and leather necktie did not consider his task completed, although he had done everything that he was supposed to do. He had sold us eleven gallons of petrol, exactly as much as we had asked for. But only then did the great American service begin.
The man from the petrol station lifts the hood of the machine and tests the level of oil in the motor with a calibrated metallic ruler. If it is necessary to add oil, he brings it at once in a handsome tin can or a tall wide-necked bottle.
Then he tests the air pressure in the tires. We carried a pressure of thirty-five pounds in the front tyres and thirty in the rear. He will let out extra air or add as much as is needed.
Then the striped gentleman turns his attention to the windshield. He wipes it with a clean soft rag. If the pane is very dirty, he rubs it with a special powder.
All of this is done quickly but without any fuss. While this work is going on, which does not cost the traveller a single cent, the man at the petrol station will tell you about the road and about the weather you may expect to encounter on your route.
After everything is in order and it seems that nothing else could be added in the way of service rendered to the automobile, the traveller, spoiled by service, begins to imagine that the right front door of his machine does not close tightly enough. Smiling his good wishes, the striped gentleman pulls instruments from his rear pockets – and in two minutes the door is in order.
Besides that, the traveller receives an excellent map of the state printed by the oil companies that sell petrol on the roads. There are road maps published by Standard Oil, Shell, Socony, Conoco, and Esso. All these are beautifully printed on excellent paper. They are easy to read and they give absolutely accurate and the very latest information. It is impossible to receive a map which would tell about the condition of the road the year before. All the maps are up to date, and if there is any serious repair work going on on any of the roads it is indicated on the map. On the reverse side are listed the hotels and tourist homes in which one may spend the night. Even the sights along the road are enumerated.
All this service is given free of charge with the petrol you purchase. The same service is rendered even when you buy only two gallons of it. Difference in treatment is unknown here. A dilapidated Chevrolet or a shining Deusenberg that costs thousands of dollars, the wonder of the automobile show of 1936, will find here the same impartial, rapid, and unruffled service.
In farewell, the attendant of the petrol station told us that he personally would drive the new machine not at the rate of forty miles an hour but at thirty, and not only the first five hundred miles but the first thousand. That would make the motor work ideally in the future. Mrs. Adams was completely overwhelmed by this, and, smiling wryly, held her speed at 28–29 miles.
We men, however, were occupied with calculations. How pleasant it is to be busy when one really has no business to attend to! Our sedate, mouse-coloured Ford showed that it used one gallon of petrol (three and a half litres) every sixteen miles. In the state of New York petrol costs sixteen cents a gallon. That meant that a full tank of fourteen gallons, costing two dollars and twenty-four cents, presented us with the possibility of driving two hundred and twenty-four miles. After converting the miles into kilometres, we discovered that an automobile journey is much less expensive in the United States than in Europe.
This comforting arithmetic helped us endure the insults of the automobiles that passed us. There is something insulting in being passed. In America the passion to pass each other is strongly developed and leads to a greater number of collisions and all the other kinds of road mishaps which in America bear the name of “accident”. Americans travel fast. Every year they travel faster and faster. Every year the roads become better and better, and the automobile motors more and more powerful. They drive fast, daringly, and, on the whole, not too carefully. At any rate, dogs in America have a better understanding of what an automobile highway is than do the automobilists themselves. Wise American dogs never run out on the highway and never race after an automobile with an optimistic bark. They know what that leads to. They will be crushed – and that’s all there is to it.
We stopped for lunch at a roadway restaurant with the sign “Dine and Dance”. We were the only ones in a large, dim room which had a square in the middle for dancing.
Out of small bowls we ate a brownish soup, accompanied by crackers, small salty rusks which justified their name by their incredible crackling when bitten. When we were attacking the large T-bone steaks – beefsteaks of frozen meat with a T-shaped bone in the middle – the owner of the restaurant and entertainment aggregate “Dine and Dance” drove up in an old Ford. He began to drag out of his machine and into the hall bundles of dried cornstalks to decorate the room with them. That evening the youth of the district was to assemble and dance. It was all very pleasant and peaceful – even patriarchal – yet we had driven only a hundred miles away from New York. Only a hundred miles behind us was the noisiest population in the world, while here was quiet, peace, heart-throbbing bucolic flirtation during dances, cornstalks, even flowers.
At the very doors of the quiet restaurant lay the dun concrete of a first-class highway. Again the wound in Mrs. Adams’s heart opened the moment she took the wheel. Thirty miles an hour – and not another mile!
A foreigner, even one who has no command of English, can drive out on an American road without any apprehension. He will never get lost, no matter how strange the country is to him. Even a child, even a deaf-and-dumb person can freely make his way along these roads. They are carefully numbered, and the numbers are met so frequently that it is impossible to make a mistake of direction.
Occasionally, two roads become one for a time. Then the roadway post contains two numbers – the number of the federal road above that of the state road. At times, five, seven, even ten roads come together. Then the quantity of numbers grows, and with it the post on which they are inscribed, so that the indicator begins to look like an ancient Indian totem pole.
There is a great variety of different signposts on the road, but-remarkable distinction! – not one among them is superfluous, not one might distract the attention of the driver. The signs are placed sufficiently low above-ground so that the driver may see them on his right without taking his eyes off the road. They are never conditional and never require any decoding. In America you will never find a mysterious blue triangle in a red square, a sign over which you may wrack your brain for hours.
Most of the road indicators are on round mirrored glasses which at night reflect the glare of automobile lights. Thus, the sign shines of itself. Black inscriptions against a yellow background (these are the most noticeable colours) warn: “Slow,” “School Zone,” “Stop Danger,” “Narrow Bridge,” “Speed Limit 30 Miles,” “Railroad Crossing,” or “Dip-30 Feet Away”—and precisely thirty feet away there will be a rut. However, such an inscription is met with as rarely as the dip itself. At each road crossing stand poles with thick wooden arrows. On the arrows are the names of cities and the mileage to them.
Noisily, and making a baying sound, heavy silver autotanks with milk fled past us. They carry milk for New York’s seven million population. They frighten you to death – these huge milk machines which suddenly appear, approaching with the rapidity of a squall. The tanks are especially grandiose at night when, surrounded by a chain of green and red lanterns, they fly without a stop toward New York. Seven million people want to drink milk, so it must be delivered on time.
Even more imposing are the trucks with special attachments which transport at once three or four new automobiles. At a distance of approximately a thousand miles, delivery by truck costs less than by railroad – so, again a storm descends upon us, this time gleaming with lacquer and nickel. We close our eyes for a second against its unendurable glare, and drive on.
Roads are one of the most remarkable phenomena of American life – of its life and not only of its technique. The United States has hundreds of thousands
