Coast to Coast (26 page)

N
obody knows quite what the Middle West is, for the geographers, the sociologists and the political economists have never agreed upon a satisfactory definition of it. It is an amorphous region, a slab of eight or nine States deposited in the centre of America, surrounded by areas of more decided and homogeneous character—the melancholy South, the vivid expanse of the West, the mellowed East. Hardly anybody wants to be a Midwesterner, for the area does not possess the allure of the great plains, nor the fragrant nostalgia of the plantations. Within its nebulous frontiers there are shades of every social flavour, from the feudal pride of the Southern States to the backwoods temperament of the territories that lie along the 49th parallel.

The accepted southern border of the Middle West is the Ohio River, which runs placidly through beautiful wooded hills to join the Mississippi at Cairo. Across the river is Kentucky, which is very conscious of its southern connotations (whisky, colonels, gallantry, blue grass and fine horses, Confederate memories and strong convictions); but on both sides of the stream there are river towns of unmistakable Middle Western atmosphere. There may be racial segregation in Hawesville, Kentucky, for example, while across the Ohio in Indiana the negro is theoretically emancipated; but the people of Hawesville speak with the rasping and angular speech of the Middle West, not the lilt of the South, and they probably have fewer affinities with their fastidious capital, Frankfurt, than with the metallic drive of Indianapolis (where an official pamphlet says of the ugliest of all war memorials that it is “universally admitted to be the grandest achievement of Architectural and Sculptural Art in the World”). These places, standing like bastions along the river, are frontier towns, marking the boundary where one philosophy of life gives way to another; and the most important of them, the splendid old river port of Louisville, was my own southern gateway into the Middle West.

I drove into Louisville on its annual day of greatness—the day of the Kentucky Derby, when the city is thrown into paroxysms of pride, gaiety and determined excitement. From all over (as the Americans say) the racegoers were thronging into Louisville that morning. Some
crowded off the diesel “streamliners” which came throbbing into town, all vista-domes and observation parlours, from Pittsburgh and the East; some came by the huge gaudy buses whose diesel fumes swirl about so disagreeably as they sweep past you on the road; thousands came in their great shiny cars, sweeping into the city across the bridges from the Middle West, or rolling up aristocratically from the deep South; some flew in by private seaplanes, landing dashingly, amid clouds of spray, on the river; and a few even came by sternwheeler from Cincinatti, to moor alongside the cobbled landing-stage and sip their cool drinks on deck, watching the traffic go by with an enviably Olympian detachment.

As always, Louisville opened its hospitable doors to this influx, turnits back gardens into parking lots (two dollars for the day); mixing its mint juleps with an urgent hospitality; stringing its streets with flags; summoning from cold storage all its most romantic traits and associations, so that the air of the place was sticky with the perfume of magnolias, and its pavements seemed almost to be peopled with swaggering southern soldiers, crinolined ladies, faithful darkies, handsome owners and patriarchal planters; and all the talk was of racing memories, Man o’ War, the gambling of steamboat men, the winner in ’22, the passing of stables, the deaths of horses, weights, colours and prices; until, what with the turmoil and the enthusiasm of it all, and the constant metaphorical blowing of trumpets and thudding of hoofs, by race-time one’s head was beginning to swim, so packed was it with traditional images. Almost the whole city contributed to this votive offering, only a few residents of long standing and very determined character standing altogether aloof from it.

Then there were the contemporary celebrities to admire. The bosomy film star stepped from her Cadillac with a rustle of silk, a casual adjustment of furs, and a wave to her entranced admirers. The cantankerous television performer, whose ill-temper makes headlines, beamed from his box, rather disconcerting those who loved him best when he was nastiest. The eminent businessman from New Orleans wore his ermine suit studded with pearls and rhinestones (“His taste is terrible,” remarked his tailor to the Press, “but it’s all in fun”). There was the scholarly linguist, who comes to the Derby each year to enlarge his vocabulary of Rogue’s American, and whose hotel room is visited by a stream of co-operative criminals, old friends of his by now, happily dropping in
to tell him the latest accretions to their argot, and not even pocketing a spoon or a fountain pen as they leave with hoarse protestations of goodwill to pursue their duties elsewhere. There was the retired general, up from Los Angeles for the day, with his wife in powder blue
this time, and his son on leave from Fort Knox. There was the oil-millionaire in his lizard-skin shoes, deep in his race-card. There is always a former President or two to adorn such a gathering as this, and probably a forthcoming Presidential candidate as well, looking spruce, hopeful and beyond reproach. On Derby Day, half America comes to Louisville.

I forget the name of the horse that won the race—a grey from California, with a jaunty jockey and a proud double-breasted owner—but I recall vividly the wave of sentimental tension that surrounded its running. The huge crowd worked itself up gradually to the occasion. The first races had been run, to mild and chiefly mercenary interest; the first fine sheen of toilettes had worn off a little, leaving dresses a trifle crinkled and coiffures a trifle wispy; the resolute smiles of the stars were still present, but were looking a little strained at the corners; the negro waiters had wandered successfully through the crowd selling their mint juleps (simply Bourbons in exotic disguise) with the cry: “Mint Juleps, mint juleps,
only
one twenty-five, and keep the souvenir glass!” The innumerable small parties in the bars grew dizzier, the tipsters more vociferous, the elderly ladies peddling ideologies more earnest. It was the moment of the race.

Poor Americans! They have so avid a yearning for pageantry, brought up as they are with only a flag to honour. Their big parades are nearly always spoilt by commercialism, sex or incompetence, and even their best soldiers, hampered by the slovenliness of their foot drill, lack the true martial inspiration. So when there arises an occasion so imbued with glamour as the Kentucky Derby, they like to make the most of it. As the hands of the big clock ticked around to four o’clock, a solitary outrider in a red coat rode slowly on to the field, and to a perceptible tightening of heartstrings the band struck up
My
Old
Kentucky
Home
, played with such intensity of feeling, to an audience so universally receptive, that Lord North himself, transported to this gathering, could scarcely resist its appeal. As this old melody was vibrantly played (Stephen Foster of Pittsburgh wrote it for a minstrel show) and as the horses came on to the field, one by one, a wave of slightly sticky sentimentality swept over Churchill Downs, uniting pickpocket and President in its glory.

After this heady interval, befuddled both with emotion and mint juleps, the great crowd watched the race itself with a less than avid attention; and very soon after its finish, to some conscientious cheering and the presentation of garlands and cups, the distinguished assembly began to disperse; with a roar of powerful engines, a last gracious smile,
a final quip to the reporters, a swing of mink and a waft of perfume, the cabbages and the kings went home. Soon Louisville was back to its agreeable normal (on any other day of the year it is a city of most urbane and enlightened tastes) and I was driving through the sunshine across the river into Indiana.

This is one portal of the Middle West. To illustrate the range and diversity of the country, let me describe another. Far in the north near the Canadian border, surrounded by forestlands and lonely lakes, lie the iron mines of the Mesabi range, in Minnesota. For decades these were the ultimate source of American strength; because of the presence of these mines, America was able to feed her greedy steel mills, laying the foundations of her power and influence, winning her wars, enriching her magnates. The chief city of the iron country is Duluth on the shores of Lake Michigan, a place as far in spirit from the Kentucky Derby or the civilization of the mint julep as Leeds is from Darjeeling (though the name is aristocratic, for the city was called after Daniel de Greysolon Sieur du Lhut). This is a hard northern country, healthy but unenticing of climate; not so moist or endearing as the Pacific north-west, but similarly Scandinavian in some of its aspects. My first glimpse of Duluth came as I drove over the hills from Minneapolis; when, turning a bend in the road, I suddenly saw below me the cold and forbidding surface of the lake and the docks along its edge. It was a grey scene. The lake was very grey, and the town, lying between the water and the hills, looked clean but colourless. Loading at one of the quaysides far below was an iron ore ship, built in the graceless manner (bulk and brute force) of all the Great Lakes freighters. The air was still and heavy and I could hear the distant clatter of cranes and hatches echoing from the docks. Presently there came heaving up the railway line beside me an enormous steam engine, spitting and hissing, pulling one hundred empty wagons, on its way back to the mines to pick up another load of ore. The driver leant out of his cab to wave to me, and I remember him as my symbol of Duluth: he wore the dungarees of his calling, slightly oily, and decorated with thin blue stripes, like pyjamas; but on his head, instead of the engineer’s peaked cap, he wore the Davy Crockett hat of the pioneer and the flatboat man, its round fur top tilted racily over his eyes, its racoon tail hanging down behind his head and getting tangled in the steam-cocks. The northern part of the Middle West contributes lavishly to the wealth and business of the region, but it is enlivened by some few faint memories of younger days, when its forests were the haunts of trappers and unconventional woodsmen.

Even in the cities there is a little of this quality still. “There’s a moose
on the golf course‚” a man remarked casually to me as we sat in a bar in Duluth. “Haven’t seen one for years. When d’you last see a moose in town, Charlie?” And it is not so long since a large bear wandered into that very bar, and was only driven out (so the story runs) after two or three very stiff scotch-and-sodas. The country between Duluth and the Canadian frontier is still rugged and unspoilt, dotted with innumerable small lakes, from whose isolated banks (on a Saturday evening) you may hear the sounds of hunters’ carousals, the popping of corks or the sudden expectant hush that precedes the
dénouement
of a smoking-room story.
My
Old
Kentucky
Home
would raise no handkerchiefs here; this is a purposeful and unmaudlin place, close to the frontier times. The greyness of its nature affects its inhabitants, and makes them (like Scotsmen) blunt, honest and resilient.

The mines lie among unprepossessing hills in the heart of this forest country. The woods were mostly destroyed long ago, by merciless exploitation and by disastrous fires (300 people were trapped and killed in one Minnesota blaze), so that most of the trees are young and modest, giving the forests a sparse, anæmic air. To reach the mines from Duluth you must drive through fifty or sixty miles of such unspiritual woods (no leagues of protection here, or impassioned lovers of the woodland sprites) until you arrive in the arid wasteland of the iron range, stretching drably away like a tedious argument.

It is, of course, by no means waste land in the economic sense; but it is less generous than it used to be, for the high grade ores are running out. I was not surprised to hear this when they showed me the largest of the open cast iron mines, the Hull-Rust-Mahoning pit at Hibbing, for this is unquestionably the biggest hole on earth, and an astronomical amount of ore—70 million tons, at least—has been removed from it since the first tentative sod was moved. It is a horrible sight. The soil is sandy and unnatural-looking, as if it needs a good wash, and the mine sinks down into the earth in a series of enormous terraces. The hole is three miles long and covers 1,300 acres. It is so big that you can hardly see the end of it, and the trains that work in its recesses are little more than puffs of smoke and dark smudges of trucks. The whole enclave is alive with activity. Trains scurry up and down its terraces; cranes swing their booms jerkily; cars run around the bottom of the pit; hoppers tip, shovels dig; there are even a few men, far down among the dirt, swinging pickaxes. In this single mine there are fifty-five miles of railway track (which would take you, if it were straightened out, from Paddington to Didcot), and outside the pit huge and splendid trains move in almost endless procession down to the docks. Their wagons are weighed
to a pound, and carefully sorted according to the grade of their ore; and the engineer talks to the guard by radio.

In the past all this was a relatively simple operation. The ore was mined; put into trains; processed by fairly easy means; loaded into ships; and sold. But half a century of mining, with wars and booms and extraordinary industrial expansion, has practically emptied the range of high-grade iron ore. I was shown one expanse of dirty ground, loaded with such good ore, which has not been mined but is reserved for a national emergency; but most of the stuff has gone, leaving behind the sort of inferior material that the pioneer miners would have scorned to extract.

Rock bearing this inferior ore is called taconite. People have been trying to use it profitably for thirty years or more, but it is really only since the war (which so disastrously depleted the reserves of better ore) that satisfactory ways of processing it have been devised. It is still very expensive to extract good iron from it, but the mining companies seem to have no choice, it being generally agreed that the better Mesabi ore deposits cannot last more than twenty-five or thirty years. Huge and intricate are the mills that have been built to prepare the taconite. First huge lumps of rock from the mine are flung into crushers, like the gold ore at Homestake, and the resulting pebbles are ground in water into an odious muddy substance. The iron is then extracted by magnets, and it comes out (for a reason I have not been able to master) in the form of a thick, black liquid, before being converted by a process of rolling and baking into iron pellets like big cricket balls. The cost is enormous, but on the other hand the reserves of taconite are incalculable. Before long the chief activity of the Minnesota mines will probably be this laborious and costly process.