Westinghouse Patent Pend. and Friends

The morning of his eighteenbirthday Westinghouse Patent Pend. Ainstruther hears his Ma say, "Wes, break a leg."He realizes it is carnie talktelling him to leave the desolate homestead to go out in the world to make hisfortune and send it back, that the other eight kid's ration of corn meal mushand goat's milk not be permanently interrupted. Unschooled he is well read fromhis Uncle Abernathy, an English Remittance Man's, library. He is then a Victorian mindedAmerican youth dropped into the bucolic glitz of San Diego, CA of the Thirties. His first acquaintance is Alyse, rambunctious daughter of an oil tycoon. Smitten sheoffers to help his quest but her mind is more on long white dresses and bridalbouquets. At Alyse'sadmission of her love of antiques they mine the defunct EnsenadaHotel, once a posh beanery, of its furnishings as items to sell on Antique Rowin San Diego. They are astonished to find inthe various armoires exotic birds and reptiles being smuggled in for the SanDiego Zoo, and finally a defunct Mafia gunman. They over come to make it, inWes' own words, "A typical American Horatio Aglae(sic) Success story".