The best short stories of 1922, and the yearbook of the American short story
General
The best short stories of 1922, and the yearbook of the American short story
American fiction -- 20th century; Short stories -- 20th century -- Bibliography; Short stories -- 20th century -- Indexes; Short stories, American
Our train pulled out of Washington at 9.40 P. M. and Mother and I
turned in early, I taking the upper. During the night we passed
through the green fields of old Virginia, though it was too dark to
tell if they was green or what color. When we got up in the morning,
we was at Fayetteville, North Carolina. We had breakfast in the
dining car and after breakfast I got in conversation with the man in
the next compartment to ours. He was from Lebanon, New Hampshire,
and a man about eighty years of age. His wife was with him and two
unmarried daughters and I made the remark that I should think the
four of them would be crowded in one compartment, but he said they
had made the trip every winter for fifteen years and knowed how to
keep out of each other’s way. He said they was bound for Tarpon
Springs.
We reached Charleston, South Carolina, at 12.50 P. M. and arrived at
Savannah, Georgia, at 4.20. We reached Jacksonville, Florida, at 8.45
P. M. and had an hour and a quarter to lay over there, but Mother
made a fuss about me getting off the train, so we had the darkey make
up our berths and retired before we left Jacksonville. I didn’t sleep
good as the train done a lot of hemming and hawing, and Mother never
sleeps good on a train as she says she is always worrying that I will
fall out. She says she would rather have the upper herself, as then
she would not have to worry about me, but I tell her I can’t take
the risk of having it get out that I allowed my wife to sleep in an
upper berth. It would make talk.
We was up in the morning in time to see our friends from New
Hampshire get off at Tarpon Springs, which we reached at 6.53 A. M.
Several of our fellow passengers got off at Clearwater and some at
Belleair, where the train backs right up to the door of the mammoth
hotel. Belleair is the winter headquarters for the golf dudes and
everybody that got off there had their bag of sticks, as many as ten
and twelve in a bag. Women and all. When I was a young man we called
it shinny and only needed one club to play with and about one game of
it would of been a-plenty for some of these dudes, the way we played
it.
The train pulled into St. Petersburg at 8.20 and when we got off the
train you would think they was a riot, what with all the darkeys
barking for the different hotels.
I said to Mother, I said:
“It is a good thing we have got a place picked out to go to and don’t
have to choose a hotel, as it would be hard to choose amongst them if
every one of them is the best.”
She laughed.
We found a jitney and I give him the address of the room my
son-in-law had got for us and soon we was there and introduced
ourselves to the lady that owns the house, a young widow about
forty-eight years of age. She showed us our room, which was light and
airy with a comfortable bed and bureau and washstand. It was twelve
dollars a week, but the location was good, only three blocks from
Williams Park.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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