Lorraine Hunter always maintained that she was a Western girl. If she
reached the point of furnishing details she would tell you that she had
ridden horses from the time that she could walk, and that her father
was a cattle-king of Idaho, whose cattle fed upon a thousand hills.
When she was twelve she told her playmates exciting tales about
rattlesnakes. When she was fifteen she sat breathless in the movies
and watched picturesque horsemen careering up and down and around the
thousand hills, and believed in her heart that half the Western
pictures were taken on or near her father's ranch. She seemed to
remember certain landmarks, and would point them out to her companions
and whisper a desultory lecture on the cattle industry as illustrated
by the picture. She was much inclined to criticism of the costuming
and the acting.
At eighteen she knew definitely that she hated the very name Casa
Grande. She hated the narrow, half-lighted hallway with its "tree"
where no one ever hung a hat, and the seat beneath where no one ever
sat down. She hated the row of key-and-mail boxes on the wall, with
the bell buttons above each apartment number. She hated the jangling
of the hall telephone, the scurrying to answer, the prodding of
whichever bell button would summon the tenant asked for by the caller.
She hated the meek little Filipino boy who swept that ugly hall every
morning. She hated the scrubby palms in front. She hated the pillars
where the paint was peeling badly. She hated the conflicting odours
that seeped into the atmosphere at certain hours of the day. She hated
the three old maids on the third floor and the frowsy woman on the
first, who sat on the front steps in her soiled breakfast cap and
bungalow apron. She hated the nervous tenant who occupied the
apartment just over her mother's three-room-and-bath, and pounded with
a broom handle on the floor when Lorraine practised overtime on
chromatic scales.
At eighteen Lorraine managed somehow to obtain work in a Western
picture, and being unusually pretty she so far distinguished herself
that she was given a small part in the next production. Her glorious
duty it was to ride madly through the little cow-town "set" to the
post-office where the sheriff's posse lounged conspicuously, and there
pull her horse to an abrupt stand and point quite excitedly to the
distant hills. Also she danced quite close to the camera in the
"Typical Cowboy Dance" which was a feature of this particular
production.
Lorraine thereby earned enough money to buy her fall suit and coat and
cheap furs, and learned to ride a horse at a gallop and to dance what
passed in pictures as a "square dance."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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