I asked if there was anyone in Smartsville who would be likely to remember my father, and was referred by Mr. Peardon to “Bob” Beatty, who, he said, had, lived in Smartsville all his life and knew everybody.  As Mr. Beatty was within a stone’s throw, at the Excelsior Store, I had no difficulty in finding him.  Introducing myself, I asked Mr. Beatty if he remembered my father.  “To be sure I do,” he exclaimed, “I went to his school, and,” laughing heartily, “well I remember a licking he gave me!” He said that among the boys who attended that school, several in after years, as men, had become prominent in the history of the State.

Mr. Beatty — now a pleasant, genial gentleman of fifty-two — very kindly walked with me to the brow of the hill commanding a view of Sucker Flat, and pointed out the exact spot where the school had stood, for not a stick or a stone remains to mark the locus of the town — it is simply a name upon the map.

I mention this incident as being another proof of the extraordinary hold the Sierra foot-hill country has upon the people who were born there, as well as upon those who have drifted there by force of circumstances.  It is forty-six or forty-seven years since my father conducted that school, yet I felt so sure from previous experiences there would be in Smartsville someone who remembered him, that I determined to include it in my itinerary.

Chapter VIII

Smartsville to Marysville.  Some Reflections on Automobiles and “Hoboes”

Early the next morning I started for Marysville, the last leg in my journey, and a long twenty miles distant.  I had been dreading the pull through the Sacramento Valley, having a lively recollection of my experience in the San Joaquin, on leaving Stockton.  The day was sultry, making the heat still more oppressive.  After leaving the foot-hills for good, I walked ten miles before reaching a tree, or anything that cast a shadow, if you except the telephone poles.  For the first time I realized there was danger in walking in such heat, and even contemplated the shade of the telephone poles as a possibility!  Fortunately a light breeze sprang up — the fag end of the trade wind — and, though hot, it served to dispel that stagnation of the atmosphere which in sultry weather is so trying to the nervous system.  Marysville is nearly one hundred miles due north of Stockton — of course, much farther by rail — and the same arid, treeless, inhospitable belt of country between the cultivated area and the foot-hills apparently extends the whole distance.  It is a country to avoid.

About two miles short of Marysville, while enjoying the shade cast by the trees that border the levee of the Feather River, which skirts Marysville to the south, a man in an auto stopped and very kindly offered to give me a lift.  I thanked him politely but declined.  He seemed amazed.  “Why don’t you ride when you can?” he asked.  “Because I prefer to walk,” I answered.  This fairly staggered him.  The idea of a man preferring to walk, and in such heat, was probably a novel experience, and served to deprive him of further speech.  He simply sat and stared and I had passed him some twenty yards before he started his machine.