Одноэтажная Америка / Little Golden America

A striped barber pole flashed by; it was a revolving glass cylinder with green, red, and blue stripes. In a red-brick house toasted sandwiches were sold. As a matter of fact, all the houses here were brick and all were red. What can one like here, what can one learn to love here?

Like all the large cities of the world, New York is an appalling city. Here millions of people bravely struggle for mere existence. There is too much money in this city. Some people have too much while others have too little. And it is this that casts a tragic light on all that happens in New York.

We parted from the city for two months.

The route of the first day was clear. We were going to Schenectady along U.S. Highway No. 9, through Poughkeepsie (it actually takes twelve letters to write that word in English), the Hudson, and the capital of the state of New York, Albany.

The regimen of the journey was also clear. We had at our disposal sixty days, and we had approximately ten thousand miles to cover in that time. Even if we were to drive at the rate of two hundred and fifty miles a day, we would cover that distance in forty days.

We set aside fifteen days for surveys, sightseeing, and so forth. All told, fifty-five days. That left us with five days in reserve for unforeseen developments. To this it should be added that a mile consists of one and six-tenth kilometres.

The suitcase with our belongings was placed in the baggage rack located under our back seat. In it were our shirts, handkerchiefs, and, most important of all, letters of introduction – new letters of introduction to cover the entire route.

Again, the addressees were professors, people of the theatre, poets, engineers, politicians) governors, and senators.

To the numerous letters received from Dos Passos was attached a long list with the characteristics of each addressee, who he was, what was his occupation, and in what way he could be useful to us.

In brief, we had a lot of recommendational merchandise.

It is high time to keep our promise and write a separate chapter about American roads.

They deserve it. Maybe they deserve even more— a whole inspired book.

This was not our first time on an automobile road. Yet, although since then we have become used to munificent highway arrangements, our first impression remains ineradicable. We drove over a white iron and concrete plate, eleven inches thick. This ideally even surface, being slightly rough, had a large coefficient of traction.