On November 25th we spent time examining Los Angeles more than a century after John Mac Twitchell’s trip there in the spring of 1923. You can read Mac’s original letters of his trip in Mac 1923 Trip to Los Angeles.
Travel and Lodging
His letters mention visiting the following places during his few weeks in LA.
Mac’s train ride, Friday March 11, to Saturday morning the 12, 1923 from New Mexico likely terminated in Los Angeles. He immediately visited friends from Colorado in Venice that afternoon and stayed with them. He saw numerous friends from southern Colorado while in LA.
On Sunday, his friends took him in their Cole Eight a “luxury automobile manufactured by the Cole Motor Car Company, featuring a powerful flathead V8 engine,” to visit most of the towns around LA.
On Monday they took him to Long beach where he stayed with a friend for the remainder of this time at 218 Pine Ave, Long Beach.
In 2025, the tall building on the right is the current 218 Pine Ave. The building on the left has a masonic lodge logo on the top, giving a sense it might have been there in 1923. The brick building across Broadway down the street might also have been there.
Entertainment and Work
While in LA sees “Jackie Cooran in Oliver Twist. All of us were disappointed in the play.” This may have been Jackie Coogan in the 1922 “Oliver Twist” movie. He later sees Gloria Sawnson in “My American Wife.” “It was fair but the shows as a rule are punk.” He mentions a baseball game that was rained out.
To earn some cash, he “decided to sell Eureka Vacuums cleaners. Just started out yesterday morning, but am having good luck so far and seeing the city, houses, and people.” He sold one each of two days and had more demonstrations, earning $11 per sale, but he didn’t think he would take up the selling profession.
“We are rooming in the main part of the city as it is much more convenient to work and play and not enough more expensive to count. We are paying forty dollars a month room rent for one room with a double bed, with lavatory but no bath in the room.” The rent seem “awful” but there simply was not enough housing, and the cost of transportation if out of the city was high.
He learned from the newspaper of a policeman that was killed nearby, and connected it to hearing two shots and yells of pain the night before. He doubted the newspaper’s report of it being self-inflicted accident. “However it does not affect us a great deal one way or the other as it simply disturbed our slumbers some what.”
In the end he concluded, “Am glad to see California or rather a small portion of it and would like to live here but do not find anything particularly attractive to do so far.” Professionally it seems his general impression was that most vets “seem to be doing very well but do not need any help. It would be expensive to try and get started” in LA itself. Within a week of arrival his mind has turned to going to visit Utah, waiting to “hear from” them while there.
Departing in LA Traffic
On April 23, 1923 he writes from Utah about his departure. “Fred and I started out in the flier at five o’clock in order to avoid traffic. It was fine that time in the morning, Fred drove and I read the road map. All went fine until we reached San Bernardino at eight o’clock.”
On our visit to follow Mac in Long Beach, it took us over two hours to travel from Santa Ana to Long Beach and back again. Traffic today would make it difficult to see all of those cities he mentions in one day except perhaps on Christmas. Besides the weather, the other constant for the last century seems to be LA traffic.
Twitchell Ancestry 
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