From these casual jottings it will be seen that there is hardly anything wrong with the Broadmoor that a first-class revolution in the kitchen will not remedy.
One more Colorado note: to the effect that the old-time sort of wellworn hospitality is not confined alone to the great cities of the plains and foothills, but flourishes with amazing vitality way over in back of the mountains. There is, for example, the excellent Strator Hotel in the still-frontier town of Durango, a Victorian structure dating from before the turn of the century where jack boots in the lobby are the rule rather than the exception, and the individual porterhouse steaks tip the scales at four pounds each. The Strator, whose directing genius is “Miss Alice,” a considerable local power in a variety of circles, possesses a new wing of streamlined, air-conditioned, modern apartments whose taste and comfort would raise the eyebrows of Prince Serge Obolensky of the Plaza. Bonded bourbon in its bar is two bits for two ounces and there are some rooms whose view gives on the wonderful, narrow-gauge railroad yards of the all-powerful Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad. For some people the Strator is heaven and that includes this department.
Now that the shooting is over, and loyalty to God and country is no longer synonymous with a toleration of the infamous service and shabby merchandise so long excused by the phrase, “There's a war on,” it is possible to comment on some aspects of passenger travel by train during the years of the great hysteria. Quite aside from a preposterous military whimsy which sent the embattled personnel of the land on a sort of Cook's tour of the countryside and utilized most of the available passenger equipment to transport Texas cowboys to Kennebunkport and Minnesota farmers to Miami, not all the railroads came out of the war of the Pullmans with flying colors so far as the traveling public is concerned.
The food and dining-car service, generally speaking, alienated vast numbers of potential postwar patrons who were snatched on every hand by the flying machine companies which maintained a uniform courtesy and fed their passengers for free. Many railroads, and to name names, the Pennsy in exaggerated particular, indulged their virulent hatred of the demon passenger to a degree of insolence and starvation combined. Nor is there any validity in their argument that steaks and strawberries, pheasant and fine service were not available. It is disproved instanter by the railroads and trains which kept the faith and provided comfort and good food throughout a period of general abuse and imposition: The Baltimore and Ohio, the New Haven, the Twentieth Century Limited, and the City of San Francisco.
The most conspicuous example of train management which refused to be confounded by the idiocies of Washington fiat and throughout the entire war maintained unabated its excellent menus and glittering service was the Century. At no time did it lack steaks or butter, good whisky or the details of luxury which have always been associated with its name, and it was apparent that the executives of the New York Central System were determined that, come what might, they were going to maintain the decencies on one train at least.
By contrast the Pennsy's Broadway management indulged its almost pathological hatred of passengers to a point where its frankly inferior food was served in portions which would arouse protest in any municipal almshouse. This department was, upon one occasion, served as a dinner hors d'oeuvre on this pride of the road's luxury flyers, a single sardine and was assured by the steward that this was the regulation helping.
The railroads, generally speaking, are in a position where they are going to have to justify their existence as agencies of passenger travel in the face of the most luxurious imaginings on the part of the air lines. If they abandon the idea of making 1000 per cent profit on every sardine served and get together a good five-dollar dinner for seventy-five cents, they will be a long way toward holding their friends. This practice was common in the old days of cut-throat competition among the railroads themselves and its revival is plainly on the cards. By Federal enactment the rail-roads are prevented from giving away anything in the form of actual transportation but there is no law to prevent their serving fresh caviar, Scotch grouse, and flaming soufflés for a dollar and a quarter.
As this bulletin is rushed smoking to the compositors, it can be reported that the Manhattan theater season, to date inexpressibly in the dumps so far as new shows are concerned, has come to life with at least one new and uproarious attraction, the long-awaited State of the Union by the team of Russel Crouse and Howard Lindsay. Produced by Leland Hayward and staged by Bretaigne Windust at the Hudson, the arrangement is the answer to a theatergoer's prayer for something new, valid, and tumultuous, and it is, of course, the flaming success of the Broadway moment. It is amusing to know that, already swollen beyond the pale of avarice with royalties on other sumptuous smash hits, the Messrs. Lindsay and Crouse rationed shares in the ownership of State of the Union to such of their friends and Broadway worthies as had not hitherto profited by being financially associated in Life with Father or Arsenic and Old Lace.
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