Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
PALM SPRINGS, Calif. – Mother Coffman had no idea what she was starting. She couldn’t possibly have visualized it all. Nobody could have.
But when Mother Coffman opened her little “boarding house” way back in 1909 in this seedy, sandy little village, unheard of at the time, she started what was to become the whole vast vogue of desert-vacationing.
All the great resorts of the desert – Tucson and Phoenix and Death Valley – the fancy hotels and the southwest dude ranches and the thousands in trailers who have discovered the uncanny lure of the desert – it all began with Mother Coffman 33 years ago.
The whole thing was built on one woman’s spiritual love for the desert. The desert has repaid her vastly for her affection. And she, in turn, still clings to the desert with a loyalty and a love that have never dimmed.
Few people know where the credit should go for revealing the desert to so many thousands, or how well the cloak of accomplishment is worn by the woman who did it. So I have come to Palm Springs to write about her – a pioneer woman, a remarkable woman.
Palm Springs now is world famous. There is a glamour about the very name. It is the ultimate in sun-vacationing. The movie world has made it doubly famous, by adopting it.
In the beginning, Palm Springs was only for those quiet people who gamed an elevation of the spirit from the space and solitude of the empty sand. It was a retreat then.
Now it has grown into a resort of gaiety and ultra shops and great luxury – although it is still essentially a retreat, if that’s what you want.
Some pay $40 a day
There are 60 private swimming pools in the town. The 250 saddle horses for hire are far out over the desert most every day. People go around in shorts and ride bicycles and play tennis and swim and go on picnics and lie on canvas cots, getting a desert tan.
There are many places to stay in Palm Springs. Nearly all of them are nice, and not all them are expensive. You can pay anything from $4 a day on up. Some places are gay and clubbish; some are outdoorsy and cowboyish; some are trailerish and tourist-campy; and some are spacious and unspeakably luxurious and rich with an old dignity.
Of the latter, the Desert Inn stands at the top. The inn has held its place through three decades of changing taste in the desert vogue. There are hundreds of very rich people from all over America who wouldn’t think of going anywhere here except the Desert Inn. And the Desert Inn is owned by Mrs. Nellie Coffman and her two sons.
The inn is not built on the hotel plan – one big building. Instead, it is 35 acres of specious loveliness. The guests live in rooms or suites or cottages throughout the grounds. There is nothing on the place higher than a story and a half. Once inside the grounds, it is as though you had entered a quiet, private world. No one can tread on you.
A couple can’t stay here for less than $20 a day. Most of them pay more than that, up to $40 and over. Movie queens must cover their lovely figures with something more than shorts or halters or they don’t get into the dining room. Autos aren’t allowed inside the grounds, except to unload baggage. A maid turns down your bed while you are at dinner. The place isn’t snooty; it’s just quietly dignified.
I came here purposely to write of Mrs. Coffman. But when I saw the lavishness of what she had created, saw the old and accepted wealth of the guests, saw the stability of the place, I was seized with a sudden stagefright.
She’s important, but friendly
In my mind Mrs. Coffman, surrounded by such proportions of richness as this, would have to dismiss me with a few coldly polite words. You can’t charge people $40 a day and not be austere, I figured.
And then when I finally did meet her, it seemed that she might have come from a Midwest farm only yesterday. Her walk, her manner of dress, her direct and honest speech. her small-town friendliness – they were as Midwestern as clover hay.
And above all, she wasn’t in any hurry. That’s the trouble with most important people, they always have to run and do something else. But Mother Coffman is in no hurry.
We sat down and she talked for two hours. Every once in a while she would ask if she were keeping me! Late in the afternoon we got in my car and drove out into the country to see a friend. And although we had been sitting for two hours in the lobby of one of the finest hotels in California, Mrs. Coffman had to go change her dress, just as my mother used to in Indiana, because she wasn’t “dressed to go calling.”
A woman has to have character to start from nothing and fight her way up into the millionaire class. But she has to have even more character to prevent success from closing in on her, making her a spiritual hermit.
Nellie Coffman’s years of success have put no guard rail around her at all. She is wise, but not sophisticated. Everybody is welcome to her thoughts, and she welcomes other people’s. She is just herself.
“I’ve never had a monotonous day in my life,” she says. That tells a lot about a person.
‘Bundists’ face loss of status
Disloyal persons will be denaturalized
…