Of all the buildings, we liked Kansas best. We liked it from its three stiff clay sunflowers raised and painted over its plain little front door to its unending varieties of grains. And all because the old Kansan—not that he was so old either—in charge of it so loved his state and was so unaffectedly proud of it, that we caught the infection from him. We couldn’t help it.
“Of course,” he said, “I’ve only samples here but there’s nothing that can grow in the soil that we can’t grow in Kansas! These people out here talk about beautiful California, the ‘ever-blooming garden of California,’ and her ‘sublime mountain scenery,’ ‘ocean-kissed shore’ and what not. Now, for my taste, give me a land that is as flat as the pa’m of your hand—give me Kansas!”
An old woman came in while we were there. She poked all around, sniffed at the kaffir corn, at every variety of grain that could be stored in glass-fronted bins or arched into sheaves.
“Land sakes!” she said. “Y’ain’t got nothin’ in here but chickin feed. Ain’t yuh got nothin’ t’eat?” And out she switched again.
“I suppose that old woman’d like me to keep a nice crock of doughnuts ready to give her, and a cup of tea, mebbe. Chickin feed, indeed! Well, when it comes to hens, I like the feathered kind. You can put them in a pot and boil ’em! Chickin feed! And it’s mighty fine chickin feed, I tell you, that a man can grow in the state of Kansas!”
Coronado Beach, the famous winter resort, is across the bay and reached in a few minutes by ferry from San Diego.
In San Diego itself a new apartment house, the Palomar, offers a novelty in automatic and economic living that is quite original. Single apartments, for instance, rent for $65.00 a month and consist of a large living-room, a small dressing-room, a bathroom, and a kitchenette. No bedroom! You dress in the dressing-room, and sleep in the living-room in a disappearing bed, not a folding one, that in the daytime is rolled into an air chamber large enough to hold it intact. You can rent a room for your personal maid, or valet, but all of the service is furnished as in a hotel. Only instead of ordering your food in a restaurant, you do your own marketing and have it prepared in your own kitchen. Instead of paying your cook by the month, you hire one at twenty-five cents an hour whenever you want a meal cooked. No meals at home, no cook!
From the point of view of the stranger glancing about the streets, the chief diversion in San Diego seems to be moving pictures. The square which appears to be the central point around which the city is built, is lined with electric arched doorways displaying every lure of lithograph. Besides the picture palaces are two drug-stores, and a funeral director’s window, proffering the latest novelties in caskets. But the most lingering memory of San Diego, outside of her harbor, is of her school buildings. They are the last word in construction and equipment, Tudor in design, and very imposing.