Lolled around for two weeks at the Alexandria, in Los Angeles, and before that at a hotel at Coronado that fairly “oozed” hospitality, although older than the handles on Solomon’s wheelbarrow.
There is an ancient quip about the three divisions of liars—plain liars, d—— liars and Native Sons. Also there used to be one that went something like this: “The miners came in ’49 and the janes in ’51,” etc., etc. But they are both all wrong. Despite what Gus’ brother said about Robbinsdale not being a one-horse town after he had spent a week wearing the “white wing” vestments, I am willing to admit that Los Angeles and San Francisco have opened the eyes of an inquisitive farmer from the aforesaid Robbinsdale.
They seem to have everything here including the Whiz Bang—and in this connection permit an old farmer the privilege of remarking that the leading California news distributors, Egbert Brothers, tell me the little old Banger leads all 25-cent magazines in California in the matter of circulation.
So Robbinsdale is on the map in California even if we don’t call our hen-coops “Renaissance architecture” and our dog-houses “Colonial garages.”
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We landed in Los Angeles just in time to plunk down in the center of a quarrel between expert fanatics and the motion picture people. A flock of moonbeam-chasing neurasthenic preachers insist that evil was not brought into the world by the serpent in Eden but was created by Thomas Edison, who invented the motion picture machine.
The latest synthetic scheme of the reformers calls for Los Angeles censorship for every picture manufactured and exhibited in the city. If the “long hairs” get away with it—and we don’t think they will—it will be a huge moral victory. Los Angeles youth will then be limited to such amusement as may be gleaned from shooting craps, joy-riding, dancing at road-houses, poker and looking for one’s umbrella.
This umbrella story has spinach on it, but in small towns like Robbinsdale it is still good. Has to do with the church-goer who arose hurriedly and left the church as the pastor was in the midst of reading the Ten Commandments. He explained to the pastor afterward that it had just been recalled to his memory where he had left his umbrella.
However, we didn’t travel all the way out to California to find our umbrella—or to lose one—and it is nobody’s business except our old Minneapolis friend, Dick Ferris, if we did. Dick is living at the Alex in Los Angeles and is one of Southern California’s most popular and esteemed citizens. Dick has begun bobbing his hair since his early days in Minneapolis, but says that if hair was brains an old-fashioned parlor sofa would be vice president.
Dick is one of the best entertainers in the Southland. One can step inside the “Ferris Harem” almost any time of day or night and meet anybody from “diggers of the ditches” to the “dignitaries of the ducats.”