PICNICKING DE LUXE

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 37, 12 August 1930, Page 12

PICNICKING DE LUXE

The American genius for practicality, almost antithetic to the British acquiescence in muddling through, impressed Professor J. Arthur Thompson and his party on a recent tour of California; In an article in "John o' London's Weekly?' he describes wayside motor-camps at which one finds veil-equipped- huts, water, andg;is laid on, a store for buying provisions, clean beds. ;i fine view/ and all for. a very moderate charge. How humane, again, is the provision at favourite picnic places of stone stoves with gas laid on, where the kettle may be boiled aiid the

"hot dogs" sizzled without delay and without risk o£ setting fire to the vegetation. As far as could be seen there was no charge at all. and in some places the same seemed to apply to wayside arrangements for inflating a soft tire from a compressed air pump. In San Francisco they saw motor-cars being put on to a moving stage on which they travelled round a garage, one man cleaning this and another, greasing that, the whole process of refreshment taking fifteen minutes and costing a dollar. Other devices that are simple, but effective, are hot air gusts for drying the hands .when the use of towels is prohibited by a passion for souvenirs, and a road-making motorwagon that fills itself with lime, sand, and water at the quarry, churns these up together by wheels within wheels as it itrundles back to the road, and empties itself and rolls the mixture in.