Sue's Audio Books
  • Home
  • Arts
    • Painting
    • Poetry
    • Nature & Science
  • Memoirs
    • African Americans
    • Artists & Intellectuals
    • Explorers
    • Native Americans
    • Pioneers
    • Travelers
    • War & Military
    • Women
  • American History
    • American Revolution
    • American West
    • Civil War
    • Gold Rushes
    • Immigration
    • Slavery & Abolition
  • Miscellany
    • Odd Bits & Tangents
    • Nonfiction Collection
  • Me
    • About
    • Bookish (the Blog)
    • Sidney’s Brooklyn (1941-1960)
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
Friendly road book cover

The Friendly Road, New Adventures in Contentment

Travelers audiobooks, librivox

Ray Stannard Baker (1870–1946)

My grandmother Gertrude received a copy of The Friendly Road for Christmas in 1919. It must have been a special gift book–green leather binding, gold embossing, a sheet of tissue paper protecting the color plate facing the title page–this a painting of a solitary man enjoying a swim in a sun dappled stream with the caption “Surely it is good to be alive at a time like this.”

Listen to the story:
Read the book on-line:

Written in first person, pseudo autobiographical style, the “author” of The Friendly Road, David Grayson, is a writer,* living on a farm with cows to milk, and ducks and pigs to feed, and fields in need of plowing. One day he just slings a few belongings in a pack and walks off, leaving the cows un-milked and his sister Harriet standing in the doorway. “My sober friend Grayson writes, “have you ever tried to do anything that the world at large considers not quite sensible, not quite sane? Try it!” The rest of the book is an odd mixture of nostalgia for a gentler, kinder age; adventures, as Grayson relies on the charity of strangers to get by; with a bit of progressive politics thrown in. After bumming for several days, Grayson arrives in the “City,” where a strike is in progress. He sympathizes with the workers, but he is appalled by “the ill-smelling streets and dirty sidewalks and swarming human beings . . . the evidences of poverty, dirt, and ignorance.” And guess what? He returns home to his farm, and Harriet bakes him a rhubarb pie.

Gertrude, who had immigrated from Germany to the United States in 1892 at the age of 17, was 44 years old that Christmas. She was living on a fruit ranch in eastern Washington state, with her husband, a school teacher, also a German immigrant, whom she had married in 1898. She had 6 children, the oldest 20, the youngest only 2. The last few years had not been easy for this family. Gertrude’s 10-year old daughter Mary, my mother, was slowly limping towards recovery from a bout of polio. Worse yet, during World War I Gertrude’s husband was unjustly accused of being a “German sympathizer” despite the fact that his oldest son was a U.S. Army volunteer, and he was forced from his teaching post. His job loss meant more work for Gertrude, because, as my grandfather later explained to a journalist, after losing his job, he decided to “retire” to the country–“to live calmly, read Homer and Goethe and Balzac and Emerson (and) raise fruit and chickens.”**

Gertrude entrusted several of her favorite books to my teenage self before she died in 1958. Another was a book of poems entitled Because I Love You, inscribed to Gertrude as a birthday present in 1897 by a young man who was not my grandfather! Books. . . choices . . .

*David Grayson was a pseudonym used by the actual author of The Friendly Road, Ray Stannard Baker.

**Louis Adamic ,”A Man from the Black Forest,” in Two Way Passage (1941).

You might enjoy Recollections of Life in Ohio, 1813-1840, by William Cooper Howells


Gertrude’s early adventures as an immigrant to the U.S. come to life in her autograph book, which she kept from 1892 t0 1896.

From Plotzk to Boston Cuentos, Adivinanzas y Refranes Populares

Related Posts

Car crossing Mexican river on poled raft

Travelers

An 1880’s Sojourn in Saltillo, Mexico

Sinai

Travelers

Our Journey to Sinai

car with solid wheels

Travelers

Driving the Lincoln Highway, Chicago to Rochelle, Illinois (1915)

The old milk wagon

Travelers

The White Heart of Mojave

Drawings of Spain

Travelers

On the Trail of Don Quixote

book_dallamstravels_1310

Travelers

Dallam’s Travels with an Organ to the Grand Signieur, 1599-1600

Recent Posts

  • Chickens, Cats, & Self-Perception: On Drawing
  • Rendering Clouds and Water
  • Cloud Identification
  • Japanese Beetle Control
  • Nurses’ Christmas Newsletters (1928-1947), Geneva, Illinois

Archives

  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016

Categories

Tags

Alfred East American West anti-semitism Arthur L. Guptill audiobooks August Jaccaci birds Brooklyn California Christopher Whall Civil War cochineal Constantine Panunzio constantinople contact Edward Carpenter Francis Roe Frontier Nursing Society Gold Rushes Illinois immigrants Immigration internet archive John Muir judaism letters librivox memoirs Mexico Mt. Rainier nature nonfiction collection Ohio painting pioneers poetry Sidney Gross sketching Slavery & Abolition Spain Spanish Borderlands Thomas Dallam war and military women World War I
  • Home
  • Arts
    • Painting
    • Poetry
    • Nature & Science
  • Memoirs
    • African Americans
    • Artists & Intellectuals
    • Explorers
    • Native Americans
    • Pioneers
    • Travelers
    • War & Military
    • Women
  • American History
    • American Revolution
    • American West
    • Civil War
    • Gold Rushes
    • Immigration
    • Slavery & Abolition
  • Miscellany
    • Odd Bits & Tangents
    • Nonfiction Collection
  • Me
    • About
    • Bookish (the Blog)
    • Sidney’s Brooklyn (1941-1960)
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
© Sue's Audio Books 2021
Copyright: Sue Anderson. All rights reserved.
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy