1943-44: Driving from NYC to LA?

Just rereading the late Ellery Queen novel And On the Eighth Day (ghosted by SF writer and editor Avram Davidson, 1964). In it Ellery the character, a pro detective story writer, takes a job writing propaganda films for the war effort in 1943-44. The government tells him it makes more sense to give him funds for gasoline so he can drive to L.A., than to find him a space on a train or plane. He goes out, has a mild nervous breakdown due to overwork, and starts back in the spring of '44 -- whereupon the real adventure/mystery begins. (Trust me, if you've read other EQs, this one is very different.)

Anyway: We're not told about his route. How would he have made the trip in his ancient racing Duesenberg? There were no Interstates then. I'd guess he'd have taken Route 66 as it "winds from Chicago to L.A." But what highways might he have used from NYC to Chicago?

Also, we're told he leaves on Dec. 27 of 1943, and arrives on New Year's Eve. Five days to do 3000 miles? Today, 5 9-hour days, averaging 70 mph, is doable. But back then?

Here's a map from 1945 that covers the better part of a NYC Chicago trip. Lots to choose from.

It doesn't seem possible to do the coast to coast trip in that small amount of time back then.

Hmm. NYC to Harrisburg, then Pittsburgh, then out through Canton, OH, and westward.

Well, part of the setup for Ellery's breakdown in the story is that he arrives in L.A. already fatigued, and tells his hosts that he can't seem to shake it off. Then several months of writing and endlessly rewriting propaganda screenplays really finishes him. (His boss finds him typing his father's name, "Richard Queen," over and over again on a sheet of paper. Perhaps Stanley Kubrick read this and was inspired with the "All work and no play" scene in The Shining years later.) So we gather that Ellery pushed himself waaay too hard on the drive west.

The Government would also have to have given him a special Supplemental Mileage Ration to cover the gas, and possibly a certificate for new set of tires. I imagine driving that Duesenberg coast to coast would have consumed a huge amount of fuel. Better he should have traded it in for a Willys Americar (30 mpg.) And he most certainly would not have been allowed to drive 70mph at any stretch of that trip -- there was a federal 35mph speed limit in effect during the war years, and every town along the route bristled with speed traps.



He would likely have taken the Lincoln Highway from New York to Chicago, traveling thru New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois. Much of that route was made up of US 30, and a good part of the route was eventually subsumed into I-80. Conceivably he could have taken the Lincoln Highway all the way to San Francisco, and from there south to Los Angeles, avoiding 66 entirely.

I've ridden a bus from New York to Los Angeles, and the eastern portion of the route followed I-80. There are dozens and dozens of pokey little towns along that route, all of which a pre-interstate driver would have to go thru. You didn't' really hit wide-open road until you got into the western part of the trip, so New York to Chicago alone would have been enough to exhaust him.

Lizzie, as a big EQ fan, I know you'll have traced out the route he takes in a much earlier novel, Egyptian Cross Mystery, chasing a fleeing murderer first in his open car, and then chartering an airplane (in 1932!!). That's why Harrisburg stuck in my memory -- that and Steubenville, OH, among other points, are on the route he takes to Chicago.

Yep, I have very strong memories of both of those towns from my own trips. I got food poisioning from some bad fried chicken in Harrisburg, which I think of everytime somebody mentions the name. Effingham, Ill. is another town that sticks in my memory, but I don't remember why. Probably something else I ate.

LizzieMaine said:

Yep, I have very strong memories of both of those towns from my own trips. I got food poisioning from some bad fried chicken in Harrisburg, which I think of everytime somebody mentions the name. Effingham, Ill. is another town that sticks in my memory, but I don't remember why. Probably something else I ate.

Click to expand...

Possibly the "effing" part of the name . . .?

A kind of haunting book, especially when you run across it in the midst of the other Ellery Queen stories.

There were a number of "utopian" communities in the California desert, Llano del Rio was one and Zzyzx was another though it was created around the time this story was set. There's no lack of odd little communes in the US and some of their very New Age ideas go back to the early 19th Century.