Perelman Tonight: California or bust -- Part 3 of "The Swiss Family Perelman"

The journey begins!

"Friends, I'm not rich in worldly goods, but let
me say this. What's mine is mine."

[Note: You have to imagine these two halves
of the Hirschfeld drawing side by side.]

"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."

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

by Ken

The last two nights we've read the first chapter, "Rancors Aweigh" (part 1 and part 2), of SJP's saga of his family schlepp to the Orient, The Swiss Family Perelman (originally published serially in Holiday magazine). Last night we left the travelers at (the old, undestroyed) Penn Station in New York, preparing for their cross-country train trip to catch the S.S. President Cleveland for the voyage across the Pacific. (The above sliced-in-two drawing is actually left over from that chapter. It depicts the actual onset of the journey, with the family bidding adieu to the hands-open building staff outside their apartment building on Washington Square, before making the cab trip to Penn Station.)

It's a long and eventful trip from New York to Oakland, then down to Los Angeles, where they have ten days before the President Cleveland departs. We're going to make the trip in three parts.


FOR PART 1 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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