they were hooking each other 's arms and their picnic baskets , trying to get up the nerve to cross between the clip-clopping horse-drawn buggies , surreys and pony carts , which were commonplace and therefore possible to safely cross in front of , and the motor cars happening up like dark hulks in a bad dream , which they 'd had little experience with , save for the shirley 's car that seldom left the port alongside the big white house , except when one of the shirley men got tanked up on a saturday night and spun snakes and cut ruts along the lane before the eltons ' safe and solid front porch facing the tracks of moniac crossing .