Just One Jump Ahead Of Winter

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28472, 30 December 1957, Page 2

Just One Jump Ahead Of Winter

[By

“SUSAN”]

I am sure you all think of America as a civilised and well-explored country. You don’t need a mule train or a covered waggon to cross it any more. But my, you do need your health and strength. I feel as if I have just broken in about 3000 miles of it with my bare hands and feet.

But it has been a wonderful jou.ney back from the east coast to the west, and by a combination of fortune and forethought we have managed to keep just one jump ahead of winter all the way. The minute we left New York, seven inches of snow paralysed the city. The minute we left Washington a foot of snow blocked the roads. Florida froze behind us. Even the warm heart of Louisiana turned to ice 1 when we left. Yet here we are all the way back to California and winter has not yet got close enough to breathe down the backs of our necks.

To go back several weeks—for this has been quite a trek—we drove out of New York on a pretty pale blue Atlantic morning and bowled down the skyway without a single traffic light from our Times Square hotel in central Manhattan until we had crossed the Delaware more than 100 miles away. Sounds incredible, but that is what tunnels and turnpikes do for you. We were heading for Washington, with great plans for picking up together some of the threads I had laid down after the Royal visit. But I suppose it had to happen somewhere; that little old Asiatic ’flu-bug which has kept its peak epidemic wave rolling along our exact itinerary finally caught up with us in the Capitol

We did get our official calls paid, dallied through the splendid gallery of art, gave the Smithsonian a once-over-lightly, simmered our sneezes in a cosy cinema with Brigitte Bardot in the bawdy but delicious—no, let us be honest, bawdy and delicious —French film, “And God Created Woman.” We whizzed through the White House, too, as any visitor may, to see if the Queen of England had dropped her handkerchief or the King of Morocco a pigeon’s blood ruby, but it was as tidy and un-lived-in-looking as ever. That my spouse spent the rest of the day waltzing round the President’s office with a press secretary, Anne Wheaton, did not disturb me one whit, for it was at this moment that I gave in. thankful to have a warm downy bed to rest my poor head and a good television programme to take my mind off all those horrid little Asiatic hobgoblins that kept prancing on my pillow. The Deep, Deep South

Happily the man of the house is made of sterner stuff and even I get better fast, so we were off and away next morning in the first light of a brave new day, bowling down the smiling Virginia countryside into the controversial South, to hear again that lilting accent so familiar now to two old Kentucky characters like ourselves.

Charlotte, Queen of the Carolinas, gavp us an antiquated but Very welcome pied-a-terre for the night, and next day we sped on into the deep, deep South, marching through Georgia with all the mental confusion that this vexed integration question must arouse in folk who have just been studying the principles of democracy in Washington, D.C. Atlanta has one of the greatest assets any city can have—a very fine opinion of itself. I do not say this tongue-in-cheek at all. especially when as in this case eivic pride dictated a red carpet boxes of chocolates, the Mayor’s limousine and a ruggedly handsome plain-clothes police escort to make sure we saw the sights in style. The thing one should remember about Atlanta is its celebrated cyclorama—an immense mural 50 feet high vividly depicting the Civil War battle of Atlanta. You revolve in a central tower to see this amazing spectacle and all the space between you and the painted wall is realistically occupied by plaster soldiers and horses and real mud and trees. tII blending into the painted canvas beyond in a graphic exposition of war in the raw.

But the thing I shall remember best about Atlanta is our address there, for I was permitted in my weakened condition to indulge a feminine whim and select a hotel purely for its' name. Remember a homesick little wartime song called “Peachtree Street?” Well. Peachtree Street is the main street of Atlanta. Georgia, and our hotel on that street was called the Peachtree-on-Peachtree. I doubt if I shall ever have a prettier address than that, or ever stay at an hotel for a more foolish —but unregretted—reason. From Atlanta we took to the air again and flew down the mighty, muddy, uncontrollable Mississippi to the fascinating, new old, paradoxical, lackadaisical, orogressive-procrastinating, picturesque, irresistible city of New Orleans. But it would take more

than the Mississippi’s floodbanks to contain New Orleans in one paragraph, so if you will tuck it away in the back of your mind I will come back to it next week and linger a little longer and more lovingly on its memory. We flew from there along the sprawling swamps of the delta and the hazy Gulf of Mexico to alight deep in the heart of Texas, where the stars at night are big and bright, and the cities, the ranches, the oilwells and the billionaires are bigger and brighter still.

We had an extraordinary flight from Houston, bouncing up and down as on a . pogo stick into Dallas, Fort Worth and Albuquerque, and then on across the Painted Desert, over the Grand Canyon and Boulder Dam., The latter part of the flight was in brilliant moonlight, and the fantastic formations of the weird landscape below might well have been scenes on the surface of the mysterious moon itself, and ourselves intrepid spacemen seeing it in wonder for the first time.

Perhaps we were more intrepid than we knew, for our destination that eerie midnight was a place where stronger men have come to grief—the green oasis, the gambler’s heaven and hell, the town that turns night into day—Las Vegas. Sad to say. the excitement and suspense that Lady Luck whips up in many a human breast are wasted on me. lam the unimaginative type who would get more fun dropping money into a sewer through a grating in the gutter than by betting it on a wheel or a fruit machine or even a horse. This is very dull of me, but my labours have done more for me than luck, and even then I would like tp feel that iffy gain was someone else’s gain, not that my good luck was someone else’s bad luck. Heavens, I sound terrible, but there it is. Beauty and Peace But lest you think I did not enjoy Las Vegas, let me hasten to tell you that it has a dramatic beauty and unexpected peace all of its own, the purest and most stimulating air that we have breathed in this country, the sweetest water—make that the only sweet water—that we have drunk in this country, and that, within the majestic circle of its tawny hills, just faintly tipped with snow, it is very, very similar to the little Central Otago town where I was born. But men have watered that New Zealand desert to make it fruitful. In Las Vegas they just milk the gamblers. This is fine for the ordinary tourist, however, for the gambling profits pay for everything in Las Vegas, so that the glamorous Desert Inn where we stayed was not nearly as expensive as it looked and the famous stars who sang at our modest suppers each evening were the highest paid entertainers in the world.

Although this little town is supposed to be so bold and bad and some of its shows so risque, the visitors all seemed to be respectable citizens like ourselves and our nearest neighbours on several occasions were members of the Roosevelt family. Due to fly just before midnight from this dazzling place, we reached the airport to find that all flights from the east were delayed by snow and all flights to the west were delayed by fog at the Pacific landing-fields. So we had to cool our heads and heels for a few more hours, and still had a chance, since even the airport at Las Vegas is full of gambling machines, to kiss our last silver dollar goodbye. “I wonder what the name ‘Las Vegas’ means?” I murmured drowsily as our flight finally got under way. “I haven’t Las Vegas idea,” he yawned and went to sleep.

And so to Los Angeles, where the ghostly fog waved us on from one airport to the next until at last we found one to give us a refuge. As we came down, a shaft of moonlight pierced the swirling mist and I saw a sight to lift my heart —one glimpse of the Pacific Ocean which is all that now lies between ourselves and home. Oh, happy, happy New Year!