On my way to the Pacific coast last month I traded a Whiz Bang to a kid at the depot in Fresno for a package of raisins which the boy was selling on the depot platform. On the way back I saw the same kid.
“Say, kid, those raisins were punk.”
“So was the book” he replied.
* * *
Now, Fellow Soaks, we’ll touch a few high spots in this grand and glorious continent as we ramble about with wry faces in pursuit of the elusive Scotch and Bubbon. San Diego and its fashionable suburb, Coronado, were tough spots for a thirsty Minnesota farmer. Nothing but a concoction commonly called “sympathy” gin to be had by a meek and lowly stranger. But, glory be to Mexico, Tiajuana with its old time western bar-rooms and music halls, is but an hour away.
We spent one grand and glorious afternoon and evening in this unique village. It reminded me of slumming expeditions of a quarter century ago. Visions of Omaha’s famous Arcade at Capitol Avenue and Ninth Street, and of Duluth’s “Minnesota Point” in its palmy days, not to mention the cribs of Dupont Street in Frisco, went flitting through my frappe’d brain.
In one solace of joy we sat at a table for Haig and Haig “service,” said service being delivered by jaded janes who divided their time between waiting on customers and jazz dancing to the tinny tunes of a tin pan orchestra. It was a wild place and a wild night. Later we dined at the Sunset Inn. The inn was flanked by rooms filled with scores of roulette wheels and faro tables. My sporting blood surged hither and thither but to no avail, for the Mexican government had placed a temporary ban on this style of gambling.
Alcatraz Island, that silent citadel that illumines the skyline of Frisco’s bay like a bleak battleship, is the temporary home of about five hundred United States soldiers who have become ensnarled in the tough and tedious red tape of Uncle Sam’s court martial system. Prisons and morgues are two places I abhor, but it fell my lot to visit both in one night in San Francisco.