"That's because you are carried away by construction. It is playing too big a role with you now. Later you will forget about it and will stop proclaiming the fame of engineers and workers."
We talked for quite a while about fame; or rather, about the right to fame. It seems to us that we did not convince each other of anything. Mr. Thompson's position was clear to us. Capitalism had denied him fame—or rather, had stolen his fame—so this proud man did not even want to hear of it. He gave his bosses knowledge and in exchange received a salary. He felt that they were quits.
Standing on the summit of one of the most beautiful constructions of our age, about which it is only known that it is not known who built it, we spoke about fame in the United States.
Fame in that country begins with publicity. And publicity is given a person only when it is to somebody's advantage. Who in America really enjoys the greatest, all-national fame? People who make money or people with the aid of whom somebody else makes money. There are no exceptions to this rule. Money! All-national fame is enjoyed by a boxing champion or a football champion, because a match with their participation garners millions of dollars. A motion-picture star enjoys fame, because her fame is of use to her producer. He can deprive her of this national fame at any time he so desires. Bandits enjoy fame, because it pays newspapers and because with their names are associated figures with many zeros.
But who could utilize and need to create fame for Thompson or Jackson, Wilson or Adams, if those people merely build machines, electric stations, bridges, and irrigation systems? Their bosses find that it is even unprofitable that they should be famous. They would have to pay a large salary to a famous man.
"Seriously," Mr. Adams told us, "do you really think that Ford is famous in America because he created a cheap automobile ? Oh, no! It would be foolish to think that! It is simply because throughout the country automobiles run around with his surname on the radiator. With you, Ford the mechanic is famous; with us, Ford the merchant."
No, perhaps Thompson is right when he waives American fame. Fame in America is merchandise. And like all other merchandise in America it brings profit not to him who has created it, but to him who trades in it.
PART IV
30 Mrs. Adams Sets a Record
ON THE BORDER of California we were stopped at the inspector's station, around which small cactuses were planted, and our automobile was searched.
It is forbidden to transport fruit or flowers into California. Cali-fornians are afraid that bacteria which cause plant diseases may be carried into their state.
The inspector pasted on our windshield a label portraying unnaturally blue vistas and green palms, and we found ourselves in California, in the Golden State.
However, after we passed the inspector's bungalow we did not find any palms at all. The desert continued as grandiose and beautiful as in Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico. Only the sun became warmer and more and more cactuses appeared. A whole forest of cactuses jutted out of the sand on either side of the road. The cactuses were large, the size <>( an apple tree. Their branches, as thick as the trunk itself, looked as if they had been injured in torment, looked like outspread arms cut off at the elbow.
Thus half a day passed. We lunched on bananas, like monkeys. The road passed from one plateau to another, rising continually. Cactuses disappeared just as suddenly as they had appeared. A grated tower appeared on the horizon, then another, then a third. They looked like the fighting machines of Martian warriors. We were crossing the high-pressure line built for transmitting current from the Boulder Dam station to California. The electricity marched in measured step across the sands and hills of the desert.
"Gentlemen," asked Mr. Adams, "is there a ringing in your ears? Confess!"
We listened. There actually was a ringing in our ears. Mr. Adams was greatly elated.
"This is rarefied air," said he. "Don't let it astonish you. Unnoticeably, we have climbed to considerable height. But I think this is the last mountain pass now."
As usual, Mr. Adams was right.
Soon we began to descend, down the beautiful winding road, to a new desert. We saw it from a great height. It did not at all look like those deserts to which we had become accustomed in the course of the week. Wrapped in a light rising mist, it disclosed itself gradually with every new winding of the road. We drove carefully lower and lower. After a considerable interruption, life began again: a ploughed field, irrigation canals, green winter crops, long brown vineyards disappearing in the misty horizon, and oil derricks of the city of Bakersfield. It was December. Palms appeared, trees, girls in skirts and girls in trousers. The girls in the long and wide trousers of thin wool, and with a light kerchief around their necks, were a sign that Hollywood was near by. This is the motion-picture style—to go around in trousers. They are comfortable and roomy.
This part of California is an irrigated desert. If California were to be deprived of irrigation for one week, it would return to what it had always been: a desert. If flowers are not watered here for one day, they perish.
"California," cried Mr. Adams suddenly, "is a remarkable state. As a matter of principle, there is never any rain here. Yes, yes,, precisely as a matter of principle. You will simply insult a Californian if you tell him that rain is possible here. If on the day of your arrival it rains anyway, the Californian will be very angry, will shrug his shoulders, and say: 'This is something incomprehensible. I have been living here for twenty years. One of my wives died here and another fell ill. Here my children grew up and graduated from high school. This is the first time I have seen rain.'"
The Bakersfield oil well derricks, in distinction from those of Oklahoma, which were of metal, were made of wood. These are the older oil wells. And again, side by side with the derricks, we saw pathetic hovels, Such is the law of American life: the wealthier the place, the more millions are pumped out or dug out of the earth, the poorer and shabbier are the hovels of the people who dig out or pump out those millions.
As a matter of fact, the oil is not pumped only by large companies. It is pumped, so to speak, individually as well, by local residents, the owners of the little houses and the little Fords. They make an opening side by side with the oil-bearing lands of the company, right in their own small garden, in their own garage, in their own parlour, and pump a few gallons a day for themselves. This method of mining Americans call "wild-catting."
Only its palms distinguished Bakersfield from the hundreds of other Gallups we had seen. But this is an appreciable difference, for a Gallup with palms is considerably more pleasing than a Gallup without palms.
Trade and advertising assume a much more lively character here than in the desert. After endless and monotonous "Drink Coca-Cola" signs, we found here a certain New York flair in the advertiser's concern about the consumer. The owner of a small petrol station on the outskirts of Bakersfield hung over his establishment a funny man made up of empty automobile oil cans. The man rocked in the wind, clattered and groaned like a lonely ghost forgotten by all. And in his groans one could clearly hear: "Buy only Pennsylvania Oil. This oil is from the Quaker State. The Quakers are good people. Their oil cannot be bad."
And farther on, over an automobile repair station (a "service station") hung such a fancy placard that Mr. Adams, who was the first to notice it, loudly clapped his hands and shouted: "Becky! Stop here!"