THE CALIFOR}.IIA LUMBERMERCHANT

JackDionne,ptblishw

LOS ANIGELES, CAL, SEPTEMBER 15, 1936

Vagabond Editorials

By Jack Dionne

It's a lie ! Dry ice will NOT keep the inside of your car as cool as an air-conditioned room as you drive through the Arizona and California desert in summer. I make this statement because I had been told that it WOULD. And I loaded my family into my Ford with every expectation of driving along the Salton Sea with my windows closed and a light overcoat on to keep me warm. But, as the sl.ang song puts it, "Tain't so, my honey, Tain't so."

>F**

But don't mistake me to say that dry ice doesn't help in that summer desert crossing. It's like the fellow who admitted drinking fifteen cups of strong coffee daily. "Goodnessr" said someone, "doesn't it keep you awake?" "Wellr" said the cofiee drinker, "it helps some." So does dry ice. ***

I hadn't driven across the desert in midsummer for several years. It used to be perfectly devilish. From Tucson to Indio-some four hundred miles-you can look at the thermometer in the shade of any gasoline station and one hundred and ten will be about the lowest you'll find. Generally higher than that. And what it is in the sun outside that shade, the Lord in His infinite mercy only knows ! A hundred and twenty-five is a modest guess. Let that sort of air blow into your car and it fairly cooks your lungs.

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Dry ice makes the crossing of the desert in summer bearable. And that's something. They sell it to you, that smoky, grey colored ice that isn't wet and takes the skin off your hands if you try and touch it for more than the fewest seconds, for ten cents a pound. You put it somewhere in the front of your car, uncovered. The more air hits it the cooler you get. You open the front of the car and also a rear window very slightly to create air circulation. And as the air hits this strange stufr (which is more than a hundred below zero, so cold that it actually burns your skin ofr) a white smoke rises from it. No smell. No fumes. Nothing unpleasant. Nothing that can harm you.

Trouble with dry "" ,. .nJ "ir.. It takes fu[y twentyfive pounds to do much good in a sedan, and that much will last all day. Fifty pounds will do that much more good, if you have the five bucks to pay for the day's reduced temperature. Twenty-five pounds reduced the temperature in our car to about ninety-five; about thirty degrees below the outside heat. And since your car is closed you are likewise preserved from that terrific hot wind, and from the dust and dirt. It makes the trip bearable; not cool. But, as I said before, (remembering how terrific it is driving the desert with open windows) that's something.

I must mention one thing that always makes me mad, because it is so utterly futile and impractical. Just as you cross the river into California you are stopped by California officers, who go through your luggage. fn that white heat you haul out your grips and your bags and a courteous gentleman in uniform takes a peek through them. I wonder if any tourists into California ever made that stop for inspection without taking time out to curse the silliness of it.

I said to the courteous ,lrnl".Jr, "Tell me, I crossed this same line just a short time ago on the train, and had with me these same bags. No one searched them then, when searching would have been comfortable and forgivable if there was any reason for so doing. But they were not touched. They never are. Then why search these same bags? I'm the same man, carrying the same sort of lug-

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