"Spring Drive"

DAFFODIL dawn blossoming in the Eastern heavens finds "us" out in the country enjoying the wonders and witcheries of the handiwork of God and man alike. My other companion is a rickety, ramshackle atrocity, called, in a triumph of irony, automobile. It was born in the city of Detroit in the year of our Lord 1926; and its only reason for not drifting into the sea of oblivion thus far lies in the fact that such a rash act might plunge her noble dynasty (Chevrolet) into a tribal misfortune of major dimension.

So, we rattle along on North Central Avenue, Phoenix, amidst an endless procession of luminous, luxuriant limousines whose occupants seem to be handling their charges with more haste and hurry than an ambulance on a mission of mercy. Wending our way through an avenue of queenly palms and graceful ashes, we reach the Indian School Road and are glad to turn eastward. Here an entirely different symphony in scene is sung. On the right side of this broad, beautiful boulevard, enormous woodyards, Indian trading stores, imposing gasoline stations, grocery markets and other kindred paraphernalia of modern age doing a roaring trade, giving the whole place an air of busy downtown section. On the left side, the scenery is more conspicuous by its diversification. In the middle of a neatly cropped green field adjacent to the road, a game of baseball is in full swing, played, not by men, mind you, but by ardent young Indian feminists, not the shy, timid and reserved kind one finds at the reservation but buxom and bouncing girls of the most modern type. An old squaw-paragon of Indian solemnity and spaciousness-wearing long hair and equally voluminous long skirt, the latter kissing dirt beneath her feet, stands outside the fence. Her puckered brow is a mute testimony to the tragic vexations tormenting her soul, caused, no doubt, by the audacity of the white man to allow her racial young broods the indulgence of what seems to her this soulless standardization-the process of modernization.

The glittering gold of the morning sun is invading the exterior splendor of the Indian School building with pervading cheeriness. The hustle and bustle of a highly mechanized and modernized society is perceptible in every particle of the air. We make a momentary halt in front of the main building of the "school" whose elevated steps supporting majestic columns look down upon two rows of ornately luxuriant palms which give it the appearance of an expensive chateau in French Riviera or some Egyptian Colosseum in the times of Pharaohs. Across the street, an orange colored trolley car driven by a smartly dressed man in blue, pulls in. A conglomeration of motley crowd-red, white and brown and yellow-hastens to take position at the entrance door and are ready to embark. They are made up of high school students, salesladies, chamber-maids, delivery boys and a mixture of laborers. Unlike several European countries where, either due to climatic inclemencies or economic distress, the majority wear upon their faces a mask of dour and dreary expression, these here almost all carry with them an air of vivid joviality, so congenial and convivial. There is one young woman carrying a number of books in a leather strap who seems to be the cynosure of all eyes. Her hair, of a ripe corn color, she wears in a semi-boyish bob, and as the morning rays of the sun throw their radiance upon her exquisite head they seem to burnish it like molten gold.

"CENTURY PLANT" MAX KEGLEY

But it is the merry month of May. The bright and breezy spell of a warm Arizona spring is still in its crystal, clear air.

We move on again.

A few minutes' pleasant drive finds us at the intersection of 16th Street. The scenery here is duplicated, excepting, that on the Northwestern corner a new hospital for the Indian wards of the Big White Chief comes into view and a few Indian youngsters apparently passing their convalescence are watching the traffic go by in a complacent and condescending manner.

The towering bunches of cotton and eucalyptus trees throwing mysterious shadows, send a shivering ray of nostalgia through every fibre of my being. The magic hand of some hidden and compelling forces have taken this poor earthly mortal, in a jiffy, 12,000 miles away in the heart of the Punjab. Because the flora and fauna, the blue canopy of a shimmering sky, the swirling and singing of the canal, the glitter and glory of never failing sunshine and the flutter of the sparrows and quails make the place so much like my native heath in India that it brings back to my mind reminiscences of my childhood days now long forgotten. During the course of my thirty years of peripetatic peregrination on three continents (Asia, Europe and America) never have I seen a place where the climatic conditions-particularly winter climate-were so analogous with the northern part of India as here. Particularly, am I obsessed by the recollection of those days of happy adolescence when in company with my school-mates we spared no pains in catching nightingales with the help of crude traps fashioned out of bamboo and reed and thoroughly anointed with sticky mucilage.

Casting a benevolent glance at this homelike vista, we jog along in a northerly direction.

The right side is dotted with lovely villas, their exteriors decorated with shady arbors and a variety of flowers smiling admirably at the hurrying travelers. Now and then, as if to break the monotony of surroundings so august and aristocratic, an endless field of wilting mustards makes its appearances, which, instead of detracting only enhances the grandeur of the neighborhood. The left side, by virtue of its luscious lush meadows, is quite the antithesis of the wild and weedy fields across the street. Broad expanses of cultivated fields with the drops of Elysian dew still sitting heavily on their immature brow sweep the western landscape, with here and there an ornate bungalow perched leisurely and forming mystic silhouettes against the pigeon-blue canopy of the ethereal heavens. It resembles the glamorous appearance of some sea bird or aquatic lark anchoring benignly on the bosom of a placid lake. Nature seems to be in a gracious and glorious mood-a mood born from no better cause than sheer hilarity in the season's desire for emancipation. Adjoining these vast stretches of cornfields a Mexican family is hoeing a field of tomatoes. Next to them is a date-palm orchard looking exactly like any other date-palm orchard whether be it in the sunlit Savannahs of the Holyland or some hidden oasis in the heart of the Saraha, excepting, of course, that the parent tree is so rich in its growth that it lives in perpetual gloom from the prodigious growth of its offspring. In a few years time these young palms will be weaned and marketed at profitable prices After we cross the Camelback Road, an interminable vista of orange and grapefruit orchards (citrus, to express it in the parlance of the orchardist) leads the visitor until it abuts against the mighty levees of the Arizona Canal. The fruit trees are planted with mathematical precision; and judging from the standard of their delicious green, their healthy and uniform growth, and myriad upon myriad of the young fruit with which they are loaded, they all seem to be enjoying a happy life under the caressing ministration of their earthly master and a pedagogic benediction of the One above. A couple of weeks ago, fortune favoring, I was driven through this section by a friend and the sight then was even more wonderful than it is today. For, at that time, a snowy curtain of innumerable blossom, so exquisite to look at, so fragrant to breathe, covered this entire landscape, like a veritable Garden of Eden. Not for nothing(Turn to Page 39)