Life, 1923-04-05 · page 25 of 40
Life — April 5, 1923 — page 25: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**The Cartoon:** A waiter offers a distracted customer food; the customer, mishearing "weather," asks the waiter to bring him "some" weather. It's a simple pun-based visual joke about inattention. **The Main Article:** Satirist Walter Prichard Eaton mocks Southern California's obsessive pride in its perfect climate. He ironically suggests that reporting snow in the region is a grave betrayal—worse than treason. The piece uses exaggerated outrage to critique the region's boastfulness and its citizens' defensive reaction to any criticism of their weather. **Historical Context:** This reflects early 20th-century California boosterism, when the state aggressively promoted its climate as paradise to attract settlers and investment. Any negative reports were treated as threats to this marketing narrative. **"Points of View":** A brief philosophical joke contrasting a practical person's optimism ("beginning of day") with a poet's melancholy ("end of night")—two perspectives on identical reality.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Obsequious Waiter: Lovely weather we're having to-day, sir. Absent-minded Patron: All right, bring me some. RECENTLY read with profound sorrow that it snowed in South- ern California. My impression is that the dispatch said it snowed in Los Angeles, but obviously I must have been befuddled. It might con- ceivably snow elsewhere in Southern California, but never in Los Angeles. Even when the U. S. weather report credits Los Angeles with 50 inches of rainfall, it invariably follows in the next. column with the word “clear.” Not even the government scientists dare affirm that the rain in Los Angeles falls from clouds. It is merely another manifestation of that glorious sunshine, like no other sunshine anywhere. * RK But the reason I feel so sad is not that snow has fallen over most of Southern California except Los Angeles, but that somebody out there told about it. I should think the snow wotld have been rather a novel relief to a people basking in the unbroken perfection of their climate, and as for the price of Snow in California lemons and oranges, they would have gone up anyhow. A cataclysm of nature is not needed to boost the price of food in this great and glori- ous republic. Man has long since triumphed over his environment. He can now boost prices far more effectively on his own_ initiative. When left alone, in fact, nature is apt to be ridiculously abundant. * Ke No, my heart bleeds for the poor chap who told. I have scanned the papers every day to learn, if pos- sible, his fate, speculating whether it would be immersion in boiling oil, exile to Death Valley without food on water, or merely a common halter. So far, however, not a line has comethrough. This Pasadena prevar- icator, this Los Angeles liar, this San Diego devil, this Santa Barbara Bolshevist, has either escaped de- tection or filed his dispatch in Nevada, or he had fled into the fast- nesses of the High Sierras, there miserably to perish. I cannot but feel sorry for him, traitor though he be. He is a marked man. The hand of every citizen in a great Common- wealth is against him. He has com- mitted the. Ultimate Blasphemy. He has spoken ill, outside the family, of the glorious climate of Southern California. Not Ajax was more foolhardy, not Satan himself more impious. ** * Another thought comes to me, and I grow sadder still. It may be that he has been detected, that he has been punished. But no other re- porter, no other telegrapher has dared to tell the country the awful details of his fate. He may have been condemned to live forever in the glorious sunshine of Los Angeles. Walter Prichard Eaton, Points of View Tue Philistine and the Poet to- gether viewed the advent of dawn. “Ah,” cried the Philistine, “it is the beginning of day.” “Alas,” the Poet sighed, “it is the end of night.” comicbooks.com