The evening Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1918-1920, 1918-09-11
PELLEY LETTERS
WESTWARD Ho v
Dear Folks:

Arizona and a day in lower Cali
forTiia. They are hot weary days with
all the babies whimpering and the
hair of the lady passengers getting
more and more sloppy and the shirts
of the men soaking through with
the Bevo and pop they have consum-
ed and life bounded by the horizon
which the train never reaches and
the smoking compartment which the
fans never ventilate. And they are
cold comfortless nights when the air
becomes icy and the blankets thin
ner and you wake up in the morn
ing feeling as though you had been
yanked summarily out of a morgue
where they wouldn't even let you lie
comfortably stiff. The only consola-
ton on the sojourn is the fawless
road-bed It has the finest road
bed in the world, the Santa Fe rail
road. The Pullman clicks along as
though on tracks which have been
creased and sometimes through the
sudden patches of mountains and out
over the bridged gorges it seems you
are floating on air in a ship that
moves without power.
1t was my impression that when
the Lord made the world he had a
lot of Vermont mountains, Indiana
underground, Kansas wheatfelds and
Texas pear-fat which He didn't
know what to do with and he brush
ed the remnants all down into the
southwestern United States where
the clutter wouldn't be noted and
man came along and called the mix
| ture New Mexico. At times the des-
ert halted abruptly and hills came
into view and when we passed into
them we found them covered with
woodland and pasture and briar-
bloom that ran riot over lazy fences
and stone walls and fallen tree
trunks beside the highways. Then
we howled through a suffocating tun-
mel and into a red-clay valley where
the only vegetation was the pea
green sagebrush. Deep deep down
an almost bottomless gully would
wash lazy muddle of dregs that the
map said was the River Something
brother. Then the mountains would
sort of fatten out and we would
bowl down long 40 mile grade and
into wheat-felds and pasture land
and stubble. Then out onto the des-
ert again with the queer shapes ant
the cactus and after long long
time the train slowed down and we
saw we were approaching a town
and place where we might get out
and stretch our legs and partake of
Northumberland liquid refresh
ment.
They were pathetic places, some
of those New Mexican and Arizona
settlements There were no paved
streets and stores and movie shows
and public buildings. Even wood
seemed at a premium. Everything
was built of mud!-mud and stucco.
Some of them seemed the dwelling
places of a lost nation-dreary I'M
attractive spots set down in the I'M
mensity of sun-baked nature-Wherc
fearful blast of heated air had
passed over at some time or other
and baked everything soulless even
the dull-eyed, listless, down-at-the
heel dis-spirited people. Take q
great chunk of clay mud;-say
twenty or thirty feet square and ten
or twelve feet high hollow it out
; inside and cut through few added
: doors and intoxicated windows; lay
some rafters across the top on which
straw was spread to make them wat
erproof for the wet season; let the
sun bake the whole into dun-col-
ored disiointed mass. Then lay 9
! few mates around and trim it with
an appropriate quota of ragged
dirty, lousy-headed children, and you
I have a hazy idea of the habitations
! where thousands of these American
Mexicans. pursue their lives, hber-
9 ties and paltry happinesses.
It was in the afterglow of the
: breathless evenings when all the
= southwestern world was sinking in
to night that the pathos Of these civ
ilization-lost people hit me hardest
There were no street lights down
there. No movie fronts glittered
When the sun sank, the day was
= done, and an awful loneliness crep
over the world. On the benches be
fore the doors of these miserable
novels, these quiet dark-skinned fam
lilies gathered and stoically watched
the Limited grow from a wisp O.
smoke on the east to a tiny dot o.
red from the signal Of the last car
! off on the level endless west. Afte1
our train had passed the world mus
: have been very very quiet; the still
: ness very lonesome. The world TO
them could only mean the mesas
the mountains and the sky, day afte
9 day the same, the future hopeless
: for all that it held which the whit
: man cherishes apd which make TO
: Joy of life and Comfort of civiliza
: ton. For the women-babies ant
!" work and age and death; for tn
i men: the endless struggle with tan
talizing nature to make her give tn
stringy weedy little crops that KEEP
starvation from the family hut
vague wenderings at life whicl
they could never understand,-sand
fleas, drought and bad bad whiskey
( | c,,roIxv 4haca a1Yie+ SuIIen Danul