A Tenderfoot in So. Cal., Echo Mtn. Echoes Winter 1996

A Tenderfoot in So. Cal.

Mt. Lowe, By M. D. Yeslah

This piece is reprinted from "A Tenderfoot in Southern California." Published as a limited edition, autographed copy by J.J. Little & Ives Co. 1908. It is one chapter of seventeen discussing Southern California.

As all tenderfeet are expected to do, I took the trip up Mt. Lowe. Its all right, that trip is, except that it makes you feel that if you ever get down on the level again you'll go to church a little oftener, and be prepared for the next world.

By gum, there are spots on that trip, and then some!

I went up with a fellar named Smith, and as we got half way up that blamed incline, I got to thinking pretty hard.

You see, Bill, at the bottom of that incline, there's a solid wall of rock, fifty feet high, not more than twenty-five feet from where those cable cars stop. Yes-sir-ree, I got to thinking that if anything busted, and we shot back down the hill, they would never be able to tell which was me and which was Smith when they gathered us up to ship back East in the baggage car.

You bet I kept my mouth shut and I guess I held my breathe too, for someway I felt that too much laughing and loud talking would jar that dinky car and mebbe loosen something.

I as mighty glad when I reached level ground at the top of the incline.

Then began a foot race for another dinky car, a bobbed tail electric this time, that takes you on further up the mountain to Mt. Lowe. There were about seventy-five people all trying at once to get into one lonesome little car, that groaned with only twenty-five aboard, but they all got on somehow or somewhere, and the rest of the ride we wiggled up and down, in and out, around corners and across squeaking bridges, that looked like they'd go down for a cent and a half, and all the time everybody was "oh-ing" and "ah-ing" and no wonder.

Say Bill, if you ever get to California, dont miss this trip. They skin you on the price of it, all right, but its the most satisfying "skinning" I've had since I came out here.

Be sure and take your mother-in-law along, Bill, and half way up that incline, if there's anything on earth you want, ask her for it, while you are hanging onto the side of the mountain at an angle of 65 degrees.

You'll get it all right, if she's got wind enough left to say, "Yep!"

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Last modified: February 12, 1999