1899 



CLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



547 



NOTES OF* TRAVLL 



i • BY i, AlKROOT, . 



^^?: : "-\^te 



SOMETHING ABOUT GOOD ROADS AS WELL AS 

 STRAWBERRIES. 

 The good people in Xenia, Greene Co., O., 

 whom 1 visited just about a year ago, wanted 

 me to be with them at their annual strawberry 

 convention again this year ; so I started out 

 on my wheel on the morning of Decoration 

 day, May 30. They were commencing to cel- 

 ebrate at Medina in the morning before I left ; 

 and I found them celebrating, and was obliged 

 to mix in with the throng more or less, both at 

 Upper Sandusky, Wyandot Co., O., which I 

 passed through on my wheel, and at Marion, 

 O. As there had been recent rains, making 

 the roads almost impassible except where there 

 were stone or graveled pikes, I took the train 

 until I was near one of the pikes in Wyandot 

 Co. After getting off at Tymochtee Station I 

 found I was but six miles from where a grav- 

 eled pike starts ; and going over that six miles 

 tired me more than riding thirty or forty miles 

 afterward. It is a little singular that the west- 

 ern part of our State should have these beau- 

 tiful stone and graveled roads, while in the 

 northeast part such a road is almost unknown. 

 If horses could talk as wheelmen do, no doubt 

 we should have heard pitiful appeals for good 

 roads long ago ; and, oh the difference it made 

 when I once struck a hard smooth stone road! 

 Why, it required no effort at all to fly just like 

 the wind ; and in many places the road was so 

 level and smooth there was scarcely a sound 

 or a vibration. The beveled gear made a little 

 bit of whiz at every revolution, and the fine 

 particles of stone made a very little gritting 

 sound as the tires passed over them ; and, by 

 the by, I think it must be true that a cinder 

 path or a smooth graveled road is really easier 

 to ride on than an asphalt pavement. Yet I 

 can not understand why this should be so. On 

 the asphalt there seems to be a little bit of 

 sticking of the rubber to the smooth surface ; 

 but where there is just a little bit of sandy 

 grit, the tire seems t) be "loose," if that is 

 the proper expression. It almost flies over 

 the road without really making close contact. 

 In getting the requisite grade the road is 

 banked up perhaps three feet, on an average, 

 higher than the bottom of the ditches on each 

 side. Through the influence of heavy rains 

 and the traffic of wheels these roads become 

 hard and smooth. The dirt sides become 

 heavily sodded, and the freezing and thawing 

 of winter, and the heavy rains and freshets of 

 summer, seem to make scarcely an impression 

 on them. I suppose a good deal is owing, of 

 course, to the material used and to the skill 

 with which the road is put together, especial- 

 ly on the surface, and finally the care with 

 which little cavities are mended before there 

 can be time for any water at all to stand in 

 even the shallowest puddle on the surface of 

 the road. I began to wonder, just before I 

 reached Upper Sandusky, if the soil was not 

 naturally better fitted for road-making than in 



Medina Co. ; but between Upper Sandusky 

 and Marion there is a piece or about a mile 

 that, for some reason or other, has never been 

 piked and graveled ; and this mile — why, I 

 actually had to get off and go on foot. The 

 clay soil was cut lip in such deep ruts that it 

 was not possible to ride a wheel at all. That 

 one mile used up my strength, besides taking 

 lots of time, more than riding ten, miles on a 

 good road. Now, what is true of riding a 

 wheel is more or less true of getting over the 

 country with a horse and buggy. The horse 

 is used up, the vehicles yanked to pieces, and 

 time wasted — how many times a day, do you 

 suppose ? I have sometimes counted the ve- 

 hicles that pass our home in a limited time. 

 Very often in good weather a dozen teams are 

 in sight at once, and there must be toward a 

 thousand that go over the road both ways in 

 the course of a day. Suppose each one of 

 these thousand rigs suffers from all the losses 

 I have mentioned, during just one day in the 

 year, how much could the great world at large 

 afford to pay for good roads ? 



After getting my supper at Marion I began 

 to inquire a little about bee-keepers. I was 

 told there was one, named G. B. Smeltzer, at 

 Smeltzer's Corners, two miles out of the city. 

 These friends were a good deal surprised and 

 greatly delighted to find A. I. Root with his 

 wheel actually standing before them. Friend 

 Smeltzer, like most other bee-keepers, is inter- 

 ested in gardening. He showed me some of 

 the most luxuriant plum-trees actually bend- 

 ing under their loads of fruit, and the fruit 

 only half grown at that. Every plum seemed 

 perfect — not a curculio sting. The only rea- 

 son he could give was that there were not 

 curculios enough to go round. We looked 

 over the trees by the light of the lantern, and 

 both of us decided that it was out of the ques- 

 tion to think of propping up the limbs, for 

 each little branch would need a prop. Pick- 

 ing off the green plums until the tree could 

 stand the load of those remaining, seemed to 

 be the only remedy. Now, bee-keepers usual- 

 ly have not only a nice garden, fruit-trees, and 

 things of that sort, but the most of them are 

 skillful mechanics. A great institution, called 

 the Huber Manufacturing Co.. in Dayton, had 

 discovered the mechanical skill of my good 

 friend Smeltzer, and had offered him enough 

 to come and work in their factory during their 

 great rush, so he was rather neglecting his 

 bees and other things at home. 



Next morning my trip was over a road not 

 a bit behind the one of the day before, and on 

 my way to Marysville I passed right along the 

 banks of the beautiful Scioto River, passing 

 through Prospect. Once or twice I was dis- 

 commoded where they were putting on new 

 gravel to repair the pike ; but that was not to 

 be compared with getting through mud roads 

 that had been cut up while the ground was 

 soft, and had afterward dried. 



A thunder-shower obliged me to seek shel- 

 ter just before reaching the pretty city of Ma- 

 rysville. But that did not hurt their kind of 

 roads at all ; in fact, I was on my wheel again 

 almost before the drops had ceased falling. 

 You see my chainless Columbia is just right 



