Saturday Nights

Before taxes took all the new payrolls away, before rationing got too tough, the people had decided to enjoy themselves. Some men were troubled that the spirit of sacrifice was not abroad (see box). But whether or not men took the war to heart in every town that had a wartime boom, men followed their instinct: eat. drink and make merry for tomorrow we fight. There every night is Saturday night and Saturday night is New Year's Eve. For example:

Gambling Seattle. Staid Seattle, its population swollen from 368,000 to 508,000 by war workers, has had twice as many arrests for drunkenness in six months as it had all last year. The city has its first successful burlesque house in 20 years. Customers stand in line at restaurants and theaters, pack the out-of-town roadhouses, keep the 25-c- slot machines clicking. Fourth Avenue and Pike Street, the hub of downtown Seattle, is often jampacked nearly 24 hours a day.

On weekdays, many people save their cars and tires, but they save for pleasure: for weekend trips to Longacres racetrack (twelve miles away), Mount Rainier National Park (100 miles), the British Columbia trout country (490 miles). Gambling is so heavy and widespread that violent protests recently came from a man who is no long-nosed reformer: young Pete Terzick, editor for the Lumber & Sawmill Workers' Union paper.

Champagne in Portland. Nearly 50,000 men now earn $45-$115 a week in the shipyards at Portland, Ore. Nearby taverns do land-office business cashing shipworkers' checks on Thursday (for a dime or 20-c- fee), then selling them beer and the privilege of playing pinball machines. The Idle Hour Billiard Parlor cashes so many checks that it has installed a bullet-proof booth, with armed guards standing by.

Portland's big cut-rate grocer, Fred Meyer, took his stock of champagne down from the top shelf, sold more in midsummer than he ever had at New Year's. At night the greyhound races are packed. At the same time, one Portland bank has ten times as many savings accounts as last year.

Solid Senders in Chicago. When traffic lights in Chicago's Loop flash red Saturday night, cars often line up for a solid block. At the Sherman Hotel, customers stand eight deep at the long Celtic Bar; downstairs in the Panther Room, where a normal New Year's crowd is 1,100, nearly 2,500 swing-loving youngsters cramp in to hear the solid-sending of Glenn Miller's band.

The crowds spill over into North Clark Street's honky-tonks. Sitting six to a table meant for two, they whistle at strip-teasers; until the closing hour, downtown Chicago jumps.

No Cooks In New Orleans. Oldtimers say they have never seen New Orleans, always a merry town, play so hard. The beach resort at Lake Pontchartrain did more business before July 4 than it had done all last year. New Orleans matrons, hard put to find servants, laughed last week at the story of a housewife who went to the Negro slums to look for a cook. She asked two Negro women sitting on a rickety porch if they knew of one, was told: "No. ma'am; we're looking for one ourselves."

The Twinges. In the U.S. conscience, with its original tincture of Puritanism, such things were troubling last week. Well they might be if they meant that the U.S. did not know its war was serious. Yet many of those who celebrated were men who that day had worked harder than they had worked in years--building a ship, a tank, a plane. And perhaps the money that went down the drain on Saturday night was less likely to breed inflation than the money that went into the bank. Somewhere in thoughts of those who reveled and of those who stood aghast was probably the same thought: the real pain of war--the pain of shortages, the pain of privation, the pain of wounds and death--would all too soon be felt.

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