The invisible roof under which the life of the town and the
surrounding country was lived did not cover it. As the Indiana railroad
man had told Hugh, the station itself stood on a spot known locally as
Pickleville. Back of the station there was a small building for the storage
of freight and near at hand four or five houses facing Turner's Pike. The
pickle factory, now deserted and with its windows gone, stood across the
tracks from the station and beside a small stream that ran under a bridge
and across country through a grove of trees to the river. On hot summer
days a sour, pungent smell arose from the old factory, and at night its
presence lent a ghostly flavor to the tiny corner of the world in which
lived perhaps a dozen people.
All day and at night an intense persistent silence lay over Pickleville,
while in Bidwell a mile away the stir of new life began. In the evenings
and on rainy afternoons when men could not work in the fields, old Judge
Hanby went along Turner's Pike and across the wagon bridge into Bidwell and
sat in a chair at the back of Birdie Spink's drug store. He talked. Men
came in to listen to him and went out. New talk ran through the town. A new
force that was being born into American life and into life everywhere all
over the world was feeding on the old dying individualistic life. The new
force stirred and aroused the people. It met a need that was universal.
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