"How far is it to the church?" The second:
"Where can I get my beer?" When informed there was no church within a
hundred miles and that it was at least fifteen miles to the nearest
saloon, the poor woman felt that she was indeed all abroad! Bereft, at
one blow of the Established Church and English Ale, the solid ground
seemed to have given way from under her feet. For her, these two
particulars comprised the whole of the British Constitution.
Smartsville possessed a sentimental interest for me, for the reason that
in the sixties my father mined and taught a private school in an
adjoining camp bearing the derogatory appellation "Sucker Flat." What
mischance prompted this title will never now be known. In my father's
time, it contained a population of nearly a thousand persons; and
judging from the manner in which the gulch and the contiguous flat have
been torn, scarred, burrowed into and tunneled under, if gold there was,
most strenuous efforts had been made to bring it to light.
I asked if there was anyone in Smartsville who would be likely to
remember my father, and was referred by Mr. Peardon to "Bob" Beatty,
who, he said, had, lived in Smartsville all his life and knew everybody.
As Mr. Beatty was within a stone's throw, at the Excelsior Store, I had
no difficulty in finding him. Introducing myself, I asked Mr. Beatty if
he remembered my father. "To be sure I do," he exclaimed, "I went to his
school, and," laughing heartily, "well I remember a licking he gave me!"
He said that among the boys who attended that school, several in after
years, as men, had become prominent in the history of the State.
Mr. Beatty - now a pleasant, genial gentleman of fifty-two - very kindly
walked with me to the brow of the hill commanding a view of Sucker Flat,
and pointed out the exact spot where the school had stood, for not a
stick or a stone remains to mark the locus of the town - it is simply a
name upon the map.
I mention this incident as being another proof of the extraordinary hold
the Sierra foot-hill country has upon the people who were born there, as
well as upon those who have drifted there by force of circumstances. It
is forty-six or forty-seven years since my father conducted that school,
yet I felt so sure from previous experiences there would be in
Smartsville someone who remembered him, that I determined to include it
in my itinerary.
Chapter VIII
Smartsville to Marysville. Some Reflections on Automobiles and "Hoboes"
Early the next morning I started for Marysville, the last leg in my
journey, and a long twenty miles distant. I had been dreading the pull
through the Sacramento Valley, having a lively recollection of my
experience in the San Joaquin, on leaving Stockton. The day was sultry,
making the heat still more oppressive. After leaving the foot-hills for
good, I walked ten miles before reaching a tree, or anything that cast a
shadow, if you except the telephone poles. For the first time I realized
there was danger in walking in such heat, and even contemplated the
shade of the telephone poles as a possibility! Fortunately a light
breeze sprang up - the fag end of the trade wind - and, though hot, it
served to dispel that stagnation of the atmosphere which in sultry
weather is so trying to the nervous system. Marysville is nearly one
hundred miles due north of Stockton - of course, much farther by rail -
and the same arid, treeless, inhospitable belt of country between the
cultivated area and the foot-hills apparently extends the whole
distance. It is a country to avoid.
About two miles short of Marysville, while enjoying the shade cast by
the trees that border the levee of the Feather River, which skirts
Marysville to the south, a man in an auto stopped and very kindly
offered to give me a lift. I thanked him politely but declined. He
seemed amazed. "Why don't you ride when you can?" he asked. "Because I
prefer to walk," I answered. This fairly staggered him. The idea of a
man preferring to walk, and in such heat, was probably a novel
experience, and served to deprive him of further speech. He simply sat
and stared and I had passed him some twenty yards before he started his
machine.
A sturdy tramp walking in the middle of the road, who had witnessed the
scene, shouted as he passed: "Why didn't yer ride wid de guy?" I replied
as before, "Because I prefer to walk;" adding for his benefit, "I've no
use for autos." Whereupon he threw back his head and burst into peal
after peal of such hearty laughter that, from pure contagion, I perforce
joined in the chorus. In the days of Fielding and Sam Johnson, this
fellow would have been dubbed "a lusty vagabond;" in the slangy parlance
of today, he was a "husky hobo," equipped as such, even to the tin can
of the comic journals. To him, the humor of a brother tramp refusing a
ride - in an autocar, at that - appealed with irresistible force.
To walk in the middle of the road is characteristic of the genuine
tramp. There must be some occult reason for this peculiarity, since in a
general way, it is far easier going on the margin. Perhaps it is because
he commands a better view of either side, with a regard to the possible
onslaught of dogs. There is something about a man with a pack on his
back that infuriates the average dog, as I have on several occasions
found to my annoyance. Robert Louis Stevenson, in his whimsical and
altogether delightful "Travels with a Donkey," thus vents his opinion
anent the dog question:
