Evening Star Newspaper, August 3, 1930, Page 79

Fiction PART . 7. The Sunfly Stal Maxasine WASHINGTON, D. C, AUGUST 3, Roadside bars, rough hewn and thorny sprang up along the way like cactus plants. 1930. Features l Puzzles 24 PAGES. ———— On Mexico’s Pacific Coast, Below Tia Juana and Agua Caliente, a Huge New Casino Is Being Built in Ensenada Where Uncontaminated Liquors and A /] the Swank and Beauty of Riviera Will Combine With the Gambling Facilities to Lure American Pocketbooks. NE of the most surpassingly beauti- ful automobile roads in the world un- coils itseli down the Pacific side of Lower Californiz 70 miles into the Mexican interior, from the border at Tia Juana to the 7!d port of Ensenada de Todas Santos. It rises over the last stretch of the desert of the Colorado and up into the tumultuous siopes of the Sierra Madres, lifting up to crests and falling down o canyons until it reaches the indigo sea. Then it flattens over fields tawny with desert flowers, sometimes within a hundred feet of the pounding surf, until, at last, it bends precipitately round a perpen dar cliff and broadens into the main thoroghfare of Ensenada. The earth road is ancient, but in dry weather it is well surfaced, and despite some of the narrow and winding descents the 70 miles can be covered safely in three hours—on weekdays. On Sunday it is wiser to keep off this road, but if you must travel along it, it is judicious to proceed more slowly, particularly around the hidden, narrow curves, because it is crowded with celebrating Americans who are making the ancient highway a primrose path. It is not today, however, the primrose path that it will be a few months hence, when the new casino at Ensenada opens its doors. By then, if all plans mature, it still will be breath- taking in its beauty, but life-taking in its jeop- ardy. For Mexico, at the instigation of American promoters, is adding another port of call to its Silver Coast—I dub it the Silver Coast because the pervasive emblem that dom- fnates the whole countryside is the United States silver dollar. JIRST, Tia Juana, then Agua Caliente, and now Ensenada de Todas Santos to catch the roaring flocd of American silver as it rolls like the wheels of an invading army over the border just below San Diego, hell-bent on such a splurge as could be released only by the bursting of our prohibition bonds. A few months after the Volstead act was enacted the village of Tia Juana was chock full of Ameri- cans determined to empty their pockets at its hundred bars, its thousand gambling places. Two years ago,_came Agua Caliente, with the ambition of being the Monte Carlo of America, rising out of the desert to cater to the more disciplined, to those of better taste. In two years Agua Caliente has become so0 successful that now comes Ensenada, far enough from the border to hold back the crest of the flood, but near enough to drain toward it those with leisure as well as cash. BY JOSEPH LILLY. Until lately the road to Ensenada still was used by motorists anxious for a taste of the exotic as well as the taste for uncontaminated liquors. A few years ago Easterners, partic- ularly writers who had been lured to Holly- wood, motored there for a respite. But as soon as they bezan to appear in numbers the char- acter of the countryside began to change. Roadside bars, rough hewn and thorny, sprang up along the way like cactus plants, until half a dozen now dot the otherwise untenanted high- way. If an American stops to quench his thirst the attendants immediately produce a card table for Black Jack, and as he blows the foam off his tankard of Mexicali beer a pin-eyed houseman begins to manipulate the deck deftly and invite him to play by stacking up piles of silver dollars. Ensenada today is predominantly a Mexican town in population, and in some of the back streets there are a few adobe houses and build- ings. Tucked away in one corner is the ubi- quitous barracks of pink stucco, with guard mounted. Along the streets you stumble over little dark-bodied Mexican boys at play, and off on the ranch roads you encounter Mexican laborers of the utmost natural dignity. But the center of the town is the Middle Western America of about 1880—wooden houses in the rococo style—and along the main street are a sucression of frothy bars and reeking dance halls flavored with the noxiousness of Spokane in the Yukon days. ’l‘HE new gambling casino is being built—the frames now are ready for the stucco—about a mile from the center of the village and, ominously enough, just beyond the cemetery. It is ideally situated on a low cliff on the left side of Ensenada Bay, which will give it an “anchorage for yachts from San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and all the wealthy little Californian ports between, and allow the revelers to avoid the dangers of a drunk-in- fested highway. A golf course is being laid out, tennis courts are being sodded and plots of flowers will border the handsome buildings. When it is completed the promoters—a group of wealthy Californians—probably will have expended $3,000,000. . There is a project afoot to avoid the mises of the present motor road. That is to spend $11,000,000 resurfacing it and rerouting a half dozen of its more dangerous spots, reducing the distance 10 miles. If this goes through, as well it may, & toll will be charged and the super- visors would be empowered to refuse tickets to those palpably unfitted by drink to drive. The toll road would mean a rebirth of poverty- stricken Ensenada, as new hotels would be re- quired to house those forbidden to clutter up the highway and new catch-pennies to draw the remaining money would have to be pro- vided. The promoters of Ensenada, the Compania Mexicana del Rosarito, S. A, of which Gene Normile, close associate of Jack Dempsey, is the managing head, have their inspiration in Agua Caliente. Agua Caliente is an apt name; literally, in Spanish, it is “hot water,” though, of course, it refers to the warm springs that burst from the desert sand along the course of the Rio Tia Juana and enable the pro- moters of the resort to offer all varieties of natural baths. Nevertheless, “hot water’ is a fair transla- tion, for lucky is the American visitor there who does not find himself being parboiled before he starts homeward. Perhaps “lucky” is not quite fair; there is no compulsion to drink or to gamble; further, the liquors are excellent and, out of the thousands who play roulette or black jack or “chuck-a-luck,” or roll the plebean dice, certainly some per- centage goes away the winner. The adjective is fair, perhaps, when we confine it to Ameri- cans, for it is the universal observation of travelers that Americans away from home are bad drinkers and unintelligent gamblers. Agua Caliente, the resort, is a thing of beauty, and if we compare it to other public gambling houses, such as Monte Carlo, we shall find that it loses only by its inevitable associations, its location so close to Tia Juana and the influx of visitors which it draws. After all, to be sure, Monte Carlo is not what it was when Russian grand dukes and Spanish grandees threw away fortunes at trente-et-quarante or roulette. In these days it, too, has its hordes of tourists from beyond the seas, who, wanting to see what the place is all about, go perambulating with that an- noying attitude of disapproval and curiosity. But the very splendor of Monte Carlo, the opulence of the Casino, the ordered richness of the streets, the gorgeousness of the gen- darmerie, the isolation on the promontory, still breathing or the ancient Grimaldi, and the lulling beauty of the Mediterranean—all of these, somehow, refine and recharge the atmosphere. OT so Agua Caliente. And it is unfor« tunate. The resort is a delight to the eye, from the approach through the road« girdling Campanile to the screened patio in the rear of the hotel along the Avenido de los Palmas to the streets and cottages. The archie tect, Wayne D. McAllister, designed his strucs tures with true Spanish touch and scholarlis ness, with their tile roofs, their grated bal= conies of wrought iron, their long Romanesque arches, their cool walls inducing a feeling of Spain—not Spain as it is, but as it would be were the old forms redone on its soil. It is the crowd that impairs the atmosphere of Agua Caliente. On Saturdays, Sundays and holidays the immense parking spaces—for the use of which the visitor is charged—are crowded with automobiles bearing license plates, not only of California, but of Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, the Dakotas, Oregon and Washington—from all the States which have furnished large blocks of the Southern Cali- fornia population. The presence of these cars denotes that visiting relatives have arrived and have decided to see everything. It would be much better for you and for Agua Caliente had these visitors stopped to fill their eyes at Tia Juana. There is some- thing for the hinterlander to look upon. It is a mixture of the Bowery of the early 1900s, of Nome after the ice has broken up and of the Coney Island of 1930, going full tilt, unashamed and unheeding, where the Ten Command- mendments are merely targets and where the uninhibited man or woman may do all he pleases. In the Foreign Club is a bar longer than the famouse one in Shanghai, stocked with every variety of whisky, brandy, wine and liquor that the palate of man has ever tasted. Within its purlieus, filling the block-length of the room, are more than a hundred gambling tables, all so heavily patronized that a new- comer must literally elbow and shoulder his way, if he is wily enough—and, if he is not, he must reach over rows of humans three deep to place his money. At every turn are slot machines, some for nickels, some for dimes, some for quarters, some for half-dollars and some for dollars. There is none so poor or so timid but that Tia Juana has a device fom him. Even the wheels of chance, so dear t§