Vagabond Editorials

By Jack Dionne

Wherever smoke wreaths heavenward curlCave of a hermit, hovel of a churl, Mansion of merchant, princely domeOut of the dreariness

Into the cheeriness

Come we in weariness Home.

-Stephen Chalmers. ***

Just been reading the column of E. V. Durling, feature writer-and a good one-for the Los Angeles Times. He just returned by motor from the East, crossing North Texas on his way. And does he give North Texas climate fits? He does.

Now THERE is what I call a controversial subject, that subject of climate. A man is really sticking his neck out who dares to approach it. And in my position of straddling between California and Texas for the past eighteen years, it has brought me into many a lively discussion.

To my wife-born ""u J"rlu irr t"*.r-.here is only one spot on earth really fit for human occupation, and that is Hollywood. If you \ryere to tell her that Heaven could possibly be half as delightful a place to be in as Hollywood, you would instantly lose caste with her.

Yet we have close tri.rl" l" l"*", who throw up their hands and scream when you mention California to them. They have been in Los Angeles several times in the summer, and each time they stayed at a downtown hotel and sweltered. One couple we are devo,ted to came to California to visit us several years ago, and struck the hottest spell I have ever seen in this district. They went home convinced that the dividing line between Hell and Los Angeles is very, very thin. And we have never been able to get them back.

Yet our offices in Los O"*r*, in the very heart of the downtown business district, have never been hot at any time, and there isn't a fan in the building that I know of. As a matter of fact, if we have any kick to make on the summer temperature in our offices, it is that they are too cool a great deal of the time. Located on the well of the building they are cool and comfortable even in the hottest spells of weather. Yet when I tell that to my friends in Texas, they just look sort of skeptical.

I knew a man ,."r" "rJ*n. -"u" a fortune in the lumber business in Louisiana. He went to Pasadena on a vacation trip, and never returned to his old home. Years afterwards f was visiting with him in California, and I said to him: "Why don't you ever go back home for a visit. There are lots of people there who love you and would like to see you, and you ought to go see them once in a while." I shall never forget his answer: "You're right about that, and I have lots of good friends, and I would like to visit them, but this is the way I figure it. I'rn sixty-three years old, and I figure with good luck I can live fifteen more years. It would take me at least two weeks to go back to Louisiana and have a visit, and if f've only got fifteen years to live I'll be doggoned if I'm going to waste two weeks of it back in that Louisiana climate." So that was that. He died that next winter of pneumonia, so he didn't get his fifteen years in California or his two weeks in Louisiana, either. *t<*

I knew another man who got the Southern California "bug" in about the same degree. He was a banker. With his wife and daughter he came to California to spend a month's vacation. When he died in Hollywood fifteen years later HE HAD NOT EVEN RETURNED ONE TIME TO CLEAN OFF HIS DESK BACK HOME. He just kissed it Bood-bIe. * ,< d<

Others who come to California from other parts of the country fall hard for the magnificent climate of the Bay District. That is easily understandable. The bracing air of San Francisco, regardless of the season, is something tremendously impressive. Yet even that does not please everyone. I have a good friend who moved to San Francisco, prospered, yet moved south within a year. I asked him why, and he said he just couldn't live where you can't sit on your front porch in the evening. You can't do that in San Francisco. {<**

Personally I have often been asked where I thought the most ideal climate in the country is, and I always answer "Santa Barbara." I must give Santa Barbara, with its clear sunshine, but always with a fine "tang" of coolness in the air, the call over anything in the climate line that I have yet encountered. The Monterey Peninsula is grand, but it is just a bit too cool for my blood. I'll take Santa Barbara. But lots of my friends who come to California from the Old South choose San Diego. Some of them never leave the San Diego district, even for a visit. rt takes a variety of "li;-,";" lo ..rit a variety of people. That's where California comes in strong. Whatever a man likes in the way of climate he can find here, anything from desert to seashore to mountains; a REAL triple play, I calls it. He can throw snowballs in the mountains; he can gasp in the glory of the Redwoods; he can freeze his toes in the waters of the Pacific at San Francisco. cool them in that same ocean at Santa Monica. or warm them in it at San Diego. You pay your money and you take your choice. You can sit on your warm front porch in Hollywood in the afternoon with the temperature at 75 degrees, and then drive over the pass into San Fernando Valley in five minutes' time into a temperature of more than 100. You can leave a temperature of 70 in San Francisco and in the fewest minutes bask in the warm sun in Oakland or Berkeley. Whatever you want in the line of climate or temperature, is yours for the asking. ***

And of course you can get as hot in places in Califo'rnia as you can in the Sahara Desert. Many a time coming into California by train I have seen people gasping for breath along the Salton Sea, and when you told them that this was California-the land of their dreams-they wouldn't believe it. They thought when you said California you said coolness and comfort and orange groves. That, of course, was before the days of air conditioning. What a mighty improvement that is, and more so to trains than even to homes and office buildings. If I had a dollar for every woman I have seen faint from heat crossing the Califo,rnia desert by train in the old days, I would be wealthy. Now they cross in coolness, comfort, and cleanliness. It's really grand, and it means much to the tourist trade of California.

I recall the yarn tr," orai"J", lora in that famous moving picture, "The Covered Wagon." The scene showed them camped round the fires one night on the plains, singing .and telling stories. And they cut in on the old scout just as he finished his tale of wonders, and he was saying: "Yes, sir, they just shipped the dead man back to Californy. An' the climate revived him, an' he's livin' there yet." It might have, at that.

But I was talking, ir th" O"r,r-a*, of what Durling said about Texas climate. Now I don't claim that Texas generally is any summer resort. Far from it. But I know