The Old Campaigner

FOR those hardy souls who can stand it, — and I am one of them, — coach travel in motorized America has charms hardly less than those Dickens found worthy of record in the horse-drawn coaches of his day. There is the same early kindling of the sense of adventure, the same ludicrous shuffling and interplay of character, the same descent into informality as weariness and friendliness join in breaking down whatever uppity notions one may have at the beginning of the journey. By the second hour you are likely to be talking to your seat-mate, whoever he or she may be; by the third hour you are willing to talk to anyone on the coach. You and your fellows are shipmates in spirit if not in leg-room.

I have seen this leaven of sociability work magically on prim school-teachers and frosty dowagers. The latter weaken more slowly than all others; but once they have broken the ice, in they plunge and fairly swim in chatter to the end of the trip. I recall one delightful old lady who chilled us all with her stony glance as she entered at Buffalo, thawed before reaching Rochester, melted into song with the rest of us near Syracuse, and for an hour before I left the coach at Binghamton held gay converse with the Negro porter, a ‘pre-med’ student at O. S. U.

As I helped her off the step she said, quite as if she had known me for years, ‘ All my life I’ve wanted to talk to an intelligent colored man, and now I’ve done it.’

Between New York and Chicago, a journey which I wisely punctuated by several overnight stops, I sat beside and heard chapters from the life stories of several persons I shall never forget. One was a broken warrior who had chased Villa in Mexico and tried chasing Fritz out of France; Fritz did not move as fast as Villa, with the result that a cannon my companion was pushing fell on him. Then along came the gas. He was not much good after that, yet waited thirteen years before applying for a pension. The good news that his claim had been allowed reached him in a C.C.C. camp to which he had been driven as a last resort through the poverty that is called unemployment. Now he was on his way back to his birthplace to buy a corner of the farm he was born on, to putter around raising chickens on the land he had once turned with the plough in the days of his strength. A happier man you never saw, in spite of his cough, or perhaps because of it.

Also a torch singer on her way to Chicago — for the Fair. Give me time and I ’ll put her in a novel before I die. Also a Swiss woman who made so many shrewd observations that I kept notes on her. In America, she said, the towns all look alike and the women look different, whereas in Europe each town differs from the other and the women of each town look like sisters — well, almost like sisters. I assured her that their men saw differences; also that I could see differences in our towns. Challenged, I had a hard time proving my point as we coursed from Cleveland to Toledo.

Then there were more articulate types. The young American proconsul home on a furlough from London, where he wrote a perfectly tremendous report on the gold situation on rush orders from Washington; he knew all about gold and many more interesting things — for instance, how one could travel pleasantly across the ocean on freighters at a cost of two dollars a day and well found. The home missionary who tried to make a Seventh-day Adventist out of this stern old Episcopalian all the way from Detroit to Toledo. The strong man from Poland who was earning $1.23 an hour at spot welding, liked his work, and was massively sure that he was a success in life, which he indubitably is. The pretty Christian Science reader from the West on her way to the Mother Church in Boston, who was just as certain that gasoline is a state of mind as I am sure that mind is a state of matter.

My prize capture, however, was the Old Campaigner, a hearty, wiry little man of sixty-six on his way back East from Gold Camp, California, where he had been placer mining for a change. A house painter by trade, he seemed to have been saved from lead poisoning by Wanderlust.

‘ Whenever I wear a brush clear down to a stub,’ he said, ‘then I know it’s time to get out of a town.’

The Old Campaigner learned how to rock sand in a bowl years ago; this time he went West more for the vacation than in hope of fortune.

‘There’s plenty of gold in California yet,’ he testified, ‘but it’s where you can’t get at it with a pick and shovel. Seventyfive cents is a good day’s haul now for one man with a pan. Thousands out there don’t average fifty cents. But they pay no rent and food’s cheap and it’s a grand, healthy country. I’m ten years younger than when I went out. Brought back a little dust, too, just to show my grandchildren.‘

Out of his pocket he pulled a small chamois bag, opened it, and showed me a thimbleful of gold dust at the bottom.

‘Can’t do a thing without a chamois bag,’ he said. ‘After you wash the dirt away, you gather your grains of gold with quicksilver. Then you put the quicksilver in the chamois and squeeze it out this way — through the pores. Quicksilver will go through anything this side of glass. Of course you don’t get it all out, but there’s always a piece of old iron lying around and you spread what’s left on the iron. . . .’

I could n’t follow7 his explanation through to the glorious conclusion; either he was too technical or I was not technical enough, but at any rate he had gold to show his grandson that the old-timer was still a conqueror.

‘Up there,’ he went on, with a wave of the hand to the baggage rack, ‘is my pack. Suppose we had a wreck and had to camp here in the fields all night. Would n’t bother me. Blankets; rubber poncho; everything. Why, I bummed my way from Gold Camp to Chicago! Walked some; hitch-hiked some; rode the roof of a freight train across Nevada. Camped out in the open every night. I’ll sleep anywhere; I’d rather sleep out than in. Money in my pocket all the way — but I would n’t sleep in.

‘I did n’t do any begging, though — not with money in my pocket. I’d walk right up to a restaurant and buy a meal and then walk on out of town for a sleep. Afraid? Why, no; what’s there to be afraid of? The bums are all honest these days; the crooks are n’t on the road any more. They make too much money bootlegging, kidnapping. and sticking up banks. And there’s soup kitchens everywhere, so a man does n’t have to rob when he’s hungry. I’m sixtysix and I eat like a horse. That’s what the road does for a man. . . . Hey, you driver,’ he yelled, ‘when do we eat?’

‘Next town,’ replied the man at the wheel. ‘Take it easy.’

As an Old Campaigner, my friend knew the wiles of wayside eating places.

‘Company’s in cahoots with ’em. They run you up to a certain place and get a commission on the trade they bring. Go next door or across the road and you get more for your money. There’s quantity and quality places; and it’s pretty hard to tell ’em apart. I was telling that to two drummers on a bus once; and at the next stop they said, “Does this place look like quantity or quality?” I took one look at the outside and said, “Quantity.” But inside I saw they had paper flowers on the tables; so I just took coffee and sinkers. The drummers laid out for everything in sight, and had to pay the cashier eighty-five cents each. Quality, all right; I kept away from those drummers for the rest of the trip.’

Presently our bus invaded Syracuse and stopped at an eating place. ‘How about this one?’ I asked.

He gave it a quick survey with his sharp blue eyes. ‘Can’t say, brother. There’s booths, and that looks like quality; but they use thick dishes, and that looks like quantity. Anyhow, I’m hungry, and here goes.’

After giving his order the Old Campaigner watched closely the heaped plates placed before the other passengers. What he saw pleased him. Leaning my way, he said in a hushed and reverent voice, as one would announce a supernatural phenomenon: ‘ Looks like quantity and quality, too.’

Daunted by the odors of the room, I bought a sandwich and went outdoors to eat it. In due course the Old Campaigner appeared, wiping his short moustache. He tried to evade the issue, but I cornered him: ‘Well, how about it?’

Sadly he shook his head — not enough to dislodge his toothpick, but enough to indicate that his toothpick was one of the best items on the menu. ‘Just quantity,’ he mumbled, ‘just quantity.’

A few hours later, more fully instructed in the arts of the road, I left the bus at Binghamton and waved the Old Campaigner on toward New York. I left him with regret and envy. The world was his because he feared it not; riches were his because he did not need them. He would keep rambling till he died. Some night he would spread his poncho on the ground, roll himself into his blanket, look at the stars, and go to sleep forever. Or he might slip beneath the wheels of a train or be mashed in a highway wreck. There would be no estate to probate, but his grandsons could remember him as one who wrung gold from the earth and between trips told them quaint stories of his travels in far lands.

The next time you see a load of worn travelers alighting from a motor coach, waste no pity on them. They may look weary, but some of them have been seeing life as well as scenery.