HOLLYWOOD THROUGH A KNOT HOLE

BY ABNER PEABODY

IN the first place there ain't no sech place as Hollywood. The railroad trains has their depots in another town called Los Angeles. Hollywood ain't even a flag stop. You got to take a street car to git there from the depot. Then when you do git there you find out you're still in Los Angeles. Fer incidence there ain't no Hollywood Post Office, leastways when you mail a letter back home from Hollywood, the postmark says "Los Angeles."

Hollywood was named because of the Holly bushes growin' around here, but I ain't seen any of 'em....

Hit seems that fokes who have always shown good sense, suddenly change when they come to live in Hollywood. A man who was content to live in a small apartment, or a house, back home wants to buy a lot of land out here, whether he can afford it er not. I heard about one feller who bought hisself twelve acres of land, and by the time he got through puttin' a fancy fence around it, why there warn't enough money left too build a house, so he had to go and live with his relates, and he borrows money from 'em every year to pay his taxes. Most fokes don't look fer a house though, in Hollywood. They look fer a swimmin' pool. The house is incidentals. Seems that a fellers success out here depends on the size of his swimmin' pool. One movie star built a pool right down on the beach. It must have een built at night though, or they would have noticed that the ocean was right next to it.

Hollywood is the Movin' Pitcher Capital of the world. I can't figger out how this movin' pitcher business works, though. Fokes with talents fer actin' and entertainin' comes out here from all parts of the country, to git into the movies, but they can't git into the studios.

So they have to look fer jobs in lunch rooms and fillin' stations, and the movies companies sends out Talent scouts to all the other cities, so's they can find new actors to take pitchers of. I don't understand it at all. They bring 'em back here and pay 'em a salary every week, and some of 'em don't do no work at all. There was one actor who got paid fer six months and finally got tired of sittin' home, so he decidd to quit. He tried to tell his boss he warn't satisfied, but he never could git to see him, so he jist quit by hisself without tellin' nobody. He took a trip back East to visit his kinfokes and when he got back to Hollywood four months later, he found that nobody missed him, and he's been gittin' paid all the time.

There's a awful lot of jealousy between fokes in the Movin' Pitcher bizness. One feller liked to talk behind people's backs, so he opened a barber shop.

All the big perducers has what they call "Yes-Men." As fur as I can figger out, a Yes-Man is a feller who's head is fastened onto his body with a hinge, because it keeps goin' up and down all day long. One execytive told me everything agrees with him but his food.

Another funny thing is that the movies is made out here, but fokes don't git to see 'em here until they've been showed might nigh everwhere else in the country. So you kin see that Hollywood is pretty backwoodsy, because, I-grannies, I seen pitchers at the Lyric Theayter in the County Seat back home months ago, that they're showin' here now, fer the first time. Seems like if they made 'em here, they could run 'em off here first. But then, everything in Hollywood is different than it is anywhere's else...But don't git me wrong...I love it!