The Vespa was far more stable than I had expected and wonderfully easy to run. As I got better at the twist-grip gears, I began really to drive the little machine instead of just riding on it. The acceleration—up to fifty in twenty seconds—was good enough to give the ordinary American sedan quite a shock, and I soared up hills like a bird with the exhaust purring sweetly under my tail. Of course I had to put up with a good deal of wolf-whistling from the young, and grinning and handwaving from the old, but I’m afraid I rather enjoyed being something of the sensation my aunt had predicted, and I smiled with varying sweetness at all and sundry. The shoulders of most North American roads are bad, and I had been afraid that people would crowd my tiny machine and that I would be in constant trouble with potholes, but I suppose I looked such a fragile little outfit that other drivers gave me a wide berth, and I usually had the whole of the inside lane of the highway to myself.
Things went so well that first day that I managed to get through Montreal before nightfall and twenty miles on down Route 9 that would take me over the border into New York State the next morning. I put up at a place called The Southern Trail Motel, where I was treated as if I was Amelia Earhart or Amy Mollison—a rather pleasurable routine that I became accustomed to—and, after a square meal in the cafeteria and the shy acceptance of one drink with the proprietor, I retired to bed feeling excited and happy. It had been a long and wonderful day. The Vespa was a dream, and my whole plan was working out fine.
I had taken one day to do the first two hundred miles. I took nearly two weeks to cover the next two hundred and fifty. There was no mystery about it. Once over the American border, I began to wander around the Adirondacks as if I was on a late summer holiday. I won’t go into details since this is not a travelogue, but there was hardly an old fort, museum, waterfall, cave, or high mountain I didn’t visit—not to mention the dreadful “Storylands,” “Adventure Towns,” and mock “Indian Reservations” that got my dollar. I just went on a kind of sightseeing splurge that was part genuine curiosity but mostly wanting to put off the day when I would have to leave these lakes and rivers and forests and hurry on south to the harsh Eldollarado of the superhighways, the hot-dog stands, and the ribboning lights of neon.
It was at the end of these two weeks that I found myself at Lake George, the dreadful hub of tourism in the Adirondacks that has somehow managed to turn the history and the forests and the wildlife into honkytonk. Apart from the rather imposing stockade fort and the harmless steamers that ply up to Fort Ticonderoga and back, the rest is a gimcrack nightmare of concrete gnomes, Bambi deer and toadstools, shoddy food stalls selling “Big Chief Hamburgers” and “Minnehaha Candy Floss,” and “Attractions” such as “Animal Land” (“Visitors may hold and photograph costumed chimps”), “Gaslight Village” (“Genuine 1890 gas-lighting), and “Storytown USA ” a terrifying babyland nightmare which I need not describe. It was here that I fled away from the horrible mainstream that Route 9 had become, and took to the dusty side road through the forest that was to lead me to The Dreamy Pines Motor Court and to the armchair where i have been sitting remembering just exactly how I happened to get here.
Part Two: Them
Seven: “Come into My Parlor…”
THE rain was hammering down just as hard, its steady roar providing a background to the gurgling torrents from the downspouts at the four corners of the building. I looked forward to bed. How soundly I would sleep between the sheets in the spotless little cabin—those percale sheets that featured in the advertisements for the motel! How luxurious the Elliott Frey beds, Magee custom-designed carpets, Philco television and air-conditioning, Icemagic ice-makers, Acrilan blankets and Simmons Vivant furniture. (“Our phenolic laminate tops and drawers are immune to cigarette burns, alcohol stains”)—in fact all these refinements of modern motel luxury down to Acrylite shower enclosures, Olsonite Pearlescent toilet seats, and Delsey “bathroom tissue,” otherwise toilet paper (“in modern colors to harmonize with contemporary decor”) that would be mine, and mine alone, tonight!