Coast to Coast (21 page)

We climbed aboard, and were soon roaring across the airfield. I noticed on the tarmac a powerful fighter aircraft of lethal aspect, clearly capable of great speeds and formidable impact. “That belongs to Jimmy Stewart,” said my millionaire, leaning across my seat and offering me a cigar from a silver box. “He’s
very
fond of aviation.”

I
f it is this kind of thing that gives Los Angeles its aura of affluent individualism, its air of frenzy stems directly from its position as undisputed capital of the world of the automobile. They make the cars in Detroit; but they use them, more than anywhere else on earth, in southern California, where almost everyone has a car, where the undergraduate expects one as his due, and the high-school boy’s popularity may depend upon the colour of his convertible. The American civilization is inextricably enmeshed with the internal combustion engine. (“Now we’re in the upper-middle class district,” said my guide as he took me round the suburbs of Portland, Oregon, “moving up out of the Oldsmobiles into the Buicks—and sure enough, Buicks there were, by every curb, with only an occasional Oldsmobile standing sheepishly in
a garage.) To observe this phenomenon at its most advanced, you must go to southern California.

It is an old joke that the Americans are soon going to lose the use of their legs, and eventually have them reduced to vestigial remnants, like the feet of whales; but it is true that few Americans will walk anywhere if they can help it, either for practical purpose or for pleasure. You can do your banking from your car, without leaving the driving seat, by choosing a bank with a “curbside teller”. You can post your letters in postboxes that protrude to the level of your car window. You can watch a film from your car in a “drive-in” cinema. At many stores you can be served in your car. At innumerable restaurants waitresses will hitch trays to the car door, so that you can eat without moving. In Florida there is even a “drive-in” church, where two or three may gather together sitting in their Chevrolets. There is no more characteristic gesture of American life than the casual rolling-down of a car window and the emergence of a hand, to grasp a hot-dog or a theatre ticket, a pound of apples or an evening paper, a cheque book, or a bottle of cider from a roadside stall.

Imagine yourself, for a moment, as a travelling motorist in America. Setting off in the morning (let us say), you pull in to a petrol station for a tank of petrol. “Regular?” says the attendant, meaning the cheaper kind; and the answer he gets depends upon the locality. In New Jersey, where so much oil is refined, petrol is likely to be cheap. In Colorado, on the other hand, it can be nearly twice as expensive. If you are lucky, you may pass through a region which is enjoying a price war, and find yourself faced with a succession of scrawled blackboards, each offering petrol at more ludicrously inadequate rates, until (if you have patience) you may fill your tank practically for nothing. “Okay,” says the attendant, wiping his hands to receive the money, but in the meantime he has not only delivered the petrol; he has unobtrusively checked the oil and the tyres, cleaned the windscreen, filled the radiator, inspected the batteries. If it is desert country, he has topped up the water-bag you carry slung over your front bumper. If you needed maps, he has produced them free from the office. He may have given your small son a lollipop from the stock he carries in his pocket. He has certainly asked you where you are from, and has told you about how he was stationed outside Norwich with the Air Force, and how he liked the pubs, but he wouldn’t go back for anything all the same, except maybe for a holiday when the air fares get cheaper. He expects no tip, but smiles the standard American smile (so universally pleasant as to be enigmatic), and waves to the children through the back window as you drive away.

So you are off. The road is likely to be smooth and wide, and you are tempted to speed, not least because almost everyone else on the road is speeding already. The limit varies, according to the State you are in. Nevada, as we have seen, has none except in cities. In some other places you are theoretically limited to 50 miles an hour. If you go too fast, you may still be chased by the traditional speed cop, with his howling sirens and trenchant manner, but it is more likely nowadays that you will be intercepted by radar. Notices will warn you beforehand—“Watch your Speed! Checked by radar!”—and your progress will be picked up by instruments mounted beside the road or in other cars, infallibly recording your progress and photographing your number plate.

Take no risks on the roads, especially in southern California. The West Coast American is a dashing driver, and often a reckless one; and statistics have shown that it is thirty-two times safer to fly in an American aircraft than it is to drive on an American road. Whatever you do, avoid the low-priced car driven by the single young man; he is probably a salesman, oppressed by the prosaic nature of his calling, and he likes to devise unutterable dangers on the road, as a relief to the monotony. If you see a woman driving, with small children in the back of the car, keep with her: she is probably just as skilful as the men, and with all her responsibilities concentrated on four wheels, she is prudent too.

Do not be ensnared by the numbers and plates on other cars, which are a constant distraction. Every State has different number plates, often prettily coloured, and with fancy slogans like “Minnesota: Land of 10,000 Lakes”; “Illinois: Land o’ Lincoln”; “New Mexico: Land of Enchantment”; “New York: The Empire State”. If it is near the turn of the year, these slogans are even more diverting, for they are often changed, and it is amusing to see what horror Arkansas, for example, has perpetrated
this
time. There are many other odd things to see on the passing cars. Some people invent slogans of their own. “Official Car”, says a pompous plate, apeing the senatorial manner, and adds in smaller print: “Ratepayer”. Or “Don’t Blame Me! I Voted Republican!” Rabbits, raccoon tails or whimsical dolls dangle in rear windows, and many a driver’s vision is obscured by sticky posters of hanging bridges, Puritans, geysers, bears, country houses, the Capitol, Indians, caves, and rhymes like:

In any small town
en
route
you may buy an excellent cup of coffee; but be careful how you park the car. It is generally illegal to cross the road and park the car on the other side in the direction you are travelling. It is usually unpopular, in places where cars are parked at right angles to the curb, to swing around and cross to the opposite side of the road. Once you have found a place, you must have a nickel or a dime for the parking meter, which was ubiquitous in America twenty years before the first example came to London. If you overstay the limit, and the red shows, the chances are that a slowly wandering policeman will happen by, pause to examine the evidence, and stick a ticket to your windscreen. Don’t be alarmed. It is a painless process. You need not appear in court, and in some places you can pay the fine there and then, by wrapping your dollar in your police ticket, and depositing it in a box conveniently affixed to a neighbouring lamppost. In a small town in Kansas my ticket, apologizing profusely for the trouble I was being caused, instructed me to place the fine on a tray; and there I found change, in case I only had a five-dollar bill.

Most of the big American roads are most skilfully signed. Large notices suggest the safe speeds for corners, and if you test them you will find that they are exactly right for the average American car, so powerful on the straight, so lumpish on the corners; go slower than they suggest, and you will be wasting time, go faster and you will feel the car heel over, and hear the tyres scream disconcertingly. (They scream more easily than European tyres, anyway, thus giving the impression, when some gentle old lady drives cautiously around a bend, that she is making for the Presbyterian Hall with an uncharacteristic abandon.) If there is a dangerous curve, or an obstacle, huge boards scream at you with bright colours or chequered patterns, not singly or in pairs, but in long rows, for several hundred yards, so that you can hardly escape their impact.

If you are colour-blind, you may have difficulty with the traffic lights, for you cannot rely on the relative positions of the colours. In England you know that when the light is shining in the top hole, you must stop; and that when it shines in the bottom hole, you may go. In America there are no such certainties. Sometimes the red light is at the top, sometimes at the bottom; sometimes it is not red at all; sometimes there is no amber light. Whatever the system, there will soon be a riotous hooting of horns behind if you fail to move when you may, for the American driver seldom displays the fatalistic patience of the British. In San Antonio, Texas, I once found myself (in common with everyone else) faced with peculiar traffic light problems; for the whole system had
gone wrong, and the lights were flashing and winking crazily, shining in the wrong order, staying for interminable minutes at red before changing momentarily to green, sometimes coming on all at once, sometimes going out all at once, till the whole city was dizzy, and portly businessmen were lying back in their driving seats in heavy hilarity. “That’s Texas for you,” my companion remarked, “they always overdo a good joke.”

Presently it is time for lunch, and you may care to try a drive-in restaurant. Steering warily into a kind of covered stall, you blow your horn (trying not to make it sound peremptory), and soon there emerges from the central building a waitress. She is likely to be plain, but heavily prepared. Her heels are high, her skirts a little short, her nylons excellent, her manner experienced. She takes your order, and soon reappears with the food, on a metal tray which fits neatly on the door. Milk in a carton (let us say); ham and eggs on a horrid disposable plate, which makes the ham taste insidiously of cardboard; bread automatically sliced; coffee in a cardboard cup; lump sugar wrapped, of course, in hygienic paper. If you want a dessert, there are many ice creams on the menu, and always several varieties of pie; the fruit pie is a national dish—c.f. the menu of the
Monarch
—and pie
à
la
mode
(meaning pie with ice cream) is a universal favourite. When you want to pay the bill, blow your horn again, and soon the waitress will be with you once more, smiling prettily, and examining the tip without much bashfulness as she takes the tray back to the kitchen.

When the dusk comes down, and you begin to feel the fatigues of travel, you may like to relax for an hour or two at a drive-in cinema. If you are near a town in southern California you are sure to come across one—a big stadium with a high wall, overshadowed by the screen, with the gigantic, silent figures of the actors easily visible from the road. You buy your ticket without leaving the car, and manoeuvre your way into a convenient position. On posts dotted around the arena are loudspeakers attached to wires; reach out of the window for one of these, place it on the seat beside you, and there you are. If it is winter they may give you a heater, too. At first it may seem a little queer having the voice beside you and the figure far away on the screen; but you will soon get used to it, mentally arranging (according to your temperament) either that Miss Bardot is really in the car with you, or that Mr. Presley’s voice is up there with his larynx. It is a wonderful way to see a film, for if you are really bored you can go to sleep in the back seat, leaving your wife to endure its banalities; and from time to time, in the best drive-ins, somebody comes round with a tray of refreshments,
and knocks politely on your window. You can take your dinner with you, if you like, and eat sausages while the sheriff gets his man. Moreover, you can talk when you please, and put your feet up, and wear the most wildly extravagant of hats without being hissed at from the row behind. Only one thing can be said against the drive-in cinema; on a dark, lonely evening, in the flat and open countryside that surrounds so many American towns, there is something creepy about the sight of those silent figures on the screen, singing their silent songs, whispering their silent intimacies, hurling their soundless imprecations, as the motorist drives by outside.

Finally, at the end of your day, you decide to put up for the night. Just beyond the drive-in cinema, towards the centre of the town, you will find the motels. There are rows of them, each with its neon sign, its oddities of architecture or decoration, its illuminated notice announcing a vacancy. Some are long terraces; some are a series of huts, like bathing cabins. Some, veering towards the pretentious, and going in for swimming-pools and fancy bars, are liable to be expensive; others, patently frequented by cockroaches and secret lovers, are certain to be cheap. You take your choice, register at a little office, and drive to your own front door. There is no service (and no tipping), and you may have to walk down the road for a meal. But your room is probably clean and comfortable, if not luxurious, and your car is parked freely and conveniently directly outside your window. There will certainly be a shower, and very possibly a bath, and, if it is a good motel, all kinds of small attentions will be paid you. In the jazzier regions, for instance, you may be offered a motion-bed, designed to continue the lulling rhythm of your car’s vibrations, or a bowl of fruit addressed to you personally by the manager, and miraculously whisked round to your room before you have time to get there yourself. The evening newspaper will certainly be provided, and a small library is placed beside your pillow. There will be a new pair of bedroom slippers, made of a thick paper-like substance, and an unused fabric device for cleaning your shoes. Coathangers without number hang in the wardrobe. There is a radio and a television set. Nests of plastic cups are in the bathroom, and cakes of soap in healthful packaging. The tumblers are enshrouded in cellophane, and the lavatory seat will have a paper wrapping across it to testify to its cleanliness. Some motels, with a thought to the early traveller, provide coffee for the morning. It comes in powder form in a little cardboard cup, together with milk powder, sugar, and a cardboard spoon; and in the morning, in the cruel dawn, you have only to add hot water to this mixture (from the tap) to have a peculiarly repulsive and effective beverage.