The Wilmington morning star., 1946-03-04
Fair Enough
By WESTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright, 1916, BY King Features SyndIc

BY WESTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright, 1916, BY King Features Syndlcate)
have been meaning to tell you some
thing about this interesting and rather loose.
jointed city of Tucson in the southwestern
desert and the country around and about. I
! am afraid we are having a little boom be-
cause we are so badly crowded that our SUM-
| shine club has been sending out word that
this would be a good year not to come here
and little houses are popping up all over the
| place. However / am confident that we will
never be another Miami because, after all,
we have no sea- and even allowing Tor Slip
I'D in the weather this Winter, Miami and all
Florida south of line drawn across the
| state above Palm Beach are usually hotter.
The weather really did slip for few weeks
Snow, twice. if you can imagine, ana almost
every day ice on the dogs drinking DaslH' 1of
about three weeks.
We have nothing TO offer comparable to the
luxury and excitement of the fast Florida re-
sorts and most evenings the town is dark
and the streets are quiet soon after the moves
let out. Our race track runs only on sunday
afternoons and the steeds are quarter-horses
and, as Cor table-games, / can report tnat'
since 1910, have heard OF only two play
| rooms in town, both running on the sneak
one of which was fearlessly exposed by our
press and put out Of business. never nearo
what happened to the other.
The other day read where George Dixon
reported from Miami that wild extravaganza
was rife and that the noisiest spenders were
black-marketers and absolute scum. There
has been nothing like that here and I doubt
that we will be so honored by the saloon
trash. We haven't the facilities for the kind OF
entertainment that they like which is
quirk for you considering that Tucson in the
old days was roaring camp.
We have MANY heautifl11 hoy,ooS h11ty mostly
our homes are on the modest, domestic side
and I think you would be impressed by the
gumption and resourcefulness of so many
people Of that class which government pater-
nalists so loftily describe as 'lttle." You
drive along a dusty road pushed into the
desert on the outskirts with little more eff
fort than a once-over with bull-dozer and
you see where family are living in tent or
trailer and putting up little house, some
times with the mother and children helping
the dad who may be holding job somewhere
and working on his own house after hours.
Charles W. Herbert, Hollywood and news
reel camera man, who spent years Iapplng
around the world doing movie features called
1.-The Magic Carpet and Going Places"
has knack Of finding such pioneers and do
ing their stories. veteran Of the first war,
he was living here when Pearl Harbor happen
ed, joined up as a lieutenant in the signal
corps and served in the Aleutians and at
hnzio. Last year, soon after he was discharged.
as captain, he discovered a man making
home Of tramped earth, which means that he
was shoveling soil into wooden form and
MASKING it down with an iron lamp on stake.
Recently, he came on a family Of six from
Michigan. parents and four children, whose
story, briefly Is this:
The mans back was hurt In a farm acci-
dent and he was paralyzed for time but re-
e,yffsc oil p41 IN yxynrk In . r1lanf
His wife said that when he brought home his
first pay they started a saving spree instead
Of a spending spree and when the doctor said
they ought to come to this climate for the
health Of one Of the children they bought
trailer and landed in the desert on the out
skirts of Tucson. They paid $3.50 for an acre
with water and sanitation, bought lot Of
cement blocks and built house entirely them
selves, including the plumbing and wiring and
the roof. Material cost them $780,
Mr.. Herbert is that kind, himself. He could
make his own house if he hadn't one already
and most of this last year he has been doing
just about that in remodeling and Quitting an
old building in town for commercial photo
graphic studio. In picture stories he does
about the same that Ernie Pyle did In words
when Ernie was rolling across our country
discovering America and Americans. before
he went to war.
Housing, of course, is terribly expensive but,
as say, see more building here than OBJ
serve anywhere else coming down across the
country They are using hardly any adobe
now and going in for cement blocks, instead.
A small. standing house that cost $500
few years ago, sold for $500 recently and
a 81, 900 house went for $4,000, but there are
still others who pull up and rough it a while
and presently are seen at work with pick and
shovel ditching in the desert for the tounda-
tons and then busy with the trowel and ham,
mer.
And next year. maybe roses round the
door.