Rambling Reporter, Ernie Pyle (1941-42)

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 23, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

LONG BEACH, Calif. – Maj. Harry L. Bateson, the garden man, says Japan was smart all right.

He says she let us build up a seven-year supply of whisky, knowing that wouldn’t do us any special good in war time (and Bateson isn’t a whisky-hater, either).

But while she was doing that, she stripped us of scrap iron, made pretty sure we were going to run out of rubber and tin, and got us in her grasp in many other little ways – not the littlest of which, he considers, is our dependence on her for garden seeds.

Bateson says that during the years after the last war America concentrated on flowers until she was producing 90 per cent of the world’s flower seeds. But on vegetables we did just the reverse. Other countries were supplying 90 per cent of our vegetable seed. And a good portion of that 90 per cent came from Japan.

Consequently, Bateson says, we are in for a dangerous shortage of vegetable seed. Prices have already skyrocketed on some things, he says. He thinks we could re-establish our seed-producing ability within a year, if we would. But will we?

Japs give up farms on coast

As you know, the Japs were the gardeners of California. Now they have to give up their farms and move out, which is all right with practically everybody, including me.

But the transplanting of these Japanese will produce a vegetable shortage unless some program is worked out for taking over their farms. And I can find no such program. The whole thing is pretty chaotic.

Bateson has a solution, which sounds all right to me. As you know, Southern California is the happy hunting ground for retired farmers from all over America. They’re all sitting around half-lonesomely out here in the sun, wishing they had something to do.

Bateson suggests putting these hundreds of thousands of hundred farmers in charge of the vacated Japanese vegetable farms; then picking up or drafting enough unemployed and Mexican labor to run the farms. And there are unemployed people, thousands of them, despite the war boom.

It would please the farmers, utilize the land, and produce the necessary vegetables.

Maj. Bateson has built a small building in his garden plot, resembling a one-room schoolhouse. Here he teaches his classes in “Maj. Bateson’s Practical Garden School.” The class runs every morning from 9 to 12. He handles from 150 to 300 students a week.

He starts them out in a primary way, just as though they had never seen a cabbage or a rake. He teaches them about soil, and watering, and fertilizing, and digging. He teaches them what to plant, and when to plant it. He gives them the rotation that will keep fresh vegetables coming to their table 52 weeks a year.

Expects surge of wartime students

He lectures and draws pictures on the blackboard and answers questions. And then they go into his gardens, where he has plots arranged so they can see vegetables in every stage from the ground-breaking to the harvesting. He says that anybody who can’t garden successfully after six weeks in his class ought to be shot.

These classes have been going for years. So far he hasn’t had any great surge of war garden students, but he expects it.

While I was there a young couple came around to inquire, and the young fellow started arguing that he thought draftsmen should draft and riveters should rivet for the war effort, and let real gardeners do all the gardening. Since he felt that way, I couldn’t figure out why he came around, and Bateson couldn’t either. He says he gets some funny ones.

Maj. Bateson says another great peril to our market basket is going to be the lack of insecticides. He can visualize the garden bugs eating us up.

For he says the base of most insecticides is a plant called perytheum, which is raised mostly in Japan. He says he tried for years to get American manufacturers to buy it from American growers, in order to encourage growth here. But they already had their contracts with Japan, so nothing came of it. And now we have practically no perytheum.

He doesn’t know what we’re going to do about the bug, worm and insect situation.

In addition to his gardens, Maj. Bateson raises rabbits. Huge white rabbits, each of which would fill a harvest table. They’re ready to eat at less than two months of age.

Bateson says you can start with two rabbits and keep a whole family in meat forever. He seems to have everything solved. A backyard full of vegetables, a pen of rabbits, and thou.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 24, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – On the way out from Los Angeles I picked up a couple of soldier hitchhikers and brought them in to Riverside with me.

They turned out to be Midwestern boys, university graduates, who had enlisted before the draft could get them. They had been to Los Angeles on overnight leave. They went hoping they could find a nice place to dance, but they never did, and were disappointed.

“We weren’t looking for society girls, nor the other kind, either,” one of them said. “We just like to dance, and thought maybe could meet a couple of nice girls who work in stores or are secretaries.”

But they didn’t. They tried two or three taxi-dance places, but didn’t like the types of girls. They finally wound up by going into a place which said, “Reduced rates for men in uniform.” It led up a dark stairs to a sad little bar in a gloomy room. It was the kind of place they had feared it would be. They said one lone sailor was sitting at the bar, half asleep, and looking very lonesome among the girls of the place. So the boys gave up and started back to camp.

They told me a couple of things about the public that I hadn’t heard before. One was that in Los Angeles men in uniform are constantly being stopped by nice old ladies who are grateful to them for helping save the country. The old ladies don’t want anything except just to express their appreciation. The boys seemed quite touched by it.

‘Superiors’ browbeat them

The other was that panhandlers continually play the soldiers for handouts. This burned the boys up. Making $21 a month, and then getting hit twice a block by panhandlers.

One of my soldiers, who has a mind of his own, said he stopped and gave one panhandler a nice little lecture on ethics. But it didn’t faze the panhandler. He gave our soldier a good cussing.

These two boys are probably typical of thousands of American youngsters in the Army now. They are well educated, obviously from good families, and intelligent. And they find Army life tough for boys like themselves, from the mental standpoint.

They’re cussed and ordered around by “superiors” with an I.Q. corresponding to that of a horse. Some of the old-timers seem to take special delight in brow-beating anybody who has been to college. The boys can take it – but it dulls the keen edge of their enthusiasm for giving all they’ve got to the war. They don’t see why recruits can’t be trained on a basis of man-to-man decency.

And yet, almost in contradiction to that feeling, they think America is in the mess it’s in now because we had got too soft. Nobody wants to work hard, everybody’s looking out for himself, nobody wants to give up his comforts. And one of the boys said:

“And another thing, people think too much about sex in this country. That’s what caused France to fall. We’re just as bad as they are.”

Tourist trade will suffer

Among its other worries, Southern California is gravely concerned over a possible dearth of tourists on account of the war. There is now in progress a small campaign to convince America that California is a safe place.

Along this line, a folder has just been issued entitled “Los Angeles County Is Bigger and Safer Than You Think.”

It is designed, apparently, to show that you could run out into the desert or hills and hide, but could still consider yourself technically in Los Angeles. If that’s the way they want to look at it, Los Angeles County sure is plenty big enough.

It’s so big you could put New York in one corner of it, and Philadelphia in the other, and they’d still be their present distance apart.

It’s so big you could run the English Channel through the middle of it, and the county would still slop over as far as London. It’s so big that if you superimpose Manhattan Island on a map of the county, you can hardly find Manhattan Island.

It is true that many people have left California because of fear. But certainly not enough to hurt anything, and California is better off without that kind of people anyhow.

No matter how much it strains, California simply cannot expect a big tourist flood from now on. There will be some, of course, but the great rush is over for the duration. And the reason, as I figure it, is not so much fear as two other things – tires and taxes.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 25, 1942)

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.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 26, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. – Life really began after 40 for Nellie Coffman, the extraordinary woman who owns the Desert Inn here, and who is the founder of the entire institution of desert vacationing.

She is almost 75 now. She was 42 when she came to Palm Springs. She was a mature woman then, twice married, mother of two grown sons. She brought with her to Palm Springs a fanatical love for the desert, a complete lack of business experience, and a laughably small amount of money.

At the end of her first season as a resort proprietor she had $65 in the bank. She paid $50 of that on some land. She had to get through the fall and start her second season on $15. That was in 1909. Today you couldn’t buy her out for two million.

But let’s go back to the beginning.

Like practically all important people (ahem), Mrs. Coffman sprang from Indiana. She was born in the village of Patoka, on the banks of the Wabash. But she remembers little about it, for her folks moved to Texas when she was a child.

Her father was a contractor. Nellie Orr, as she was then, was brought up in Dallas. She married and had one son – George Roberson. Her first husband died. Later in California she married again and bore another son – Earl Coffman. Both are here with her today.

The history of the Orr family had been one of moving onward to new lands where there was more room. Theirs was the blood of pioneers. Down through the generations they had followed the new places from North Carolina to the Midwest to Texas and finally to California.

Money! What’s that?

After Mrs. Coffman’s second marriage, she and the children were alone, because her husband was in medical school in Philadelphia. Unfortunately the commodity known as money was something they hadn’t much of.

Then suddenly ill health came to plague her. That was in the days when doctors treated incipient tuberculosis with altitude, and lots of it. They told her she had to get above 5000 feet, and stay there.

So she took her little money and her two boys and went up on old Mt. San Jacinto, where she got cheap accommodations in a private home.

She stayed up there four months, and her tuberculosis was cured forever. Also up there her entire career was mapped, although she didn’t know it at the time. The family cook did it.

This cook kept talking about a village down on the desert called Palm Springs, where she went every winter when it got too cold on the mountain.

The cook was an uneducated woman, but her powers of description were so vivid and her enthusiasm was so catching that Mrs. Coffman took a vow that some day she would see this fabulous little village. The year was 1898. She didn’t see Palm Springs until 10 years later.

She came down off the mountain a well woman. Her husband finished medical school and set up practice in Santa Monica. For a decade Mrs. Coffman was a mother and a housewife.

But gradually the dampness and “gray days” of the coastline began to get on her nerves. It finally became an obsession with her, and once more she had to get away to preserve herself.

Long-delayed trip

Finally she made her long-delayed trip to Palm Springs. As soon as she saw this desert, she knew she was here forever. Here the sun shone, both out of the sky and within herself.

She made a plan. She would start an inn or boarding house, for people on holiday from Los Angeles. She went back and laid the plan before her father, who had moved to Los Angeles in the 80s.

Her father couldn’t see it. “Nobody will ever go out there,” he said. “It’s too far and there’s nothing on the desert for people.”

“You believe in Los Angeles, don’t you?” she asked her father. He did indeed. He sat that day and told her that some day Los Angeles would grow until it was solid city from downtown clear to the ocean. It’s that way today.

“All right,” said Mrs. Coffman, “I think it will too. And when that day comes. I’m going to have the sandpile in Los Angeles’ backyard for people to play in!”

And so in the fall of 1909 Mrs. Coffman and her husband and her two boys came to Palm Springs. The village consisted of 13 houses, 11 white people and 56 Indians.

It would be two years before the first auto arrived. It was six miles to the railroad, and they made the trip to the depot or supplies in a spring wagon.

There was no water pressure in the town, no electricity, no gas, no phone. Everybody had his own cow, including the Coffmans. People did their own washing.

“You could have bought 10 square miles, including the town, for $50,000,” Mrs. Coffman told me. Today there are single lots you couldn’t buy for that.

Mrs. Coffman opened her establishment for guests on October 16, 1909, she had seven rooms. Three were in a frame house; four were in a converted barn. They weren’t much, but they were clean. She waited a whole month before her first guest came.

She charged him $5 a day for room and board, and she did most of the work herself. Today a single guest pays from $12 to $20 a day, and Mrs. Coffman hires 200 people to see that he is properly pampered.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 27, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. – For eight years Mrs. Nellie Coffman hung onto Palm Springs like a stubborn dog clinging to a stick. If she hadn’t done so, you never would have heard of the place.

From 1909 to 1917 her effort to run a resort hotel way out here on the desert was a touch-and-go affair. A few people came, but most people didn’t.

Mrs. Coffman worked day and night. She kept books just like a farmer – she had two spikes, one for paid bills, the other for unpaid. At the end of each winter season, the unpaid stack was always the higher.

The Coffmans had some real estate in Santa Monica. Piece by piece this was sold to meet the bills at the end of each unsuccessful season on the desert.

Nobody had any faith in the thing but Mrs. Coffman. Today she gives the bulk of the credit to the two boys. But they themselves admit they couldn’t see it, and anyhow they were away most of those tough early years, in school and then through the war.

Dr. Coffman, who was running the sanitarium end of the thing in a tent colony, also could not vision the day when people would flock to the desert. He held on a few years, and then went back to the coast. Mrs. Coffman was on her own.

Through all those years she wouldn’t give up. Her son Earl says of her today, “I don’t know whether it was Mother’s ability to see ahead, or just her plain stubbornness, that made her hang on. Probably a little of both.”

But hang on she did, and in 1917 things began to break her way. The virtues of Palm Springs had begun to get about the country by word of mouth. People began to hear of the quiet and restfulness of the desert, of the winter sunshine, of Mrs. Coffman’s little Desert Inn.

Not a flu death in World War

In 1917 the new crop of war millionaires looked afield for vacation places, and came to Palm Springs. And eastern families of old riches, cut off from Europe for the first time, also came. But most of all, the flu epidemic filled the place up.

Palm Springs kept itself without a flu death in the World War. Those that did get flu were immediately isolated. Los Angeles physicians sent their families to Palm Springs for safety. Everything was crowded. Everybody worked himself to death. In those days Mrs. Coffman worked until she felt she couldn’t keep going. She was all alone now, too.

That was the toughest time, the crisis. And it was then that her beloved desert sustained her.

Mrs. Coffman is not a dreamy woman, or one given to fancy flights of soul-soaring, but she is a person of fine sensitivities – the kind who can draw courage from a flower or a thunderstorm. And her greatest strength and solace came from her love of the desert.

“In those terrible days in 1918,” she says, “almost every evening just before sunset I’d go to a big sand mound south of town, and just sit there alone for about three-quarters of an hour, feeling the desert. Of course I didn’t go every day, you know, but every time I could, I went. And I think that’s what pulled me through.”

To see her now – always cheerful – always friendly – you’d never guess that she was once a melancholy and depressed kind of person. She was before she came to the desert. Even now, when she goes to the coast on trips, the corners of her mouth go down and she’s a changed person. She is happy only in the desert.

Her feeling for the desert is nothing faddish, nothing she has thought up as an old sentimentalism now that her success is established. It is something as deep as one human’s love for another, and it has been with her every moment since she set foot on these sands.

Uses Hoosier ‘out of whack’ expression

The first auto came to Palm Springs two years after Mrs. Coffman arrived. She says the unreliability of autos was all that kept her going for years.

“Seems like they were always getting out of whack,” she says. (She’d almost have to come from Indiana to use that expression “out of whack.”)

“They’d get this far and then they’d get out of whack. It would take three weeks to get parts out from Los Angeles. The people would stay a few days, then take the train to the city, then in a couple of weeks come back for the machine. That way we got two cracks at them.”

Things started going more rapidly after 1918. The two boys came home from the war, took a look, and saw what was about to happen. They went into business with their mother, and the three of them within the next decade built the tremendous Desert Inn as it is today – an investment of a million and a half.

Mother Coffman calls George the “watchdog of the treasury,” because he handles the book and business end. Earl is the active manager. But Mrs. Coffman is not resting on her laurels by any means. She still dreams and plans ahead. And she works. She spends all forenoon supervising the housekeeping and kitchen departments, and chinning with the workers.

In the afternoons you’ll find her around the lobby or the grounds most of the time. She loves to talk with the guests. She has been doing it for 30 years, and has never got tired of it. “I’ll talk to anybody who’ll listen to me,” she says.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 28, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. – Mrs. Nellie Coffman’s success in life – as the woman who started the era of desert resorts and has kept on top of the heap – is a marvelous example of two things:

1. That you don’t have to follow your original ambition to be successful; that you can fit yourself to circumstances and still lead a wonderful life.

2. That it’s never too late to start. For, as I’ve said, Mrs. Coffman was 42 when she began her second life (and on “half a shoe string,” as she says), and she was past 50 before any real accomplishment came to her.

When she was young Nellie Coffman’s one goal was music. She thought she had a fine voice, and maybe she did. Even during her first marriage she taught music. But finally she had to give her music up, and it didn’t kill her.

In those “music” days, she often said to herself that, if she were ever thrown out on her own and had to make her own living, she was positive of one thing – she’d never do it by running a boarding-house.

“How the Lord must have sat back and laughed when He heard that remark,” she says. For that’s just what she’s been doing for 33 years. But now, if she had her entire life to live over, she’d have it exactly as it was.

Once into it, Mrs. Coffman found “running a boarding-house” a very engaging way to make a living. For she loves people and she always liked to keep house. “I love to scrub a floor,” she says. Although she has 200 employees, she still does most of the work in her own cottage on the grounds of the Desert Inn.

She is deeply interested in her employes; in fact, sort of mothers them. It is illustrated in the stories of her Filipino boys who have gone to war. Already 11 have enlisted, and when the inn closes in May for the summer there will be around 30.

Proud of her ‘boys’

Mrs. Coffman is so proud of her boy Segundo Rigonan she could bust. He worked at the inn for 12 years, and for the last three years had no special duties at all. He drove Mrs. Coffman’s car and spent the rest of the time as a “free agent,” keeping an eye on things.

Segundo was the first to enlist. He was all hot for getting at the Japs. He wanted to kill a few personally. Several of the other boys followed him. Mrs. Coffman didn’t try to dissuade them. In fact, it made her prouder of them.

Segundo is already a sergeant, and when he gets leave he comes “home” to the Inn. One of the other boys was “home” during my visit. They go right to Mrs. Coffman’s door the first thing.

Each week Mrs. Coffman sends them a box of stuff. Once she sent Segundo a box of dates. He wrote back that he was quartered with a bunch of Texans, and that they sure did like those dates.

So Mrs. Coffman, who is still fond of Texas, sent another box of 15 pounds, with a note to Segundo saying, “Get those longhorns’ stomachs filled up.”

Another of her Filipino boys is at Fort Sill, Okla. The other day he wrote and said he’d sure like some of those cookies they used to serve at the Inn called “macaroons.” So Mrs. Coffman had 600 macaroons baked and shipped them off to Fort Sill.

Not a pessimist

Unlike most people, Mrs. Coffman doesn’t think the war is going to bring the world to an end, although she does think we’d better start changing our way of life pretty fast if we’re going to win. She believes the hardships will strengthen our fiber, harden us up, force us to have more initiative. She, herself, wouldn’t be afraid to start from scratch again at 75.

And war restrictions aren’t bothering her, either. Like me, she believes in a philosophy of not laying away a lot of stuff (although she did confess to buying a dollar’s worth of hairpins). But when everybody else was buying silk stockings, she didn’t.

“I’ll wear cotton stockings or go bare-legged,” she says. “You know, the college girls think they started the fad of going bare-legged, but they didn’t. I started it myself, 30 years ago, because I couldn’t afford stockings at all, and because it was too hot out here in the summer to wear them anyhow.”

The other day Mrs. Coffman was walking through the grounds, and one of her workmen stopped her. He was a carpenter who has been here many years. He was gravely worried about what would happen to the resort business next year, and of course about his own job.

“Mrs. Coffman,” he said, “you can see ahead about these things. What do you think we’ll be doing this time next year?”

Mrs. Coffman pretends to be no seer. But she doesn’t worry too much, either. She figures that if everything comes to the worst she’ll have a hell of a lot of company. So she said:

“John, I have no idea what we’ll be doing. Maybe I’ll be running a hash-house, for all I know. But, if I am, I bet I’ll be cooking the best hash in town.”

And she wasn’t just talking through her hat, either.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 30, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. – This is the last of my pieces on Mrs. Nellie Coffman, the woman who mothered the bare deserts of the Southwest into a national haven for the tired and the vacation-hungry, and who made it pay handsomely.

This is probably the most that has ever been written about her. For, despite her friendly nature, Mother Coffman is very shy of publicity. (Of course, when I started working my cobra-like charms on her, she was helpless.)

She has good reason to be shy. For, some years ago, a national magazine wrote her up and pictured her as a sort of Klondike Annie, with a mule skinner’s tongue and knots on her fists.

Such a picture is very far from the truth. She could much more aptly be compared with my own mother. She has had a hard life, but there is nothing hard about her personality. As her son Earl says, “There has never been anything undignified about my mother.”

Mother Coffman is a medium heavy woman, wears a net over her hair, still has her own teeth, and wears gold-rimmed spectacles. She does not look like a city woman when she’s dressed up, nor does she look like a desert-rat, either. She looks like a Midwestern grandmother.

She has never gone in for the baubles that many well-to-do people amuse themselves with. Her work has been her amusement. She is no slave to her work, but her facile mind, always thinking up something new to accomplish, has kept her young.

She hopes her tires give out

She does indulge herself by having breakfast in bed, but she has it at the atrocious hour of 6:30 a.m. In fact, she has the bad habit of waking at 4 o’clock, and between then and breakfast time lying there and mulling over her business. There is an unwritten rule at the Desert Inn that any employee may come right into her room any time after 7 to discuss things with her.

Despite the vast grassy haven inside the grounds of the Inn, the Coffmans are still close to their greatest love – the desert. Walk a few blocks and you’re out on the sand, away from everything. One mile out on the desert and you can barely see the town.

Mrs. Coffman used to walk 20 miles a day, just because she loved to walk, but she goes mostly by car now. She says she’ll be glad when her tires run out so she’ll have to walk again. She feels better when she walks.

Because of the terrific heat (sometimes up to 120) Palm Springs becomes practically a ghost town in summertime, with everybody gone and stores and houses boarded up.

But for the first 16 years Mrs. Coffman stayed right here through the summer, because she was too poor to get out. Now she has a place up in the hills above Banning – not so very far away – where she goes for the summer. She calls the place “Lazy Acres.”

Sons also like the desert

Mrs. Coffman’s devotion to the desert has been transmitted to her sons. Earl was telling me the other day about something that happened to him. Shortly after he was out of school he went to New York and got a job on Wall Street. The last war ended that, and he never went back.

But last summer he took an auto trip across the continent, and looked up his old Wall Street friends. He found many of them pretty threadbare, but some had gone on up to riches and the permanent life of high finance.

“But good Lord, their outlook on life!” says Earl. “Worried and cynical and harassed. I never saw such gloom. You’d think nothing existed west of the Hudson. I had to drive clear to Tennessee before I could get it out of my system.”

As I said before, Mrs. Coffman loves to gab with the guests. Yet, oddly enough for one in her business, she can’t remember names. She has actually taken memory courses, and concentrated on the old connect-it-with-something-else system. But it was no go. She can’t remember anybody’s name until he has been here several weeks.

Before I arrived, some mail had come for me facetiously addressed to “Col. Pyle.” Apparently the clerks tipped her off, for Mrs. Coffman greeted me as “Col. Pyle,” and kept calling me that (she forgot my name later, however).

So, after a while I began to get self-conscious about the colonel business, and told her not to be too grave about it, me being just an honorary New Mexico colonel. Whereupon she laughed and said, “Why, I’m a New Mexico colonel, too!” So we saluted, and now I call her “Col. Coffman.”

She was, in addition, a Virginia colonel for a few months, until they sent her a bill for $25. So she “resigned” and sent her commission back.

Mrs. Coffman has not traveled a great deal, although she did take a trip to the Orient seven years ago. She was enchanted by Japan, and can’t quite conceive of how such seemingly nice people could turn out to be such bad people.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 31, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

CATHEDRAL CITY, Calif. – Not all of our air heroes are in uniform over Australia or on the flying fields of Britain. Some of them are sitting almost anonymously right here at home. Marshal Headle is one of them.

Headle is chief test pilot of the Lockheed Aircraft Corp., and one of the finest and most respected pilots in the aviation world. These next two columns tell the strange story of what happened to him.

It all happened in less than 10 seconds. Headle wasn’t even in a plane. The accident got brief notices in the Los Angeles newspapers, and then was forgotten. But it took out of the air one of America’s most valuable fliers.

Marshal Headle is the quiet, human, serious type of airman who does his job with intense thoroughness. He has been with Lockheed for 13 years. He personally insisted on flying every new type of aircraft first, even though some of them are tough to handle, and even though Headle has capable younger pilots under him.

And he was always experimenting. The experiment that almost led to his death was brought about by the great heights at which planes are flying in this war.

We hear a lot about oxygen and so on, but the plain truth is that a pilot is no good, even with oxygen, when he gets above 35,000 feet. He just doesn’t do things right, that’s all.

So Headle, for months, had been experimenting. They have a pressure chamber at the Lockheed factory, and Headle spent much time in there, using himself as a guinea pig.

He turns valve wrong way

It came to its near-deadly climax last June. Without being too technical, here is what finally happened, as nearly as I can reconstruct it:

Headle was in the chamber alone, while observers stood outside watching through a thick glass window. The observers had duplicate controls, outside, on everything but the supply of oxygen. Headle controlled that himself, from the inside.

Well, they slowly worked the pressure down until they had Headle in the rarified atmosphere of 42,000 feet – eight miles above the earth. All the way “up,” he says now, he had given himself less oxygen than he really should have had, trying to make the experiment tough.

At 42,000 feet he felt himself getting very weak and hazy. He was sitting on a stool. He remembers reaching up toward the oxygen valve; he doesn’t remember ever touching it.

But those on the outside remember it well. For they saw him reach up, turn the valve the wrong way – shutting his oxygen completely off – and then saw him topple off the stool!

It is hard for a layman to realize the terrible consequences of that act. Nobody can live long without oxygen. But, you might ask, why didn’t they open the door and drag him out?

They didn’t, because that would have meant instant death. You see, his system had been gradually worked up to a thin pressure of 42,000 feet – it would have to be worked as gradually back down again, over a period of half an hour or more, not to affect him dangerously.

But he couldn’t live that long without oxygen. Fast and desperate thinking was in order for those at the controls outside. They had to compromise on the time element, and take a chance. They compromised on leaving him in there eight seconds.

No one could live – but he did

They stood there, frantic with anxiety while the eight seconds ticked off like eight hours. Then they opened the door and carried Headle out – and to the hospital.

Headle had “fallen” the equivalent of eight miles in eight seconds – almost 3000 miles an hour! No human ever before has gone through atmospheric changes that fast, that far. No human can live through such an experience.

But Headle did live through it. The accident happened nine months ago and he is still alive, although a semi-invalid. Eventually he will recover, in an abbreviated way.

He probably can never fly again, even as a passenger; his heart will never stand much physical exertion; he never can take any “altitude” – he can’t even cross to the East Coast again unless he goes by boat through Panama. He must always stay near sea level.

When the accident happened, it was written that Headle had the deadly “bends” that deep sea divers get from being brought up too fast. That wasn’t true. What he got was exactly the opposite of bends. As far as he knows there’s no name for it, for nobody ever “fell” that way before. The result is a dangerously delicate heart, and a shattered nervous system corresponding to World War “shell shock.”

For two months the doctors didn’t expect Headle to live, although he didn’t know that’s what they thought, and it never occurred to him that he wouldn’t live.

Then he began to get better, but his nerves were bad. Any loud noise would throw him into a panic. They moved him from the city to a hospital at Indio, out on the desert, seeking absolute quiet for him. But the passing trains drove him insane.

He started to go down again. By October he was in a bad relapse; in some ways worse than at first. He couldn’t stand it there any longer.

So he rented a new California-type house on the edge of this tiny village of Cathedral City, some six miles east of Palm Springs. The quiet of the desert is over this place and sudden noises are rare. Headle has improved rapidly.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you how this life-long airman, now sentenced to the ground, has readjusted his life.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 1, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

CATHEDRAL CITY, Calif. – Marshal Headle, chief test pilot of the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, had never been an “indoors” man. Both his work and his hobbies kept him in the open, in a life of great activity.

And so, after his 42,000-foot “fall” in a pressure chamber experiment last June, he knew he was doomed to many months of indoors quiet and solitude. He knew he’d go crazy if he just let time lie on his hands. So the first thing he did, as soon as he was able, was to plan out his days so they would be fully occupied.

It is working out well. He has not become bored or impatient. I have just been to see him in his nice rented house here on the desert, and except for a constant twisting of the cords on his bathrobe he seems perfectly calm and at ease. Yet a violent “shell shock” type of nervousness was the gravest after-effect of his accident.

Every morning Headle calls up the Lockheed plant – 125 miles away – just to see how things are getting along. He doesn’t worry about the work, for his assistant pilots are old-timers and thoroughly capable. But he likes to keep his finger in the pie.

During the day he sits in his living room, with a big north window looking out over the desert valley and down toward Palm Springs. The nurse sits in a nearby chair, sewing.

Headle has two nurses, one for day, one for night. His family could not move out here from Los Angeles to be with him, for he can’t stand the children’s noise. Any sudden or loud noise throws him into a panic.

Catches up on his reading

He reads almost constantly. He says he’s read more books in the last nine months than he had read in all his life before. He reads every type of book imaginable. He says he reads a lot of trash, just to insure a diversion against boredom.

He reads the newspapers, but never listens to the radio.

Another of Headle’s “occupying-time” diversions is figuring out the daily racing charts. He has been to only four races in his life and didn’t bet them, but he loves horse races and loves to dope them out.

He spends about three hours a day doping out the winners at various tracks, and he says his average is mighty high, although he never places any bets.

Now and then a visitor drops in, and on Sundays a bunch of executives and pilots from the Lockheed plant come out to see him. He enjoys them, but they don’t stay too long.

He does not walk around outside very much, for just a little exercise plays havoc with his heart.

Once in a while he takes a short ride in a car. But there are only three people he can bear to ride with. In his life, a plane or an automobile have always been the same as a human being. But most drivers are merely mechanical drivers, with no real “feel” of their machinery, and that kind of driving sends Headle’s nervous system off. Fortunately his doctor (from Palm Springs) is one person he can ride with.

One great diversion – which Headle didn’t expect and which he now laughs about – was his gout. “Imagine a fellow like me having gout,” he says. It was caused by gastric disturbances from taking too much heart medicine. It is gone now, but he says it’s one of the most terrible pains you can imagine.

In his shocked condition, the two things Headle must avoid are noises and physical exertion. And it’s very odd about noises. A noise that he feels is necessary doesn’t bother him.

For instance, there are Army training planes roaring constantly over the desert nowadays. I asked Headle if that didn’t bother him. Oddly enough, it doesn’t.

He knows those planes are necessary, and he can’t do anything about stopping them even if they weren’t necessary – so they don’t bother him.

He expects to resume

What does bother him, for instance, is when he’s trying to get to sleep, and two people are sitting out in the living room talking in low tones. It seems to him they are screaming. He simply has to ask them to stop talking.

He follows the war in the papers, but our reverses haven’t upset him. He says everything that has happened in the Pacific was to be expected. He has been in the East Indies and the Philippines, saw the shape of the defenses, and considers what happened as inevitable. But he says we’ll win in the end.

Headle is philosophical about the fact that he may never fly again. “I’m getting pretty old for flying, anyhow,” he says. “I figured I had 10 more good years in me, but eventually I’d have to go on the ground. So I suppose I can do it now as well as later.”

Headle is, I would say, just upward of 45. He flew in the last war, and has been flying ever since. Only a few of his generation of pilots – such as Dick Merrill – are still at it.

The hardest thing for Headle to contemplate is that the accident will put an end to his lifelong hobby of prospecting in the mountains. For years he has spent his week-ends tramping into the high gulches, looking for ore. He has never found anything that would make him rich, but he just loved to do it.

Marshal Headle is as nice a man as I’ve ever met – quiet, courteous, intelligent, hospitable. He has taken his great tragedy with his chin up. He thinks that in two or three more months now he’ll be back at work, in a ground capacity. “Back annoying everybody,” as he puts it. his return will be the nicest “annoyance” the Lockheed company has had in a long time.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 2, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. – Today I have achieved a status in life which I am sure must bring delight to all my friends and a vile green envy to my enemies. I have really arrived. I am a guest at a dude ranch!

I never supposed I’d make it. But perseverance, long hours, honesty and forthrightness have brought their just reward. Life for me has reached its goal.

But before I depart for a future that can be only anti-climax, I must tell you a little of what life on a guest ranch is like.

This ranch, for instance, (it’s the Deep Well Ranch) is only a mile and a half out of Palm Springs. It is not a real working ranch; it is admittedly and honestly just a guest ranch. It’s just as nice as staying in town, except you’re out in the country.

People “rough it” with every comfort up here, which is right up my alley. I spent 19 years washing outdoors in a washpan, going 100 yards to a “Chic Sale,” riding horses because I had to – and I never liked it and don’t see why I should pay high prices to do it again.

I do passionately prefer the open country to the smothered city, but I like to take my city conveniences with me to the open spaces – so I approve of the Deep Well Guest Ranch.

In one building here there is a huge western-type lobby, with rawhide chairs and a fireplace and saddles hanging on the wall.

In another building is the dining room and kitchen. The owners live in a beautiful ranch house right in the middle of the works. And scattered around, here and there, on various sides of various grassy plots, are the rooms and lodges for the guests.

Visitor treated as a guest

Some 40 people can be accommodated. The ranch has 25 horses for them to ride, including three Tennessee “walking horses.” It also has a lovely swimming pool, innumerable lawns and low canvas chairs for lolling, a paddle-tennis court, bicycles, and lots of sun.

The fundamental principle is that the visitor is treated as a personal guest in the owner’s home – except that, of course, he does have to pay. The theme is to do what you please, so long as you’re a nice guy about it.

The ranch is essentially for rest. But when the rest cure has begun to take effect, then there is entertainment if anybody wants it.

Such as, for instance the breakfast rides. Everybody who wishes gets up early (8 o’clock!), climbs on a horse, and rides 45 minutes out into the desert. Real western stuff.

At the end of the trail they have breakfast out in the open. (It has been delightfully brought out ahead of time by some thoughtful stranger in a chuck-wagon.) And then, after gorging and sniffing the desert air, they all ride back again. Puts steel in a man.

But mostly, the men just sit all day long, and the women lie around the swimming pool. In late afternoon, cakes and sherry are served as “tea.” The ranch has no bar, so it escapes the too-rich-to-work type of cut-up vacationer.

At night the ranch wagon takes those who want to go in town to a movie. The others sit around talking or playing dominoes or cards. The guests go to bed fairly early and get up late. Hardly anything is stirring before 8 o’clock.

Ranch stresses informality

The ranch is a friendly place – not professionally friendly, like an obsequious waiter – but actually so. Nearly all the guests call the owners by their first names. The owners are Frank and Melba Bennett, who seem to have been born to the art of guest-ranch-running.

Melba Bennett is really a genius at this sort of thing. She comes from a well-to-do but earthy family. She has always known ranch life, has always loved people. She has a gift.

The Bennetts came here originally as guests, and Melba was so disgusted with the way it was being run (a “ranch” where a head-waiter met you at the door in full dress) that she itched to get her fingers on the place. She did, and it isn’t that way now.

Most people wear shorts or overalls, and you eat as you are. The ranch likes to make people feel welcome, so if anybody accidentally drops a spoon, everybody in the dining room drops one. It makes a terrific noise.

Frank Bennett, pursued by his many duties, is usually late to dinner. So when he enters the guests all sing a song to the effect that “Frankie is late again.”

Melba Bennett has always wanted a real western ranch, with actual cattle on it. So, in her folders and correspondence, she dotes on their prize piece of beef known as “Ernie the Cow.” I started for my shootin’-hip when she said that, but it turns out that “Ernie the Cow” was a part of the business long before Melba ever heard of me.

When guests arrive, the first thing they want to see is “Ernie the Cow.” Unfortunately there isn’t any “Ernie the Cow.” Melba just made it up. There isn’t any cow at all. The best Melba has been able to achieve so far is six calves.

Like all resort owners, the Bennetts are trying to look ahead and fit their business to war conditions. Melba has it all figured out.

By next season Frank will be in the Army or defense work. So Melba figures on cutting the meals down to one main dish instead of a choice of three, having the guests keep their own rooms tidied, cutting the rates, and she’ll run the place herself, alone.

And she can do it, too. If I weren’t such a vital cog in the international situation myself, I’d like to come out and help. Maybe I will anyhow. I could be “Ernie the Cow” and just chew straw all day.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 3, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

PALM SPRINGS – It happens that, in addition to the many signal honors that have come to me – such as being frequently mistaken for a poet – I am also blessed by being a personal friend of the most popular girl in this popular desert resort.

She is the queen of this year’s annual desert circus. She is referred to in the newspapers as “the tops in local royalty.” Everybody is nuts about her. But having known her and her whole family for some years. I just treat her like dirt, which gives me a terrific sense of superiority over the rest of the population.

This girl’s name is Edie Bush. She is 21 years old (and purty, too). Despite my superior airs toward her, I make it a point in a sort of underhand way to court her good-will, because by the time she’s 40 she’s going to own this whole damn place, and 20 years from now I may be needing a nickel for a cup of coffee.

Edie is hostess at the Deep Well Ranch where I’ve been staying (in fact, that’s why I’ve been staying there). If it would interest you, I’ll tell you how such things as this come about. If I had time I’d make a novel out of it.

Well, some five years ago I was going down the Yukon River on a paddle-wheel steamboat. That sounds pretty romantic, but it was cold and the mosquitoes were terrible, and anyhow Edie wasn’t on the boat, so don’t get ahead of your story.

But on this boat I met a couple from San Francisco – Duane and Sevigne Bush – and we became good friends. I stayed with them at their gold camp in Alaska, and visited their home on our return to the States.

He meets rest of the family

The following winter there came to this couple a beautiful baby daughter named Vondre, a remarkable child, and for some mysterious reason I was appointed godfather to same.

In the ensuing years I have cultivated this child with perfumes, candy, gardenias, love letters, old lace and an occasional pinch, and have finally made such an impression upon her that now, at the age of 4, she actually remembers my name.

In the course of this courtship of my god-daughter, I naturally met the rest of the family, including my god-daughter’s elder sister, Edie (now 21 and purty – or am I getting old and repetitious?) But, anyhow, I met her, and then she went off to Oregon to college.

After three years of higher learning she decided her time had come, so she turned her back upon the classroom and looked about for something to conquer. And since her Cousin Melba rather runs the Deep Well Guest Ranch, she chose that as her first conquest.

She didn’t choose wrong. In one season she has captured the whole place. Everybody in town knows her, from Mother Coffman down to the lowliest cowboy. She walks gaily into the snooty Racquet Club in her overalls as if she owned the place, and they hold out their arms.

She hasn’t been out of overalls since last October, and dreads the near day when she will have to return to San Francisco and put on a dress. She wears her hair in pigtails, and guests can’t believe she is more than 15. That saves her a lot of trouble, too.

She is absolutely agog over “hostessing” at the ranch. She loves to ride and swim and talk to people, and thinks it’s perfectly ridiculous that she should be getting paid for it.

She plays miserable paddle-tennis (I beat her, 6-2, and me with athlete’s foot) and she’s lousy at dominoes, but she’s got what it takes to make the guests happy. She has a crush on the word “wonderful.” If a disgruntled guest were to come up foaming and yell, “This place stinks!” I’m sure Edie would say, “Wonderful, Mr. Nibbs,” and he would be whipped.

She does her bit for war

She has one day off a week, and spends three hours of that day serving as airplane-spotter on top of a Palm Springs office building. She has completed her Red Cross course. She sold more defense bonds than anybody else in a recent Palm Springs contest.

Her family home is within poor-aim range of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and she has only disgust for those who talk big and do nothing about the war.

Edie smokes cigarettes, used to take a cocktail but doesn’t any more, and keeps her overall pockets full of string and nails and things, like a little boy. She knows her way about the world, and yet there are a lot of bad things she hasn’t learned yet.

For instance, one day coming from town in the station wagon, one of the ranch’s women guests got mad about something, and told Edie and the other girl hostess off in a manner considerably unbecoming to a lady. The girls arrived at the ranch practically in tears.

So Frank Bennett tried to get out of them what had happened, and just what the woman had called them, and finally they told him, but neither of them knew what the words meant. And Frank said to them, “It’s a hell of a lot of good three years of college did you girls. You don’t even know all the words.” (The vulgar guest left next morning, by request.)

In the big Palm Springs annual circus, Edie will ride (or has ridden by the time this appears) on the leading float surrounded by her “court” of five girls. I wish I could have been there, to swell with pride. But a man can’t have everything, and I’ve already had my inning – walking nonchalantly down the main street of Palm Springs with overalled Miss Bush on my arm, the cynosure of all eyes, as they say. It was “wonderful.”

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 4, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

PALM SPRINGS, Cal. – Most of my time in Palm Springs has been taken up with work, but I did have one afternoon off to look around a little. And I was amazed at the number of very lonely places to stay. There are scores of places that make your mouth water. I’d like to stay a year and try them all.

They’re all built on the same plan – very low and spread out so the sun can get in. Actually, they’re like tourist courts, except they’re super-modern and set amidst beautiful lawns dotted with bright-colored umbrellas and low chairs, and nearly all have their private swimming pools.

Although my purpose in coming here was to write about Mother Coffman and her Desert Inn, there is one other place that runs neck and neck. That is the Hotel El Mirador.

It is built on the same plan as the inn – vastly spread out. It was built in 1928, and launched with a gigantic wave of movie-star publicity.

The Mirador and Desert Inn are the same size, and their rates are the same. The Mirador is flashier, but they cater to the same class of solid wealth.

Although most visitors to Palm Springs actually come only to rest and get a good shot of sunshine, it was the idea of Hollywood pulchritude out here that finally made Palm Springs known to every cow-puncher and telephone girl in America.

Thrill for Rita Hayworth

It’s funny how people go silly over publicized beauty. Visitors start their eyes out looking for Dorothy Lamour or Marlene Dietrich. But, if the guests at the Mirador, for instance, would just look around them a bit, they’d find a very satisfactory substitute.

I mean Miss Janette Grant, the Mirador’s publicity director. Her main interest in life is journalism. But I’ve taken an option on her anyhow, just in case Hollywood starts nosing around.

One afternoon I went with friends to the Racquet Club. This is a very flossy place, open only to members and their guests. They have room for only 12 people to stay there, but scores come in the afternoon to play tennis, or swim, or sit and drink.

The club is run by Charles Farrell, the former movie actor who used always to play opposite Janet Gaynor. It is a favorite hangout for the movie people.

The afternoon I was there I learned that the lady in white shorts and lots of lipstick at the next table was none other than Miss Rita Hayworth. I didn’t take a pulse count on her, but she did appear thrilled to be sitting so close to me.

It’s haven from the Japs

Palm Springs is considered sort of a haven from Jap bombers, because it’s back behind the treacherous mountains, and there is nothing remotely resembling a military objective here. If the Japs bombed Palm Springs it would be just pure orneriness.

Consequently, people have started sending Mother Coffman their treasured possessions for her to store until after the war. One woman has sent her three boxes of fine China. And Mrs. Coffman’s sister, in Santa Monica, has sent all her treasured Indian baskets.

“Why, that’s silly,” Mrs. Coffman told her, “to send the baskets and not come yourself. Nobody but you cares anything about those old baskets, so why save them if you get killed?”

And her sister replied, “Well, I just love them so much I can’t bear to think of them falling into Japanese hands after I’m gone.”

Mother Coffman, in addition to everything else, is a poet – or a rhymester, as she says.

The inn is given to leaving little printed jingles around the rooms, all decorated up with red sketches, to explain things to the guests. And I learned to my astonishment that Mother Coffman writes them herself… thinks them up at night when she can’t sleep.

The latest one is entitled “Sherman was right. War is hell.” And the poem says:

“Please don’t scold the maid, she’s not to blame,
You’re short on towels and that’s a shame,
But Uncle Sammy, brave and wise,
Has asked us to economize…
If this restriction leaves you numb,
Wait’ll we tackle sugar, chum!”

So, because of this restriction, I’ve had to try keeping clean with only five hand towels, three bath towels, two wash rags and a bath mat each day. A man just can’t do it, that’s all. So I’m leaving before the garbage man starts chasing me.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 6, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

PHOENIX, Ariz. – It’s a long jump from Palm Springs to Phoenix, but when I jump, I jump big.

Breaking away from California is sort of like pulling your boot out of the mud. You can’t do it gradually. You have to heave.

It was hard for me to leave California, for I have developed a very great affection for the place. I suppose it’s the farmer in me, but I’ve long passed the day when I can sneer sophisticatedly either at Hollywood or the climate. I like them both.

Now I’m headed east. I waited as long as I could for the Japs to bomb California. If California gets it now, they’ll just have to take it alone, for I can’t keep running back every time somebody blows a siren.

Business is certainly good this year in the desert. I had intended stopping over a few days at Yuma, but couldn’t even get a place there to lay my head.

It was the same story in Phoenix. We got in after dark and couldn’t get a hotel room even though I had phoned ahead. Finally I just sat down in the lobby of the Hotel Westward Ho and started to cry. So they took pity and dug me up a room in a private club.

In Phoenix and Tucson, they say, the tourist season has been as good as ever – maybe a little better. Many people have come to the desert who otherwise would have gone to California on their vacations. And, too, lots of Californians have come inland – just in case. They say that two-thirds of the traffic these days is eastbound.

From bank teller to pill roller

Coming across, I picked up a soldier, and asked him how far he was going. “Just as far as you are,” he said.

“I’m going to New York,” I said, “but it’ll take me about two months to get there.”

“Well, I’ll get off at Dallas,” the soldier laughed.

He was on six-day leave, hitch-hiking clear from the Coast to Dallas to get married. He figured he could make it in 48 hours each way, which would give him two days at home.

He had been in the Army six months and liked it all right. He was a bank teller before he joined up – so the Army made a pill-roller out of him, a medical attendant.

When we crossed the Colorado River at Yuma, Army sentries stopped us. They stop only cars in which service men are riding. They wanted to check my soldier’s furlough papers.

They were O.K., so the guard said, “All right, roll up your windows and cross the bridge.”

When we got on the Arizona side and stopped at the Agricultural Inspection Station, I asked the inspector why we had been told to roll up our windows.

“Oh, it’s the Army,” the inspector said. “I’ve never been able to find out the reason.”

I asked several people, and nobody knew why. Maybe I’m just too dumb to be roaming around loose like this, but I can’t make any sense out of such an order. If anybody knows, I wish he’d write and tell me.

Few free meals handed out

In Phoenix there is a little restaurant, only about twice the size of your living room, where you can get a good meal for 40 cents or so. The place never closes.

On the window they have a sign saying: “A free meal to any person finding this cafe without a customer day or night.”

I asked the cashier how often they had to give away a free meal.

“Well, when I worked here three years ago,” she said, “we’d give away about two a year.”

“But how about now?” I asked. “Surely between 2 and 5 in the morning there must be times when nobody’s in here.”

“Oh, it’s busier than ever then,” she said. “We haven’t had to give a free meal in ages. Why, between 2 and 5 in the morning it’s so packed we can’t even scrub the floor."

There’s one Hollywood item still left in my system, before we get too far away.

A friend of mine out there recently saw Gene Autry, the Western star, and found that Gene is due to be drafted in the early summer. And this friend spoke as follows:

“Gene’s ready to go, but I think it’s foolish for the Army to take a man like that. Here he is paying the government a quarter of a million a year in taxes. When he goes in the Army that revenue will stop. Don’t you think that’s penny wise and pound foolish?”

The question stopped me. I’d never even thought of anything like that before. Is that a sound theory or not? It does seem sensible at first, but there must be a flaw in it somewhere.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 7, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

TUCSON, Ariz. – One of the main questions people all over the country keep asking me is, “Do you know Pegler personally?”

And I say, “Well, I know him a little, but not awfully well. Why?”

And then they always want to know what he’s actually like – if he’s big or little, if he is tough in person like he is in his columns, if he has gone permanently on the wagon, if he’s a religious fanatic, if he kicks his wife, and so on.

So now – having just spent an afternoon and evening with the Peglers – I’ll try to answer a few of those questions for you.

No, Westbrook Pegler is not a mean man or a sourpuss. He is pleasant to be with. He’s a big fellow, tall and well built. He is not on the wagon. He is a good Catholic, but by no means a fanatical one. He smokes, drinks and swears, as do almost all newspapermen. He does none of them to excess.

And among all my acquaintances, I don’t know of a man who absolutely dotes on his wife as Pegler does. If anything ever happened to her, it would go mighty tough with him.

It is hard for readers to reconcile Pegler the Professional Hater with Pegler a Human Being. If he isn’t mean at heart, they figure, then his column hating must be just a pose by which he can make a lot of money.

That definitely is not true. He is so serious and sincere about his work that it occupies a large portion of his thoughts, even when he’s on vacation. Just sitting with him before the fireplace in a pleasant chat, his conversation drifts almost magnet-like again and again to the subject of union racketeering.

Dipped into labor problems

Although his sole purpose in being out here now is to rest and relax, he has let himself get interested in some of Tucson’s labor problems. Fry-cooks and poor waitresses and small business owners get to him somehow with their troubles, and he can’t resist lending an ear.

In person as well as in print, Pegler is a man of definite opinions. There is no wishy-washiness in his attitudes. Most things to him are either good or bad.

And he isn’t “agin” quite everything, either. Right now, for instance, he thinks America is doing marvelously with its production program, and that it would be an indescribable calamity if anything were to happen to Mr. Roosevelt.

Pegler gets a terrific amount of mail, most of it bad. One reason he decided to take vacation now is that his mail was changing – it was getting too pro-Pegler! That scared him to death. He thought he must be getting the wrong slant on things.

Also, he says he found he was getting too worked-up and wrote angrily and used words “too strong,” which sounded odd coming from a man noted for the strongest words in America.

Because of his strong words, the public realizes by now that Pegler must do a vast amount of research, and be able to back up every word he writes. Consequently, most people assume he has a large research staff working for him.

Pegler does his own research

He does not have. He is his own researchist. He does it by a large amount of telephoning, frequent trips to Washington to look personally into records, and by a man-killing amount of reading and wading through court opinions and legal documents.

Right here in the house now, he has a bag of printed matter weighing 50 pounds that he must read before starting his columns again.

Pegler, like the rest of us, wishes that he’d write “funny” columns oftener than he does. But he just has so much material on his various crusades there doesn’t seem space very often any more for a funny column.

The Peglers have built a lovely house out here in the desert, for vacationing and maybe some day retiring – though I doubt that will come very soon.

Mrs. Pegler came out ahead of time to get the house all fixed up. They are right out in the desert, thoroughly surrounded and hidden by cactus and desert growth. But inside, the house is as modern as a Spitfire. There is even a swimming pool in back, but it’s been too chilly to swim during Peg’s vacation.

It’s no use for you to come looking for their place, because it’s hard to find and the Peglers will soon be gone anyhow. Since he is looked upon as a celebrity, Pegler has had to throw up a wall around himself or he’d never get anything done.

He’s very hard to get to. That’s the way it has to be, and should be. True, the public provides his living by reading his column – but on the other hand the same public could destroy him if he’d let it use up all his time.

The Peglers have a station wagon, and drive into town frequently. Peg enjoys driving, but drives even more slowly than I do. They go out with friends occasionally, and have friends in to dinner. The other night they had a whole roast pig.

Pegler doesn’t share my almost spiritual “feel” for the desert, but he does like it well enough to build out here, so I guess he can join my club. In fact I am now trying to work out some arrangement whereby I can help share his burdens with him – such as letting him continue the columns, while I, acting as his proxy, retire to the desert and do his resting for him.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 8, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

TUCSON, Ariz. – I suppose she might be termed a neat little trick, this Esther Henderson. She sure ain’t bad to look at, and to top it all off, she’s got brains. She’s just the kind of girl some good man should come along and marry, and that’s just what Chuck Abbott did, damn his hide.

This Esther Henderson makes just about as nice a column as I’ve run onto in a long time. If you want to hear a story of a pretty girl who made good, this is it. I’ll start at the beginning and lead you up to it.

She came to us in Oak Park, Ill., just a couple of jumps more than 30 years ago, I would say. Her mother died about the time she finished high school, so she and her father moved to the resort town of Alexandria, Minn.

Esther was pretty and she could dance like a fool, so she took some extra lessons and then went on the stage. For seven years she was a showgirl. She danced on Broadway, she toured with Franchot & Marco, she organized and traveled with her own act.

Her father went with her, always. They were great pals. He never really kicked on what Esther was doing, but it was a hard life, and it wasn’t what he raised his daughter to be.

So at the end of seven years Esther decided to cut loose while the cutting was good. She liked the life of the stage, but she saw she was about as far as she could go.

One morning in New York she got the telephone book, turned to the classified section, and started going through the lists to see what a girl without a college education could do to make an independent living in the world.

*Enrolls in photography course

The only thing she could find was photography. That day she went down and bought a camera, and enrolled in a three-month photographic course. Then for a year and a half she went on the road again – not dancing this time, but working as a lackey and helper in photo shops, to gain experience.

She worked in New York and New Orleans and San Antonio. All the time she was looking for a place to stop and set up in business. When they came to Tucson she decided this was it. She and her father had some money, so they bought a corner lot out in the residence section, two or three miles from downtown, and built a nice southwestern house on it. She built a studio and small dark room in the house, and then hung out her sign.

Esther decided not to start off humble and work her way up. First-class or nothing, was her motto. So she set her prices high, and her location was exclusive.

She waited six weeks for her first customer. When he finally arrived, Esther was so nervous she almost collapsed. But she didn’t, of course, and everything went off all right.

That was six years ago. Today Esther Henderson is one of the finest photographers in the Southwest. She has put her profits right back into the place. The house has been added to and added to. She has the best-equipped studio between Los Angeles and Kansas City, and how do you like that for an ex-showgirl, out on her own?

Accepts two sittings daily

She is so successful that now she accepts only two sittings a day, five days a week. No matter how badly you want your picture taken, you fit yourself to her hours and her schedule, or else you wait. And she takes four whole months off in the summer time!

The studio – portrait work – is her bread and butter. That’s where the money really comes from. Her pin money comes from, what she does on week-ends and in the summer, which is to rant out over the desert in a station wagon and take outdoor Western pictures, which go to magazines and roto gravures and such.

Esther’s father died two years ago. She carried on alone without companionship. Less than a year ago she married Chuck Abbott. I’ll tell you about that tomorrow.

They are living a life that seems to me ideal – and to them, too. They have simply harnessed their energies and abilities along the right line. They are both sincere and deeply attentive to their arts, but they see no sense in being a slave to anything, so they aren’t.

Their station wagon is equipped with bed rolls and camping equipment. On week-ends they go far into the desert, camp out and take pictures. In the summer time they drive to remote places in the Southwest, camp out under the stars for weeks at a time, have more fun than a box of monkeys, and come back with a cache of beautiful and saleable pictures.

Right now they are just taking off for a two-week trip down the west coast of Mexico. And, in June, they are leaving to spend the whole summer in Mexico, clear down deep into Mexico. Neither has been there before, and they’re as thrilled as children at the prospect.

Those are the material success facts of this remarkable girl. Tomorrow I’ll try to tell you what she’s like as a person, for she’s really a little buzz-saw on wheels.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 9, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

TUCSON, Ariz. – You remember Esther Henderson, the eminently successful showgirl photographer of Tucson? Oh, of course you do, it was only yesterday I told you about her.

Well, Esther Henderson has really got life by the throat. She quit the stage before it was too late, went at photography with hooks and tongs, now has the finest studio in the Southwest, and keeps hours that would make the traditional banker look like a peon.

She is now a little past 30. She’s as big as half a pin, and still as pretty as a picture. She is very tanned, and wears a checkered shirt and faded cowboy overalls. I can’t imagine her in a dress. She gives you the impression of being the happiest person alive.

She smokes and takes a drink when she can get somebody to drink with her, and now and then a nice “damn” floats into her conversation, but if that gives you the impression she’s a hard gal, you’re clear off the track.

Seven years on the stage didn’t harden her. She’s as fresh and enthusiastic as if she were just seeing her first circus. She’s wise, but about as hard as maple syrup.

She had a tough go of it here in Tucson, at first. Things were pretty well sewed up, and it was no child’s play to break through. But she kept battering and ramming, and finally she not only broke through, she shot clear to the top.

A couple of years ago Esther made some pictures for a tourist pamphlet the Sunshine Club was getting up. Then suddenly she heard the state was bringing in a photographer from California to complete the pictures. Esther hit the roof.

Storms downtown to protest

She went storming downtown and probably pounded the desk and said, “What is this? You can’t even have the booklet printed in Phoenix because it would be disloyal to Tucson, yet you bring in a photographer from California. What is this? What is this, anyway?”

They tried to pacify her by saying this man was more than a photographer, he was an experienced dude-ranch organizer, and could run barbecues for the eastern guests and make everybody happy, as well as take pictures.

To which Esther replied, “What the hell is this guy, anyway, a cook or a photographer?” And then she huffed out. They brought the California guy anyway. His name was Chuck Abbott.

Esther kept hearing about this fellow but never saw him. She didn’t want to, for she had a hate on him. The whole idea of an imported cook-photographer still rankled in her.

Then one night just before Christmas a year ago, Miss Henderson’s secretary came into the studio and said Mr. Abbott was outside to see her. At first she wasn’t going to go out, but then she thought, what the hell, might as well be decent about it. So she came out and offered him a drink. He wouldn’t take more than one, and that made her mad, too.

They were married not long afterward. They’re two of the happiest people I’ve ever seen. Chuck is one of these prematurely gray men – his hair is snow white. He wears overalls and cowboy boots, and is quiet and kind. He has a separate studio downtown.

Chuck is dude-ranch fugitive

As a couple they’re doubly happy, for they’ve both escaped from careers that would have been ceaseless grinds. Esther escaped from the stage and the night-club circuit, and Chuck escaped being a dude-ranch owner. He’d been saving for years to buy a dude ranch. When he met Esther, that was all off.

Nobody yet knows why Arizona brought Chuck over from California, because actually Esther is much the better photographer. But all’s well that ends well, so what’s the difference?

When Esther was telling me about looking for a place to land and finally settling here, Chuck broke in and said, “And Tucson got another dynamo.”

He sure was right. She makes things hum. Whatever she does, work or play, it’s fun for her. She doesn’t have to worry much about the kitchen, for that “cook or photographer” guy she was ranting about turned out to be both cook and photographer. Incidentally, they have a dish-washing machine, the first I ever saw in a private home.

I happened to hit them about 11 o’clock, just as Esther was dismissing a young man who had got all dressed up to have his picture taken.

By 11:30 we were all calling each other by our first names. By 12 we were out in the kitchen eating sandwiches. By 12:30 we were talking about going into business together. Thank God, I had to leave at 1 o’clock.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 10, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

TUCSON, Ariz. – Do any of you remember Rudy Hale and his wife, the snake-catchers I wrote about several years ago?

They lived way out on the Arizona desert, ran a filling station on the side, and made their main living by catching rattlesnakes for zoos, collectors and serum manufacturers. When I first wrote about them, they had caught some 25,000 rattlesnakes with their bare hands in nine years.

A couple of years after that, I stopped past to see them. They were down-in-the-mouth. They had so depopulated the snakes that they had to drive 25 miles to find one.

1 stopped past again this trip. Their house and filling station were boarded up, and a big sign said, “Closed–Keep Out.” I couldn’t find what had happened to them, for the desert is mighty empty out there, and there was nobody to ask.

I guess they just ran clear out of snakes and had to leave.

Finally reads a book

Something strange happened to me the other night. I actually read a book. Can’t figure out what caused me to do it. It certainly isn’t like me. For in the last seven years I’ve read fewer books than all the village idiots put together.

But in Phoenix one night I couldn’t get to sleep, so I read a book. It was John Steinbeck’s “The Moon Is Down.” It’s a very short book, so I’ll give it a very short review, to wit:

I liked it. but not as well as “Tortilla Flat” or “Of Mice and Men.”

Two and a half years ago, when we were in Tucson, I bought a pair of blue pajamas.

Since that time those pajamas have been twice to Panama, all through Central America, several times across the continent, twice across the Atlantic, to Africa and South America. They are well-traveled and well-worn.

Last week they split across the shoulders from simple old age. I hung onto them a few days, until the splits multiplied to the point where I couldn’t get into them without getting all tangled up. So I threw them away.

The funny part is – and I didn’t plan it deliberately – those pajamas went to their final resting place in the city where they were bought two and a half years and some 75,000 miles ago. Isn’t life wonderful?

Ernie’s praised

This column has never been published regularly in Tucson, but has been running recently as a substitute for Westbrook Pegler’s while he was on vacation.

Consequently the paper sent one of its reporters over to the hotel to see what kind of monstrosity I really was. During our conversation the reporter said:

“I’ve been reading your column for a few weeks. Much to my amazement, it’s pretty good.”

I didn’t know whether to hit him, or take him out and buy him a drink. Much to his amazement! Fah upon him. Much to MY amazement would be a better way to put it.

The other day, when I was visiting the Peglers, we got to talking about picking up hitch-hikers. I don’t ordinarily, but nowadays I always stop for anybody in uniform. Peg does, too, but he doesn’t trust even a soldier hitch-hiker too far.

So I got to telling about the soldier hitch-hiker I picked up the other day and carried for 400 miles. This soldier told me that his request for leave came through so unexpectedly he didn’t have time to get money wired from home, so he started out without a penny.

He had a long way to go and his time was short, so I lent him $10 so he could eat, and also ride the busses at night when hitch-hiking would be slow. He said he would send the money as soon as he got home.

“I’ll bet you $10 you never get your $10 back,” Pegler said. So the bet is on.

Soldier, don’t let me down. I want that $10 of Mr. Pegler’s awful bad. Everybody else tries to hook him because they think he’s rich, so I don’t see why I shouldn’t have my share.

I’ll let you know how it turns out.

A woman in San Francisco sends in what seems to me a pleasant plan for helping win the war. It’s to turn slot Machines into purveyors of defense stamps.

If you get two cherries and a lemon, a defense stamp pops out. Three plums – three defense stamps. The jackpot – a defense bond! If it clicks, says the lady, she envies the pocket of Uncle Sam.

“In case you don’t use this idea,” she writes, “turn it over to Maj. Hoople.”

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 11, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

SILVER CITY, N.M. – Silver City is one of these high-altitude once-tough old mining and cattle towns of the Southwest.

Most of the picturesque two-gun men and iron-nerved sheriffs have died off now, but Silver City has many a more tractable resident who has a glamor about him.

Such a man is Wayne Mac V. Wilson, who never shot anybody and who has never been shot. He is an Easterner who came to New Mexico more than 40 years ago.

He is past 60 now, but walks with a lilt, smokes a pipe, knows more funny stories and tells them better than anybody else in town, and dresses as though he were still in Princeton, where he went to school. And in spite of all this youthful gaiety, he has probably been through more torture than anybody else in the city.

Wayne Wilson first came here for tuberculosis when he was 19, and in college. In a year he was able to go back to school. He got his diploma, and worked a few years in Philadelphia, but he worked too hard and broke down again. That time he came here for good. His lungs have never bothered him since.

But, a few years ago, he did come down with spinal tuberculosis. That is the main thing I want to write about. Before the doctors realized what it was, several of the vertebrae in his upper spine had been destroyed and his backbone, as he describes it, was just like a willow twig – it wouldn’t stand up straight.

The pain was indescribable, and gradually his legs started to get paralyzed. Even in bed, when he’d lift one of them, he couldn’t tell which way it might go. Doctors said he would be dead within a few months.

Suspends motion in spine

Then he finally got hold of one doctor with a different idea. This doctor’s idea was not to operate, but to suspend all motion in Mr. Wilson’s spine – from that day until it had healed itself. The only way to do that was to make him rigid.

So this doctor made a plaster cast of Mr. Wilson’s back, and then had a permanent mold made, and built this solid mold into a special steel bed. The lower half of the bed was canvas, for the Wilson legs to rest on.

Then they put Mr. Wilson onto this rack, and told him he might have to lie there two or three years. The natural thing happened. With no exercise and never changing position, his internal organs became disturbed and he took on terrific gastric troubles.

There had to be a solution to that, so they found one. They rigged up another thing, whereby he could lie on his stomach half of the time. This new apparatus was a canvas arrangement over a wooden frame, which they would place over Mr. Wilson’s chest and head, and strap down tight. Then they would turn him over, and he’d lie on his stomach, with the hard mold still fitted to his back.

Of course, it took several people to turn him over twice a day, so he thought up an arrangement to take care of that. He had the bed fitted with spindles at each end, and the whole rack hung on these two swivels. That way, one nurse could simply turn a crank at the end of the bed and twirl Mr. Wilson, rack and all, right over. “Just like turning a roast pig on a spit,” he says.

Mr. Wilson lay in this thing for a year and a half. The doctors told him the terrible pain would start to subside in six weeks, and it did. After that, he never minded his imprisonment a bit. He never got despondent; in fact, enjoyed himself.

Read books, wrote letters

During the 12 hours of the day he’d spend flat on his stomach, he read books and wrote letters. How did he do that, you ask? Well, his shoulders stuck out beyond this canvas rack, so he could put his arms under the rack.

Then they put a low table under it, and put either a book or writing paper on the table, and Mr. Wilson went to work. For, you see, there was a hole cut in the canvas for his face to stick through.

During the entire year and a half that Mr. Wilson was encased, he had a drink of whisky every evening. It helped his digestive system, and gave him something to look forward to all day long. Also, he was never lonesome – he had lots of visitors, attracted to him, he says, by the fact that he always had a drink to offer them.

Mr. Wilson finally got out of his rack three years ago. Then he was in a solid plaster cast for several months. Then a steel and leather brace affair. He even abandoned that six weeks ago. It took him a year to learn how to walk again.

Today, you’d never know there had ever been anything wrong with him. He’s one of the chipperest men in town. And he works hard, too.

He’s head of the Grant County War Bond drive, and they have set some sort of a record here in selling $600,000 worth of bonds to a population of 20,000. They say it will hit a million before long.

Mr. Wilson’s father was a colonel in the Civil War, and stayed in the Army afterward to fight Indians in the West. Mrs. Wilson’s uncle was Gen. John C. Bates, once chief-of-staff. So there is a lot of military in the family, but none in Mr. Wilson.

However, as somebody in Silver City remarked, he’s the kind of fellow who, if he were a military leader, you would follow to the death.

Just to hear his latest story with the last breath, if nothing else.