OVER AMERICA BY ROAD

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 105, 5 May 1937, Page 13

OVER AMERICA BY ROAD

New York, as has often been said, is : »ot America, and any visitor who really wants to understand the United States should leave the big cities and : take a motor trip from coast to corst i The Dowager Marchioness of Reading took such a trip last summer, and she has told that when she set off on tho < famous Oregon Trail she was completely oblivious to the stupendous beauty that would be met on the way. As she looks back on it now, tho drive ■lands out to her for a grandeur ol ■cenery unrivalled by anything she had ' •ver seen, except the Himilavas in < India. Everywhere the people were i ■harming, hospitable, and interested in ; the visitors’ experiences, and she was'; particularly struck by the way in which' most drivers respected the laws of tho road. (A notice in one town read: j •Drive slow and see our town. Drive * fast and see our jail*.) The politeness of the attendants at retrol filling stations was also notice- . able: as a car arrives at the pump to|.

Hospitality of People

fill up, a beaming face looks in at the window, and a cheerful voice says: ‘Hullo, folks, how are you?’ Clean rest-rooms await the dusty traveller, a cheery word is always ready, and free maps are provided lor the next two or three hum-red miles of road. Moreover, a tip is regarded as an insult, and ' this is not the result of good salesmanship so much as of real friendliness. ‘What we brought back from our drive,’ said the Dowager Marchioness, 'i3 a memory of peaceful countrysides, ot glimpses of happy home lives, of logs stacked at the 6ides of houses in readiness for winter, of work industriously courageously undertaken and very ( thoroughly done, of wooden houses with porches on which rocking-chairs give j tired limbs a comfy rest; but deepest !of all is our realisation of admiration and affection for the people we met, for their kindness and their quickness, their ever-smiling friendliness, and ./or the virility of their youth, the