Одноэтажная Америка / Little Golden America

In America you will never find a mysterious blue triangle in a red square, a sign over which you may wrack your brain for hours.

Most of the road indicators are on round mirrored glasses which at night reflect the glare of automobile lights. Thus, the sign shines of itself. Black inscriptions against a yellow background (these are the most noticeable colours) warn: “Slow,” “School Zone,” “Stop Danger,” “Narrow Bridge,” “Speed Limit 30 Miles,” “Railroad Crossing,” or “Dip-30 Feet Away”—and precisely thirty feet away there will be a rut.

However, such an inscription is met with as rarely as the dip itself. At each road crossing stand poles with thick wooden arrows. On the arrows are the names of cities and the mileage to them.

Noisily, and making a baying sound, heavy silver autotanks with milk fled past us. They carry milk for New York’s seven million population. They frighten you to death – these huge milk machines which suddenly appear, approaching with the rapidity of a squall.

The tanks are especially grandiose at night when, surrounded by a chain of green and red lanterns, they fly without a stop toward New York. Seven million people want to drink milk, so it must be delivered on time.

Even more imposing are the trucks with special attachments which transport at once three or four new automobiles. At a distance of approximately a thousand miles, delivery by truck costs less than by railroad – so, again a storm descends upon us, this time gleaming with lacquer and nickel.

We close our eyes for a second against its unendurable glare, and drive on.

Roads are one of the most remarkable phenomena of American life – of its life and not only of its technique. The United States has hundreds of thousands of miles of so-called highways, roads of high quality, along which regular automobile communication passes. Autobuses race on schedule at the rate of sixty miles per hour, and transportation on them is twice as cheap as by rail.

At any time of day, at any time of year, in the worst possible weather, passenger autobuses race across America. When at night you see a heavy and threatening machine flying across the waste spaces and the deserts, you involuntarily remember the post diligences of Bret Harte run by desperate drivers.

An autobus travels down a gravel highway. It turns large stones over and sucks the small ones after itself. It cannot be late.