April 4, 1935 - 8000 MILES OR BUST
A daring young man at the wheel finds gas high from here to California, roads good, hotels just so-so, and convoys a menace
Washington Daily News — Thursday — April 4 1935 Page 29
8000 MILES OR BUST By ERNIE PYLE
ABOUT the first of the year there was an article in The Saturday Evening Post describing a transcontinental motor trip, taken by two people, from Los Angeles to New York, via Washington.
The article was read with considerable interest by the intrepid gentleman in the linen duster pictured above, since he was at that very moment contemplating just such a journey, in reverse order, himself. He was particularly impressed with the prices quoted, to wit, excellent hotel rooms all the way across for $2 a night, and gas in some parts of the country for as low as it gets.
So he started out. He drove not only from here to Los Angeles, but he wandered around those two magnificent states of Arizona and New Mexico to the tune of some 5000 miles. And how many times during the journey did he wish he had the author of that article by the neck!
Hotels for $2, eh? Well, just start across country and see where you’re sleeping for $2. I think probably the Great American Novel might be written on “Hotels I Have Met.” We stayed in about 35 of them, ranging from $1.50 to $5, from gyp joints to regular palaces, and high prices didn’t always inspire comfort.
The best hotel bargain was in New Orleans—a huge room on the 14th floor, huge bath, deep carpets, lots of big, easy chairs, plenty of soft reading lights, beautiful furniture, and a window six feet wide looking out over the entire city—all for $3.50.
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THE WORST stinging was in—well, a toss-up between a town in New Mexico (I shan’t further identify this abominable place in such an otherwise perfect state), and a hotel in Texas. Both rooms were dirty, cold and bleak; old iron bed, oil cloth on floor, wall paper torn, hard wooden chair, no curtains, and one unshaded 25-watt bulb hanging miserably down from the ceiling—all for a mere $3.
The most picturesque hotel—in Tombstone, Ariz., that famous old two-gun silver town, where in the 80s [I think] they shot and then asked the questions. The lone hotel there, a relic of the old days, was full. But the proprietress thought she might put a couple of other guests in the same room, which she did, opening up a room for us. And what a room. It was 30 feet square, had three double-bed, with room for at least five more, about six windows, and a coal stove in the middle. And there we stayed, rattling around among all those beds and dreaming of Wyatt Earp and “Curly Bill,” for the amazing sum of $1.50.
And about gasoline? Oh, yes, the cheapest we ever found was 18 cents a gallon. It’s true, of course, that gas is 10 cents a gallon in Texas, but there’s a little [item?] of eight cents tax that you have to pay, so why not count it?
The roads? Good and bad. Very good if you stay on the main highways. In fact, you can go from coast to coast without getting off pavement. But if you choose to wander off the beaten track, as we did, you’re liable to find almost anything from squishy sand to good old gumbo and, worst of all, worn-out gravel full of millions of holes.
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IN THE “American Sahara'' west of Yuma, one of the few places in America where the yellow sand drifts in bare, rippled dunes, we drove on a wide, smooth cement road. Alongside it lay the remains of an old plank road, half buried in sand, rotting and forlorn. Many years ago we had driven on that board road, and they had told us there could never be any other kind there, because of the drifting sand. We felt very pioneerish as we drove on cement thru the dusk, looking at the remnants of that forgotten old corduroy.
Nowadays in the flat part of the southwest country your road, smooth as a floor, may go for 50 miles without even a curve. And you can see sometimes as far as 15 miles ahead. YOu make speed on those roads, whether you’re in a hurry or not. You can’t help it. Late one afternoon we drove from Lordsburg to Douglas, exactly 100 miles, in exactly 98 minutes. And we were in no rush at all about getting to Douglas.
The car? One punctured tire in 8000 miles. Nothing else. Not a single squeak out of the motor.
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OH, YES there was the incident of running out of gas. It happened far off the main highway, some place in New Mexico, a place which I can’t identify because it was simply out there in the desert, not near anywhere. We had just passed a ranch house in the bottom of an arroyo, and were going up the other side, when the motor stopped. We coasted back 100 yards to the ranch house, got some gas from the rancher, and drove away, having escaped a 20-mile walk by nothing but plain good luck.
Something new in the way of traffic is infesting the roads in the West these days. It is the second-hand auto convoy. From El Paso to the coast, you will overtake about four convoys a day. We Easterners never heard of them. They are cars gathered from everywhere, and headed for the thirsty second-hand car markets of Los Angeles. One car pulls another driverless car behind it. There are about 15 of these doubleheaders in each convoy. They travel from early morning till late at night, about 40 miles an hour, and about 100 feet apart. On the desert they don’t bother you, but in [crooked?] mountain roads you may drive 50 miles before you can get around the entire bunch.
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