But at last we were ready: Gramp at the wheel, a gleam in his goggles, the usual cigar held by the neck in his strong teeth; me at his side seated on a sack of onions (Gramp was going to camp and eat out a lot); and in the back on the buffalo robes and luggage. Mama, small, scared, but game, her best hat on her best hairdo, waving goodbye weakly.
“Henry,” Cramp showed.
Papa took the crank, and Gramp figured on spark and gas and nodded. Papa Spun the crank. Nothing. Papa spun again, the car howled, the body shook. Papa landed five feet away but on his feet, holding his arm tenderly to his chest as if it were of great value. Everybody shouted goodbye. Mama turned a shade lighter and greener and waved back, the car jackrabbited down the block, and then went on headed for the ferry station. Behind us a feeble cheer rang out, and I turned and thumbed my little nose at my little cousins. It was ten o'clock on (and an old journal gives me the date) April 18, 1919.
Steering only right, we made the ferry station and got on board behind a pair of big brewery horses; “a good Omen,” Cramp said. Mama had a little “mal de mer” as she called it in her high-school French, but Cramp held her head while I held a horse. We landed in New Jersey, a New Jersey before the big paved highways and skyways and traffic cops. We headed south, past Newark, the slaughtering houses smelling, as they still do; we went past Elizabeth (which turned out to be a city and not a girl, as I had expected) and past our summer place in New Brunswick, which Cramp saluted by tooting twice and running over a large dog, who got up. dusted himself, and bit one of our tires.
“Where,” asked Mama, “are we heading for?”
“Philadelphia, what a place to spend a night, but it's the nearest civilization, ” said Cramp.
“I'm hungry.” I said.
Gramp grinned, “All stomach and no brains. You'll go far, boy. We're heading for the Red Lion Inn near Trenton. Great place.”
Gramp kept a huge journal of the trip, and I have it open before me as I write. It's full of the great eagle tracks that Gramp used as script and some of my early drawings, of which there is yet no demand by the museums. Gramp had drawn in a map and was trying to follow it. It was before the fancy folded road map with its varicose veins in all colors showing the best roads. Mostly there were no roads.
Gramp scowled at the map. “Damn it, I was sure I had Princeton marked on this map.”
“Uncle Willie went to Princeton.” I volunteered.
Gramp said, “He's even been to Harvard and to the dogs, but that doesn't get us to the Red Lion Inn.”
“I'm dusty.” said Mama.
“Shake yourself, Sari.” (That was a family joke for years, not funny any mote, bur part of the flavor of the trip.) Anyway, we went on and lost Trenton a few times and met a few lady cows that seemed amazed at Gramp's command of language. But at last we saw a low brown barn of a place and outside it a big red sign with a golden lion rampant on it and the letters: YE OLDE RED LION INN …
We drove up, Emma snorting in tired glee, her brass front steaming. We stopped and Mama said she had to collect herself; Gramp leaped down and hammered on the big oak door until it opened and a large old man came out and shook his head.
“Hain't opened for the season yet.”
“Hain't!” shouted Gramp. “Hell. man. I've risked life and limb to get here. You remember me, Kimmil, Captain Longstreet.”
“— — —,” said Mr. Kimmil, an old Army man himself. “You ole — — —.”
“— — —!” said Gramp, already in the spirit of the first day at Gettysburg.
“Really.” said Mama, “There are women and children present.”
“Kimmil, my daughter-in-law and grandson, Sari and Stevie.”
“Pleased to meet up with you. Come in and I'll roust out the cook and get some food out of the spring house.”
The Red Lion was very nice inside if you liked elk horns, wolf skins, wagon wheels, old guns and cobblestone fire places and pictures of old circuses and Civil War people and dead fish with glass eyes in cases.
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