Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Star-dust in Hollywood The overseer of the firm that sold us the car in San Francisco had assured us : " She is all rilled up : there's oil enough for a thousand miles in her." But either he lied or he had grossly misjudged her appetite for oil. For we had proceeded no more than a hundred and fifty miles on our route, when in the pitch dark of the night, miles apparently from anywhere, a grinding sound became audible from the engine, and our recent purchase came to an abrupt stop. I climbed out and lifted the hood, to find the cylinders glowing a gentle red, clearly not a healthy colour for motor-cylinders even in an air-cooled engine. Darkness and silence wrapped us round. So, leaving Jo with the car, I walked on, for the map showed a small village some distance ahead. " It is strange," I thought, as I walked along, " how bad my asthma has become." I had first been vividly conscious of a troublesome shortness of breath in Chicago during the blizzards. I had expected that with the passing of winter the trouble would diminish, but even the warm days of San Francisco spring failed to relieve me. Indeed, the more exercise that I took up and down the San Francisco hills the worse the trouble seemed to be. Now it was so distressing that I could walk forward only with a slow, plodding step, and I wondered, indeed, should the village prove very far, whether I could reach it. Luckily, after half a mile in the darkness, on turning a corner I found a camping-ground. From that moment the road to Los Angeles was a series of accidents. We were delayed here, delayed there. Judging from the camp-grounds of the eastern States, we had expected to find in California a rough but almost hotel-like comfort, refreshment-stalls and cabins with good beds, mattresses, and blankets. The sanitary laws of California stepped in and almost killed me. We had to lie wrapless on the bare wire lattice of the springs, doing our best with newspaper. Three [14]