wilkes-Barré. We had concluded from our maps and some signs that it must be about thirtysix miles farther. As it turned out it was nearly seventy. The roads had a tendency to curve downwards on each side into treacherous hollows, and as I had recently read of an automobile skidding on one of these, overturning and killing three people, I was not very giddy about the prospect. Even with the chains the machine was skidding and our able driver kept his eye fixed on the road. I never saw a man pay more minute attention to his wheel nor work harder to keep his machine evenly balanced. A good chauffeur is a jewel, and Speed was one.
But this ride had other phases than a mere bad road. The clouds were so lowery and the rain so heavy that for a part of the way we had to have the storm curtains on. We could see that it was a wonderful country that we were traversing, deliciously picturesque, but a sopping rain makes one’s spirits droop. Franklin sat in his corner and I in mine with scarcely a word. Speed complained at times that we were not making more than four miles an hour. I began to calculate how long it would take to get to Indiana at that rate. Franklin began to wonder if we were not making a mistake trying to cut straight across the poorly equipped state of Pennsylvania.
“Perhaps it would have been better after all if we had gone up the Hudson.”
I felt like a criminal trying to wreck a three thousand dollar car.
But beyond a place called Bear Creek things seemed to get better. This was a town in a deep ravine with a railroad and a thundering stream, plunging over a waterfall. The houses were charming. It seemed as if many well-to-do people must live here, for the summer anyhow. But when we asked for food no one seemed to have any. “Better go to Wilkes-Barré,” advised the local inn keeper. “It’s only fifteen miles.” At four miles an hour we would be there in four hours.
Out we started. The rain ceased for a time, though the clouds hung low, and we took up the storm curtains. It was now nearly two o’clock and by three it was plain we were nearing Wilkes-Barré. The roads were better; various railroads running in great cuts came into view. We met miners with bright tin buckets, their faces as black as coal, their caps ornamented with their small lamps. There were troops of foreign women and poorly clad children carrying buckets to or from the mines. Turning a corner of the road we came suddenly upon one of the most entrancing things in the way of a view that I have ever seen. There are city scapes that seem some to mourn and some to sing. This was one that sang. It reminded me of the pen and ink work of Rops or Vierge or Whistler, the paintings of Turner and Moran. Low hanging clouds, yellowish or black, or silvery like a fish, mingled with a splendid filigree of smoke and chimneys and odd sky lines. Beds of goldenglow ornamented and relieved a group of tasteless low red houses or sheds in the immediate foreground, which obviously sheltered the heavy broods of foreign miners and their wives. The lines of red, white, blue and grey wash, the honking flocks of white geese, the flocks of pigeons overhead, the paintless black fences protecting orderly truck gardens, as well as the numerous babies playing about, all attested this. As we stood there a group of heavy-hipped women and girls (the stocky peasant type of the Hungarian-Silesian plains) crossed the foreground with their buckets. Immense mounds of coal and slag with glimpses of distant breakers perfected the suggestion of an individual and characterful working world. Anyhow we paused and applauded while Franklin got his sketching board and I sauntered to find more, if any, attractive angles. In the middle distance a tall white skyscraper stood up, a prelude, or a foretouch to a great yellowish black cloud behind it. A rich, smoky, sketchy atmosphere seemed to hang over everything.
“Isn’t Walkes-Barré wonderful?” I said to Franklin. “Aren’t you glad now you’ve come?”
“I am coming down here to paint soon,” he said. “This is the most wonderful thing I have seen in a long while.”
And so we stood on this hillside overlooking Wilkes-Barré for a considerable period while Franklin sketched, and finally, when he had finished and I had wandered a mile down the road to see more, we entered.