AIRMEN ON LEAVE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 26 November 1942, Page 3

AIRMEN ON LEAVE

NELSONIAN’S EXPERIENCE MORE ABOUT SAN FRANCISCO UNBOUNDED HOSPITALITY II Yesterday, in the first instalment of a letter to his parents in Nelson describing a trip down the Pacific Coast of America, Pilot Officer A. C. Harley gave some impressions of San Francisco. To-day’s extract tells of the great bridge and the university, of a round of some of the social clubs and of a visit to the zoo. We were up around 9 o’clock the next morning and went to the Southern Pacific Railway Office to arrange about our reservations on the daylight to Los Angeles. The ofljee clerk was very eager to help us but I was rather embarrassed when he leaned across the counter and whispered confidentially, “Would it be rude to ask how many planes you have shot down?” The question was so unexpected that I told the truth before I had time to think out a really good yarn.

We met the other boys at eleven and we all went to the New Zealand Government representative’s office which is in the U.S.S. building in the heart of the financial section of the city. We were ushered into his office and introduced ourselves. The representative’s ncme was Pilcher and he was thrilled to hear that I knew his relations in Nelson. Mr Pilcher made us very welcome and after a chat took us to his club for lunch. The dining room was on the thirteenth floor of the Stock Exchange Building overlooking the harbour and the magnificent Oakland Bridge. It was an enormous room seating over 2000 at once and we lunched right royally. The Pilchers have been over here for some time now. first at Vancouver and then at San Francisco.

After lunch Mrs Pilcher and her only son, a lad in his twenties, came in and picked us up in one of their lovely Packards. Mrs Pilcher has two New Zealand degrees and, after teaching in Auckland for a while, where she taught Dr Curtis of the Cawthron, she came across here and took a doctor’s degree in philosophy and then lectured for quite some time at the university here and later at Stanford University in Son Francisco. BRIDGE AND UNIVERSITY We had a wonderful drive with the two of them first over the bridge. Let me digress to tell you a little about this wonderful structure. It is over eight miles long, the first four being a suspension bridge to Goat Island —a tiny islet in the harbour —and the next four miles of bridge is of cantilever design. The Sydney bridge would fit between two suspension towers comfortably. These towers incidentally are 740 feet high which is higher than Flaxmoor is above the sea. The lower roadway for trams and trains gives a clearance of about 200 feet above the water and there is another road for lighter vehicles. Fifty thousand vehicles cross the bridge each day on the sixlane tracks. It’s absolutely staggering. Then out at the Golden Gate, there is another enormous suspension bridge. At night the two structures look magically beautiful with their sodium lights and air obstruction lamps. San Franciscans never tire of gazing at this colossus and feel rightly proud of it.

We crossed the bridge into Oakland which is a big place about half the size of San Francisco and very busy with docks and railways. We passed quickly through and into Berkley where the Pilchers have their home. The University of California, the biggest university in the world, is located here and is a complete city all on its own. They have 25.000 students. 5000 lecturers and the most wonderful buildings you could possibly visualise. The university covers an area about the size of Nelson and in the whole area there is not a blade of grass that is not in keeping with the spirit of the place. We went and had a look at the stadium where all the big football games are played, a terrific structure seating 99,000. The seats rise up in 72 tiers. They have a •lovely little open-air Greek theatre nearby that seats about 10,000. I came away feeling rather ashamed to think that San Francisco can support a place like that and Stanford as well, which is reputedly better though not quite so big, yet we at home have colleges that are pitifully short of money to carry on their vital work.

The State of California, with a population of at the very most 6,000, 000, has four huge universities and about the same number of smaller ones, each with six or seven thousand students. New Zealand with a population of over 1,500,000 has one university with a total roll, including agricultural schools, of less than seven thousand.

We left the university and motored to the other side of the town and to the Pilcher’s home, a glorious place in a perfect setting.. We had a real New Zealand afternoon tea, my first since leaving home and oh boy did we enjoy it! We all became fascinated with their radio which has a remote control.

You have a little box that is not connected to the set in any way but, by pressing buttons, you can make the wireless pick up any station and you can also control the volume and tone. It was an amazing thing. GIRLS ACT AS GUIDES Around five we were drive.n back to our hotel and were given a list of plans for the rest of our stay. In the evening the British Association arranged for four girls to act as guides in another night out. We met them in the Hotel Fairmont on top of Nob Hill. While we were waiting for them an old chap came across and spoke to us. He was a former Aucklander, Frank Moore, and he had an art exhibition in th • building. I saw some of his work and it was lovely. The girls arrived and we introduced ourselves and set off. First we went and visited the officers’ club in the hotel. Pretty well all of the big hotels in the States have made over a floor for use by the U.S.O. for the men, or else have turned it into an officers’ club. The hotels in the States are rather different from ours. They serve more as community centres and less as drinking places. The drinking is done in liquor shops which more often than not sell liquor and nothing else.

We left the Fairmont and crossed the road to the Mark Hopkins which is the show place of the city. We ascended to the eighteenth floor to the lounge which 1 is a room that takes the complete floor | and has plate-glass walls. The lighting | is very dim and the view outside is j breathtaking. We were above the J clouds and, as they drifted outside, we j caught glimpses of the town below us j and of the- bridge with Oakland in the ' distance.

The girls decided the best places for us to go so we left and w'ent on to the Copa Cabana Night Club, a new place that is entirely Mexican as seen in the Hollywood manner. We were treated like royalty and given a table right on the floor and the announcer made flattering comment about us and our country. The orchestra were asked to play song after song by various patrons who dedicated them to the New Zealand boys. I got quite dizzy with the spotlight trained on us and with continually blushing and bowing. I eventually learnt to rumba, though haven’t got quite the snake-like wriggle of the experts. The girls were charming, all pretty, and determined to give us a

We decided to wind up the evening at “Slapsie Maxies,” a new place run by Rosenbloom, the prizefighter, and on the way we called in at a real dive know as the House that Jack Built, My only comment is that we didn’t stay there long. Rosenbloom’s place was a very elaborate affair and was packed. The great Max was there. I was talking to him for a few minutes. When he speaks he pronounces each word slowly and with the same accent for each. He asked about Ellerslie racecourse and said that he thought it very pretty. By the time that we took the girls home it was well after 4 o’clock so, as we were free during the morning, we decided to catch up on some sleep. I was pulled out of bed at 11 o’clock by one of the lads and we tore out and had some “brunch” and then back to the hotel where a car sent by the British Consul was to pick us up. At one, a large car driven by a charming Red Cross worker pulled up outside and we climbed in afid set sail on a sightseeing tour of the city. An Australian woman joined the party. She was a Red Cross worker too and was keen to meet some fellow Antipodeans. We had a wonderful drive, all through Chinatown, the Italian quarter and then to the top of Telegraph Hill from where we had a marvellous view. To the west was the Golden Gate spanned by the bridge; straight in front of us was the notorious Alcatraz Prison Isle; and. beyond it, on the mainland across the bay, was another suburb. Then to the east, straight below us, were the docks, entirely different from any others that I have seen in that they were spotlessly clean. There was also the Oakland Bridge connecting the cities of Berkley and Oakland.

PARK AND ZOO From Telegraph Hill we went through a wonderful big park rather like an enlarged Snowden’s Bush. It is rather remarkable in that it is entirely manmade on what were formerly sand dunes. We went to a beach and watched the broad Pacific breakers rolling in, then all wondered what was happening over on the other side of the horizon. Down near the beach was the zoo so we paid a visit there. It is a very modern place and the animals are not kept locked up in cages but live in surroundings similar to their natural homes. Deep impassable pits separate them from the spectators. We visited the kookaburra and emu and went quite * crazy when we spied some New Zea-1 land flax growing there. The bears were our favourites, though they are. so comical in the way they beg for nuts \ and sweets. Our two guides drove us back to the 1 , hotel about 5.30 and we were such! tired wrecks after all our strenuous I sight-seeing that we decided that it i would be as well to have an early night for a change. We went to a movie and I saw the “Pied Piper” with Monty j Wooley. Don’t miss it whatever you do.

It’s the story of an old Englishman crossing France after the collapse and of all the children that attach themselves to him.

(To be continued)