Diary of Two Motorcycle Hobos #essentialsofrec #recovery #Lois #aa

By Lois Wilson

PART V

Rural Hall, N.C.

Thurs., Jan. 7, 1926

When we left Camp Robert Lee Tuesday morning, the family all turned out to see us off. They surely were good to us and seemed sorry to have us go.

Now we are under a roof again, visiting Bill Smith and his peach of a wife, Ethel, whom we had not met before. Both urged us to stay on and on. Although they had only recently moved into this large old house, they are now expecting to move out again. They call it "just camping out," but to us it is luxury.

Wednesday evening we all went to the movies in Winston‑Salem and Thursday Bill sought information at the Chamber of Commerce, while I bought two shelter halves for 75¢ each, a doll, a baby's sack, some candy and toys for the children at the Robert Lees'.

Although North Carolina, with surfaced roads and many up‑and‑down towns, appears far more prosperous than the parts of Virginia we saw, Winston‑Salem is an unattractive, messy tobacco town, with small, disorderly shops. At sales counters, I was pushed around just as rudely as in a lower New York bargain basement. However, the Reynolds Tobacco Co., makers of Camels and Prince Albert tobacco, and the leading industry, is putting on a campaign to renovate the town.

Friday, mild and balmy, Bill Smith took us in his Studebaker to High Point, a splendid city about thirty miles from here, laid out on modern lines, with fine public buildings and one hundred and forty factories, mostly for furniture, segregated in one section of the city.

Bill Smith is quite a chicken fancier and has some very fine birds. My Bill calls him "the Squire" and it certainly fits him for, although he is manager of the toy wagon department of the furniture factory across the way, he has the air of the country squire and the master of all he surveys. Tonight we are to have [a] couple of the farm's own pullets for dinner.

The Smiths think the factory where Bill works is on the rocks because of competition with the better located factories in High Point, so they are looking around for the next jump. My Bill and Ethel have great arguments on economics, she having keenly observed the trends about her and formed a number of interesting opinions.



Charlotte, N.C.

Tues., Jan. 12, 1926

We haven't gone far in the last week, the weather was so sleety and cold. Since we left the north we have had hardly anything but rain or snow. There one expects the cold and it is invigorating, but here, it chills to the bone and is most annoying.

On Wednesday Bill looked into the matter of glue used in the manufacture of furniture in High Point. As Thursday was fine we could find no excuse to linger longer, so with many regrets, we left the Smiths.

Reaching Charlotte too late to camp we took a room in a small hotel and left the motorcycle to have new spokes put in the wheels. Expecting to leave the next morning we arose early, but found an inch and a half of snow on the window sill. We were snowbound, for our machine skids badly in the snow, which remained on the ground for the next three days.

Charlotte is a fine town, the center of the cotton industry. Today I had lots of fun fixing up the box I have been intending to send the Browns. The doll for Barna wears a store dress, a pair of rubber bloomers and a shirt I made out of an old handkerchief of Bill's. The maid, noticing that I was cutting up a handkerchief, gave me some pieces from the linen room to put in the box. For the boys are 10¢ store toys, and the baby gets a little knitted jacket to match the cap her grandfather gave her. Mrs. Junior had told me her eldest girl planned to get a jacket for the baby, but hadn't been able to because funds were so low. So I feel sure our gifts are what they want. I also included some snapshots I took there.



Near Marion, N.C.

Fri., Jan. 15, 1926

Tuesday the snow was still on the ground, but we were spending so much money in Charlotte for room and food, and extravagantly for movies every night, that we simply had to go camping again. Before we could leave, as usual Bill had to call on a few odd bankers (not that these were any odder than any other bankers). One of them phoned another that, "Mr. Wilson of New York is here." The mystic words, the “open sesame” everywhere in the south seems to be, "New York." Just whisper them and the door flies open. On the other hand, they want to think that the growth of the south is entirely due to their own energies and imagination and will stoutly say, "This town is growing from within, without any help from the outside."

Of course, what really started the expansion of the south (and evidence is everywhere, especially in North Carolina) is the influence of two men, Walter Hines Page who aroused interest in better education, and J.B. Duke, who through his power developments, has made industry possible on a grand scale. Another factor was the coming to the south of northerners with money and initiative.

The experience of Danville is an example of what happens to unprogressive towns. J.B. Duke wanted to bring his own cheaper power into the city, where there were a few small industries, the largest (we are told) cotton mill in the south, a municipal power plant and his own huge tobacco factory, but the authorities would not permit it. So he moved his factory to Durham, and Danville has rued the day ever since. Although the cotton mill remains in Danville, the other industries have moved to where cheaper power is available. As a result many merchants have failed.

Unmistakably a sectional feeling exists here. We northerners pride ourselves on having pep and initiative, while the southerner scorns these characteristics, calling them by very different names, such as "arrogance" and "intrusion."

Sunday, while still in Charlotte, we walked the five miles and back to a Ford Assembly Plant, and peeking through one of the thousand sparkling windows, were so intrigued that upon leaving Charlotte on Tuesday, we went out of our way to drive there. Unfortunately, it was not visiting hours, so again we could only peek. A man dressed in spotless white was tending gleaming, efficient looking motors-‑and a sign read, "Every man is required to wear clean overalls every Monday." At least we know the plant is bright and shiny.

So on we went to the Southern Power Co.'s steam plant at Mt. Holly on the Catawba River, a fine big layout with two old‑fashioned 10,000 kw. turbines, and two new 15,000 kw. ones. The chief engineer told us they could not hope for the efficiency of northern plants because of the higher caliber of labor there; nevertheless the plant was very fine. At Mountain Island, three miles further on, we went through another waterpower plant with four upright 15,000 kw. Turbines.

By this time the day was nearly gone, so we found a suitable place, in the piney woods, although we had to shovel the snow away and put down boughs. When we were purchasing provisions earlier, the tiny store soon filled with curious observers. Everywhere, we are the cynosure of all eyes, and lately, of all ears, since, in a vain attempt to find what ails the motorcycle, Bill had removed the muffler.

It seems as if he had excluded every possible source of trouble, and yet the poor old buzz‑wagon runs a temperature, having not been really well since we left New York. When we run fast she loses power and backfires, and now she can hardly go up a little grade in high, sometimes even necessitating a shift to first. It used to be my pride and joy to pass every car on a hill, but now it is my shame and sorrow that every car passes us-‑and with the muffler off we make such a hullabaloo about it!

After leaving Washington we thought she would be hunky‑dory, and she was for a while, but soon the old trouble came on her again. The carburetor had been cleaned there, new spark plugs put in, and a block of wood discovered in the oil tank. Seeming to know their business, the garage men assured us they had put her in fine shape.

In Winston‑Salem the brakeband had been eased up in case it was dragging. In Charlotte a new chain was put on and new spokes placed on the wheel. Bill, wondering if the new carburetor put on in Brooklyn might be the trouble, went for the old one as a last resort. But nothing seems to do her any good. In fact she seems a little worse after all this doctoring‑probably just plain tuckered out, carrying such a heavy load. But enough of the poor pop‑cycle!

Gastonia is called the "City of Spindles," because it has more cotton mills than any city in the south. The other day, Bill, wearing his traveling coveralls, "uber‑alles," we call them, much tattered now, torn and generally disreputable, his sweater cap and pipe, strode into the Gastonia Chamber of Commerce. The man, after looking him up and down, asked what he could possibly want with pamphlets about the city, apparently it being difficult to recognize what a mighty brain and heart lay hidden behind the eccentric garb.

Speaking of eccentricities, the ramshackle barns in these parts have no doors-‑thus, probably giving rise to, "Close that door. Were you brought up in a barn?" I have always wondered where that remark originated, because all the barns I had ever seen had doors. Sheds on all four sides are sometimes added to barns here, making them look like wooden circus tents. In Pennsylvania the barns are wonderful, stone halfway up and the rest of red‑painted wood. White scrolls decorate the windows and doors, with often a sheep, horse or cow painted white on the side wall. When it rains, cattle in an enclosed yard crowd under the deep overhang of the eaves.

Tuesday, about halfway from Gastonia to Asheville, we camped up a side road, and again snow had to be cleared away. Bill walked quite a distance for water, the nearby wells being dry. At best here, the water is not very good; it's pretty muddy from the red clay soil. When dry or not frozen, clay makes good roads, but slipperier than the dickens when wet. Most of the roads in North Carolina are concrete and marvellous.

Again Bill tinkered with the machine and corrected something out‑of‑whack in the carburetor, optimistically hoping this is the end of our trouble.

At Chimney Rock big realtors, expecting the bottom soon to fall out of the Florida boom, have purchased a large tract of land for a summer resort. A tremendous lake, fifteen square miles of water, is being constructed and large hotels erected. Lots twenty‑five by seventy‑five feet, with a view of the Rock, are selling from $2,000, to $10,000, with no building restrictions. Some of it will probably develop into what Bill calls, "A hot‑dog vendor's paradise," like the Delaware Water Gap, but on the lake further from the road it ought to be truly beautiful. About halfway up the mountain, a small inn with cottages, called the "Cliff Dweller," resembles a colorful toy train of cars from below.

The sun was bright, the sky a deep blue and the ground and mountains white with snow on this cold brisk day, as we climbed into the Blue Ridge Mountains, through gorgeous scenery. The road wound, circled, horseshoed, and tied itself in knots all the way from Chimney Rock to Asheville, which we reached in early afternoon.

The mountains are not in long ranges as they are in Vermont, but poke up here and there in separate peaks, Asheville being on a high plateau with a circle of mountain caps around it-‑a huge pie with a crinkle crust. The city itself is higgledy‑piggledy and dingy‑‑but the surrounding scenery is superb.

While I waited at the Asheville post office for Bill, four separate individuals asked where we were from and where we were going. One woman from New Hampshire, remarking that only Yankees would have the initiative to get up such a rig, invited us to her home, giving us the address. Coming here with $2,000, she has made $6,000, in real estate, at the same time supporting her daughter and grandchild.

Journeying towards Marion, forty miles distant, we climbed down from the plateau with wonderful outlooks across deep gorges at every turn. Mt. Michel, down the side of which the road alternately snakes and plunges, is the highest of ten peaks over six thousand feet in this area.

To top off this exhilarating trip we found a peach of a spot to camp, in the woods, near a spring and under a sheltering hill. The machine ran smoothly all the way, up and down the mountains, no doubt also exhilarated by the brisk, clean air. Let’s hope it lasts.



Near Marion, N.C.

Sat., Jan. 16, 1926

Winter is more colorful here and not as bleak as in the north. Besides the firs, many trees, shrubs and vines stay green all winter--holly, magnolia, rhododendron, laurel, azalea, and smilaz. Green blades of winter wheat pop up through the snow. Long slabs of burnt orange bark shingle the trunks of pines that produce exceptionally large cones. The birds are lovely: robins, bluebirds, brilliant cardinals and vereos with that nostalgic song that one hears on mountaintops in the north, and many others unknown to me.

Last night, sitting around the fire, we were startled by the most unearthly scream--perhaps a horse in mortal agony, or a hog being butchered. It had to be some animal in its death throes. In the morning, the anguished sound hit a remembered chord from Bill’s army days--the braying of a mule. How could he ever have forgotten it!

The cold is so severe that water freezes on the dishes before I can wipe them, Bill’s dampened hair stiffens upright before he can comb it, and we bite off from the unspreadable stick as much butter as we want with each mouthful of bread.

Bill spent nearly the whole day writing a long letter to Frank, thirty-odd pages. When he finished, instead of moving on, while the sun sparkled on snow and water, we walked up an old wood road and across a stream, overhung with rhododendron, on a rickety bridge.

Speaking of sparkling, on several mornings the inside of the tent has been covered with tiny crystals, from our breath, I imagine. Living in a tent is far more interesting than between four walls. For instance: car lights make fantastic silhouettes of objects between; in moonlight grasses and boughs form decorative patterns on the fabric of the tent; looking from the outside, when our electric light is lit inside, the green, translucent tent is eerie, like a fairy habitation that might fly away at any moment.

The two extra shelter halves are just the ticket for wind breaks. Later I plan to make Bill a new “uber-alles” out of them, but at present they are too useful. After our walk I tied them to trees around the fire, making a cove for myself, and had a grand old bath while Bill wrote.



Between Hendersonville and Asheville, N.C.

Sun., Jan. 17, 1926

Yesterday morning we broke camp and drove the eight miles into the town of Marion--not much of a place. Gangs of seedy, seemingly ambitionless individuals hung around the street corners, gossiping Saturday afternoon. Up till now I had wondered where the “poor white trash” were, for all the folks we had met appeared intelligent and kind, but his mill hand bunch could fit the phrase.

The James Lake, a tremendous storage reservoir for the Southern Power Co., which Bill wanted to see at Marion, was nearly empty due to last summer’s drought, but its location among the mountains is magnificent. Its fifteen thousand acres of water enclosed by one hundred and fifty miles of shore is being considered for a real estate development and will make a dandy. One old codger answered our question with an amusing but pointed remark: “No, there ain’t many summer people comin’ here, praise be! They and the campers that don’t do any real work are the ruination of the country!” That for us!

It was much warmer yesterday, but today, Sunday, it is raining, and we are spending it reading and writing in our camp. The folks around here are very strict about the Lord’s Day, and not even a gas station or a delicatessen is open.



Atlanta, Ga.

Thurs., Jan. 21, 1926

Monday morning, warm and sunny, we could not resist seeing more of this beautiful countryside, so we drove back up the mountain to Asheville, and calling Mrs. Patch, our acquaintance from New Hampshire, rented a large, sunny room with bath and lots of hot water, in her comfortable suburban house. Mrs. Patch wanted us to be her guests but we insisted on a business arrangement. Her two stunning daughters and a really beautiful granddaughter live with her. Much interested in real estate, she lauds Asheville to the skies, expecting tremendous activity here next summer. Real estate companies, looking for the reaction from the Florida boom to come here, have bought most of the land in western Carolina, as they had around Chimney Rock.

On Tuesday, while Bill broke into several banks and real estate offices, I gleaned what was new and interesting from the industrial magazines in the library. In this way I have found some valuable bits of information for him.

Because the weather was so perfect for traveling, we left Asheville in the afternoon, driving down from the heights, through beautiful scenery till we came to a stunning wild spot near a place with the unlikely name of Tuccoa-on-the-Tugalo. The clear brook, supposedly the Tugalo, rippled over rocks, reminding us of northern streams, most every stream and river in the south that we have seen being muddy and sluggish.

Passing into South Carolina the next day, the roads, though not hard surfaced, were at first not as bad as we had expected. Further south, however, they worsened until, upon reaching Georgia, they became unspeakable. Pushing on in order to make Atlanta before the prophesied rain, we traveled through parts of three states and wound up at 10 o’clock at night in a mudhole called Alta, and I mean literally a mudhole. While, somehow, the two motorcycle wheels stood on terra firma, the sidecar wheel sunk completely out of sight, my elbows level with the mud, and Bill, a leaning tower above me, in imminent danger of teetering.

All were abed when Bill walked into the little town for help. However, he did find a huge beam and plank. After unloading everything from the machine, we began to dig, each step sucking off my shoes, the clay-mud being both heavy and sticky. We no longer wondered why the mule team we had noticed earlier could hardly pull a quarter load of this clay. Finally getting a path dug we put down the plank and while Bill pried with the beam, I pushed--and out she same. As it was then after midnight, the road ahead probably no better, and everything already off the motorcycle, we pitched the tent then and there, between the road and the railroad tracks, and fell asleep immediately.

Several times during the night a car got mired and we called advice from our store of experience, lending our shovel and planks. In the morning we were so anxious to decamp that we didn’t bother to look for water for coffee or to wash. But we seemed glued to the spot, bogging down again in less than a hundred yards. We learned later there was a perfectly good detour used by the well-informed, but no one had bothered to put up signs.

Soon after we began digging again the road boss summoned his gang, and with all hands pushing, we slowly emerged. A motorcycle with a sidecar has more trouble than a car on such roads, but only because the low-slung engine runs into the mud, but also because three wheels cannot get as good a grip on slippery clay. Before reaching Atlanta we dug ourselves out twice more.

All this red mud grows tiresome to look at as well as dig at. Cotton and corn fields must be terraced to prevent erosion, as rain easily washes away the clay. In a short time a disused roadbed becomes a gully, and together with many other deep red gashes, scars the countryside. The terraced effect of the fields, however, is picturesque.

Georgia is flat with apparently few rocks, so that, about fifteen miles from Atlanta, it was astonishing to see in the distance the tremendous rock, Stone Mountain, rising almost perpendicularly hundreds of feet. The rock itself being a natural monument, is most fitting for a great memorial. Three men held by ropes of steel shafts sunk in the rockface work with electric drills, but only Lee’s head has yet been cut. The work appears both perilous and costly and will take a long time to complete.



Atlanta, Ga.

Mon., Jan. 25, 1926

As soon as we arrive here Thursday Bill called up an old friend from East Dorset, Joe Reed, the breeziest, blusteriest, most likable salesman. From unending pep he is into every civic and charitable organization in the city, knowing everyone, high and low.

Joe, apologizing for not having room for us, settled us in the home of the parents of a friend, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, typical old southern folks. The most hospitable souls in the world, they have a fund of interesting information and anecdotes, but as neither can see very well and the old lady has been ill, no one tidies up, and the house is a mess, especially because of the soot from the open soft coal grates which provide the only heat.

Although Thursday was like spring, it has been really cold ever since. In the mornings the old folks light the gas heater in the bedroom for us, bring a pitcher of hot water, get us breakfast, and at night see that a nice fire is burning in our room. Treated so much like guests we cannot retire to our room to read or do an odd job until bedtime.

After looking over the town Friday afternoon, Joe took us in his Packard coupe to his home where we dined with his pleasant wife and two cunning children. A beautiful southern belle and her homely, slap-stick fiance joined us in the evening, and a rollicking, jolly, slap-stick time was had by all.

Atlanta, a cosmopolitan bustling city, is growing rapidly like most of the south, although prices of land here are not as high as around Asheville. Joe, enthusiastic about Atlanta, talks climate incessantly, as they all do here, but we have experienced only two or three beautiful days; there is snow on the ground again this morning.

Saturday morning Bill and I again snooped around town, blowing ourselves to lunch and the movies as a one-day-early anniversary celebration. Coming out of the movies we ran into Harry Seward (he and Ethel, now passed on, spent their honeymoon at The Camp in Vermont). It was fun to have dinner and go to the movies with him, apparently contented and prosperous. Quite a movie-ing day.

The friendliness of the people is the nicest thing in the south--everyone speaks to you. Old gentlemen, particularly in the country districts, touch their hats as you pass. I had a funny experience yesterday. Earlier, when I remarked to Joe how charming this custom is, he told me it was dying out because northern women, not understanding, refused to return the bow. Soon after, while walking alone, a man in a car took off his hat to me and bowed. Not to be thought an intolerant northerner, I nodded my head slightly. He immediately stopped his car, saying, “How about a ride, kiddo?” Discretion in bowing is necessary, as in everything else, I have learned.

Sunday Joe took us for a ride before dinner at his home. I had no idea there was so much wealth here; beautiful suburbs extend for miles in every direction. In the evening we went to church with Harry Seward.



Fitzgerald, Ga.

Sat., Jan. 30, 1926

Joe tried to persuade Bill to go into a real estate deal with him, but, although Bill is interested in South Georgia farm land, he is not enthusiastic about going into real estate.

Leaving Atlanta Wednesday afternoon we camped in a beautiful pine grove, in fine weather with a romantic moon, outside of the town of Griffin. We enjoyed our Atlanta sojourn, especially the old couple where we stayed.

The land in southern Georgia has more sand and less clay than farther north. Many fine farms are separated by strangely intriguing swamps, where huge live oaks, festooned with long gray moss, grow out of black swamp water, as do small scrubby palms--the first we have seen. The live oaks which also grow on dry land have small uncut evergreen leaves, quite different from northern oaks. It was exciting to see even scrubby palms, evidencing our arriving in the deep south at last.

I am still trying to get mistletoe for Mother, but it is either way up in a treetop with no way to reach it, or if gettable, in front of a home. Yesterday, however, we spotted some and Bill climbed the tree in the rain to get it. Many of the berries, unfortunately, shook off before I could pack it. We also learned today how turpentine is procured from pines. Instead of boring a hole as for maple syrup, a sliver of bark is sliced off and a container placed to catch the sap. Some pines here are so resinous that a lighted match is enough to set a log on fire.

At Perry Bill heard of a cement plant about twenty miles away at Clinchfield, the only one in this section of the south; so, of course, he wanted to investigate. We asked an old codger walking along the road how to get there. He didn’t know, because he said, he had never been there, and added, “I never go any place that I have never been before.”

The boss was away, returning the next day, so we set up housekeeping in another pine grove where I discovered two pine cones nearly a foot long, with their petals spread out like a flower.

In the morning Bill found the cement plant both modern and efficient, the quarries containing more clay and sand and less rock than those in the north; wages being lower, the production is easier and cheaper.

After leaving Clinchfield, so many conflicting directions were given us, that we found ourselves in one place when we expected to be in another. Making the best of it, we ate lunch and changed our plans.

The day was chilly and rainy, the road rotten, and I punk--either a little indigestion or the ill effect of foolishly drinking brook water. So Bill did all the chauffering in the rain and the digging in the mud when we got stuck, which happened a couple of times. Wanting to get me to a room for the night, we pushed on in the wet and dark, into this funny old inn at Fitzgerald. We hope to leave tomorrow unless it continues to rain or I continue to be ill--neither of which casualties we expect.