Westward hoboes

by Winifred Hawkridge Dixon

I have been told that many Indian tribes name a child from the greatest event in the life of its oldest living relative. When the child reaches maturity, he earns a name for himself by some characteristic achievement, goaded to it, no doubt, by the horrors of his given name. Thus by a glance at the census lists we are able to read past history, and compare the amorous agitations of Xavier Billetdoux’ granddaddy with the bucolic and serene existence of Ada Calflooking’s great-aunt. Not a bad way of checking up one’s ancestry against one’s own worth. If we followed the same system, Cornelius Rowed Washington across the Delaware might be rechristened C. Shimmyfoot, while Adolph Foreclosedthewidow’smortgage might earn the nobler surname of Endowsahospital. It is really a remarkable system of shorthand autobiography, enabling a complete stranger to tell whether one belongs to a good family going downhill, or a poor one coming uphill, or a mediocre at a standstill. How many a near Theda Bara who would like to be named Cecile Weaselwoman would have to be content as Mary Ear-rings. How many a purse-proud Biglodgepole would have to confess his grandfather was named Scabbyrobe. Perhaps this is the reason we leave such nomenclature to the heathen Indian.

Reflecting thus, Toby and I amused ourselves with renaming ourselves and our friends, until we reached a place where some altruistic citizen had inundated the road in order to irrigate his patch of land. Here we were supposed to take to the top of the canal, but the bank was high, narrow and shaly. It looked too much like a conspiracy against both us and the canal, so we disregarded our advice and skirted the open land. By leaving the road altogether and keeping to the hills we avoided most of the bog, and got through the rest with a little maneuvering. A mile further we learned that the canal bank had given way under a car the previous day, and carried car and occupants into the water.

The beautiful Flathead Mountains had faded away behind us, leaving a prairie country of no charm, dry and burnt. At the border, as at Mexico, we found our little customhouse less formal and more shabby than our neighbor’s, but at both we received clearance and courteous treatment. When we said we came from Massachusetts, the Canadian agent sighed.

“Massachusetts! What do you see in a God-forsaken hole like this to tempt you from such a state? I wish I could go there,—or anywhere away from this place.”

Everywhere we heard the same refrain. Three years of killing drought had scorched the treeless plains to a cinder. The wheat, promise and hope of Alberta, had failed, and immigrants who had gone there expecting to return to the old country in a few years with a fortune, were so completely ruined they could neither go back nor forward, but saw dismal years of stagnation before them.

There are more cheerful places than Alberta in which to face bankruptcy. So near the border, this part of Canada is half American,—American with a cockney accent. But it is newer and rawer than our own west by a decade or two, with less taste apparent, less prosperity, more squalid shiftlessness. The section through which we drove had been mainly conquered by the Mormons, driven into Canada when the United States was most inhospitable to their sect. They in turn have converted many of the immigrants from the old country. The church or tithe lands make sharp contrast in their prosperity, their thousands of sleek, blooded cattle and irrigated fields to the forlorn little settlements of individuals. As every Mormon pays a tenth of all he has to his church it is easy to understand this contrast.

In our six months of travel we had driven over the reservations of the Papago, Pima and Maricopa, the Apache, Hopi, Havasupai, Navajo, Ute, Piute, Pueblo, Shoshone, Blackfeet and Flatheads. We were now on the Blood Indian reservation, though we saw few inhabitants. Those we saw were red-skinned and tall, resembling the other Northern tribes. The country grew less inhabited. We met no other cars and few people. Fifty miles north of Browning, our last town, we came to a lumber camp, and seven miles further our car quietly ceased to move, and rested in peace on a hillside.

Since its wetting in Nambe creek, the ignition had been prone to such sudden stops and starts. From past experience we knew that the ignition system must be completely taken apart, exposing its innermost parts to the daylight. All I knew about it was summed up in my brother’s parting advice, “Never monkey with your ignition.” All Toby knew was that Bill of Santa Fé had taken it apart, done something to it, put it together again, and it ran. So we decided to follow Bill’s procedure as far as we could, and began by taking it apart. That went very well until we discovered some covetous person had removed all the tiny tools used in operating on this part of the engine, leaving us only a monkey wrench and a large pair of pincers. Toby nearly stood on her head trying to unscrew very little screws with the big wrench, and progressed but slowly, as she had to change her entire position with each quarter turn.

After about an hour we had every nut and screw in the forward part of the engine in rows on the running board. My task was to take the parts as Toby unscrewed them, and lay them neatly from left to right, so that we should know in what order to replace them. Then I glanced at the remains which Toby had succeeded in uncovering.

“The distributor needs cleaning,” I said expertly, thereby greatly impressing Toby. I remembered Bill had said the same thing, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember what the distributor was. By opening the cock of our tank, and holding a tin cup beneath, catching a drop at a time we managed in another hour to get enough gasoline to bathe the affected parts, as druggist’s directions say.