Roughing it De Luxe

by Irvin S. Cobb

OUT FROM UNDER A ROCK SOMEWHERE WILL CRAWL A REAL ESTATE AGENT

At the end of the valley—top end or bottom end as the case may be—you come to a chain of lesser mountains, dropped down across your path like a trailing wing of the Indians' fabled thunder-bird, vainly trying to shut you out from the next valley. You climb the divide and run through the pass, with a brawling river upon one side and tall cliffs upon the other; and then all of a sudden the hills magically part and you are within sight—almost within touch—of the ocean; for in this favored land the mountains come right down to the sea and the sea comes right up to the mountains. It may be upon a tiny bay that you have emerged, with the meadows sloping straight to tidemark, and out beyond the wild fowl feeding by the kelp beds.

Or perhaps you have come out upon a ragged, rugged headland, crowned belike with a single wind-twisted tree, grotesquely suggesting a frizzly chicken; and away below, straight and sheer, are the rocks rising out of the water like the jaws of a mangle. Down there in that ginlike reef Neptune is forever washing out his shirt in a smother of foamy lather. And he has spilled his bluing pot, too—else how could all the sea be so blue? On the outermost rocks the sea-lions have stretched themselves, looking like so many overgrown slugs; and they lie for hours and sun themselves and bellow—or, at least, I am told they do so on occasion. There was unfortunately no bellowing going on the day I was there.

The unearthly beauty of the whole thing overpowers you. The poet that lives in nearly every human soul rouses within you and you feel like withdrawing to yon dense grove or yon peaked promontory to commune with Nature. But be advised in season. Restrain yourself! Carefully refrain! Do not do so! Because out from under a rock somewhere will crawl a real-estate agent to ask you how you like the climate and take a dollar down as first payment on a fruit ranch, or a suburban lot, or a seaside villa—or something.

Climate did it and he can prove it. Only he doesn't have to prove it—you admit it. I had never seen the Mediterranean when I went West; but I saw the cypresses of Del Monte, and the redwood grove in the cañon just below Harry Leon Wilson's place, down past Carmel-by-the-Sea; and that was sufficient. I had no burning yearning to see Naples and die, as the poet suggested. I felt that I would rather see Monterey Bay again on a bright March day and live!

And for all of this—for fruit, flowers and scenery, for real-estate agents, and for a race of the most persistent boosters under the sun—the climate is responsible. Climate advertised is responsible for the rush of travel from the East that sets in with the coming of winter and lasts until well into the following spring; and climate realized is responsible for the string of tourist hotels that dot the Coast all along from just below San Francisco to the Mexican border.

Both externally and internally the majority of these hotels are singularly alike. Mainly they are rambling frame structures done in a modified Spanish architecture—late Spanish crossed on Early Peoria—with a lobby so large that, loafing there, you feel as though you were in the waiting-room of the Grand Central Terminal, and with a dining room about the size of the state of Rhode Island, and a sun parlor that has windows all round, so as to give its occupants the aspect, when viewed from without, of being inmates of an aquarium; and a gorgeous tea room done in the style of one of the French Louies—Louie the Limit, I guess. There are some notable exceptions to the rule—some of the places have pleasing individualities of their own, but most of them were cut off the same pattern. Likewise the bulk of their winter patrons are cut off the same pattern.

The average Eastern tourist is a funny biped anyhow, and he is at his funniest out in California. Living along the Eastern seaboard are a large number of well-to-do people who harken not to the slogan of See America First, because many of them cannot see America at any price; they can just barely recognize its existence as a suitable place for making money, but no place for spending it. What makes life worth living to them is the fact that Europe is distant only a four-day run by the four-day boat, the same being known as a four-day boat because only four days are required for the run between Daunt's Rock and Ambrose Channel, which is a very convenient arrangement for deep-sea divers and long-distance swimmers desiring to get on at Daunt's Rock and get off in Ambrose Channel, but slightly extending the journey for passengers who are less amphibious by nature.

These people constitute one breed of Eastern tourists. There is the other breed, who are willing to see America provided it is made over to conform with the accepted Eastern model. Those who can afford the expense go to Florida in the winter; but it requires at least a million in small change to feel at home in that setting, and so a good many who haven't quite a million to spare, head for Southern California as the next best spot on the map. Arriving there, they endeavor to reproduce on as exact a scale as possible the life of the ultra fashionable Florida resorts; the result is what a burlesque manager would call a Number Two Palm Beach company playing the Western Wheel.