Tale of Two Towns

Gatesville, Tex. (pop. 3,300) and Geneva, N.Y. (pop. 16,000) are each having one of the strange experiences which war has brought to U.S. towns as well as U.S. men.

Gatesville people were asked to oblige the Army by billeting 285 officer-students while a nearby camp was being built. The soldiers agreed to pay $10 a month for room. Mrs. Ercell Brooks provided beds for five (she had to buy two new beds at $20 each and $40 worth of linen, had to put two beds in the dining room and eat in the kitchen). "They are fine to have in the house," she said. Horace Jackson put up a colonel in his guest room and two lieutenants in the garage. Editor Mat Jones put up a captain and his wife: "We just gave them the run of the house and we got along fine." A Negro couple boarded three Negro officers. A month of rain turned the ground to sticky gumbo; it became regulation for the soldiers to take off their muddy shoes before entering a house. "They're real gentlemen," the townspeople said. Gatesville gave the auditorium for lectures on tank warfare and women ran the high-school cafeteria for the soldiers. In return, the grateful visitors entertained Gatesville at a review, barbecue and dance. Everybody had a good time.

Geneva, instead of having a 10% influx of earnest young Americans learning to be soldiers, had a 100% influx of roughneck workmen--15,000 men, any sort of tough riffraff whom contractors could hire at high pay to build a big naval training station on Seneca Lake. All Geneva's spare rooms were let; cots filled the City Hall, an old movie house, a dance hall, hotel corridors. The once quiet, orderly town nearly went mad. Buses were so jammed that sometimes drivers had to threaten unruly crowds with wrenches in order to make them let passengers out. Decent bars became clamorous dives. Honest citizens dared not let their daughters go out after dark. More policemen were hired but holdups and disorders mounted. Staid, tradition-loving Geneva felt its life was ruined. Everybody was miserable.

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