Одноэтажная Америка / Little Golden America

Rain did not make it slippery. We drove over it with the ease and noiselessness with which a drop of rain runs down glass. Along its length the road was marked with white, thick stripes. Four automobiles could travel down this road at once in both directions. These roads, like the roads of ancient Rome, are built practically for eternity.

Mrs. Adams looked at us appealingly from time to time, but we pretended we did not understand her glances, although we really did. Mrs. Adams wanted to drive faster. But at the time he sold us the machine, the dealer recommended that the first few days it be driven no faster than forty miles an hour.

This is necessary so as not to damage the motor before it has time to get under way. Mr. Adams glanced at the speedometer and, seeing the beautiful thin arrow wavering close to the figure 50, became anxious at once:

“No, no, Becky, it’s impossible! It’s impossible! The car is too stiff. You must be very, very careful with it. Isn’t it so, gentlemen?”

Not understanding anything yet about the treatment of automobiles, we merely nodded, without taking our eyes off the white stripes of the road.

Oh, that road! For two months it ran to meet us – concrete, asphalt, or grained, made of gravel and permeated with heavy oil.

It is madness to think that it is possible to drive slowly down an American federal highway. It is not enough to have the desire to be careful. Side by side with your machine pass hundreds of other machines, and thousands push from behind.

You meet with tens of thousands passing by, and all of them drive for all they are worth, sweeping you along with them in their satanic flight. All of America speeds somewhere, and evidently never will stop. Steel dogs and birds gleam on the noses of its machines.

Among the millions of automobiles flying from ocean to ocean, we, too, were a grain of dust chased by a petrol storm which has been raging for ever so many years over America.

Our machine raced past rows of petrol stations, each of which had six, eight, or even ten red or yellow pumps.

We stopped at one of these to fill our tank.

From a small neat building, in the large glass show window of which could be seen all kinds of automobile greases and cleaning powders, came a man in a cap with a striped top and in striped overalls, the unbuttoned upper part of which revealed a striped collar with a black leather bow tie. Such is the style of mechanics – to wear leather ties.