Perelman Tonight: Hooray for Hollywood -- Part 4 of "The Swiss Family Perelman"

Illustration by Al Hirschfeld

I was privileged to overhear a couple in the
Vista Dome engaged in a vital discussion.

"No band of Polish immigrants setting foot in the New World could have displayed quite so creamy a mélange of sullenness, martyrdom, and disillusion as my little troupe that winter morning aboard the Oakland ferry. Shivering in an icy rain amid our myriad traps, the ranee and the lambkins glowered at San Francisco and filed a long, sorrowful beef. 'He said there were gonna be coconuts,' ran the chant."

-- from tonight's installment of "Low Bridge -- Everybody Down"

by Ken

Last night we left the Perelman clan wending its way on an assortment of rolling stock from Chicago westward. As the paterfamilias put it:

Of the dozen-odd transcontinental trips I have made in the past decade, the present was unquestionably the most circuitous. As nearly as I could ascertain, we reached San Francisco less by steering a westerly course than by closing in on it in decreasing circles. Every few hundred miles, our car was shunted onto a siding and attached to a railroad whose dining cars were even more unspeakable than the last.

As we're about to discover, however, eventually the train trip became less arduous.


FOR PART 2 OF "LOW BRIDGE -- EVERYBODY
DOWN," CLICK HERE


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, E. B. WHITE, JEAN SHEPHERD, and PERELMAN TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

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