Americana

Notes on U.S. customs, habits, manners & morals:

P: Atlanta police, responding to pained protests, ordered a diaper laundry, to silence the musical horns on its trucks. The horns played Rock-a-bye Baby.

P: After five months of daylight saving, communities in 20 Eastern and Midwestern states went back to standard time.

P: Clyde B. Aitchison of the .Interstate Commerce Commission wryly suggested that witnesses before the commission ought to take the following oath: "I swear that what I am about to read has been faithfully and truthfully prepared for me by my attorneys."

P: On the Sac and Fox Indian Reservation at Tama, Iowa, Charlie Davenport took a close look at the squaw corn,/- noted that its husks were loose and thin, predicted that the U.S. would have a long Indian summer and that real winter would probably not set in until after Christmas.

P: At Smyrna, Ga., the Rev. George Almiran Gaines, 34, announced that he was in the third week of a four-week fast. He hoped to attract attention to his campaign for $9,000 to finish making the down payment on a $66,000 mansion to be used as an orphanage. The mansion was once owned by former movie star Colleen Moore. Said Mr. Gaines: "I have fasted many times before. I have never fasted for anything that God has not given me."

P: The FBI reported that rural crimes are on the increase (up 7.5% over 1946), urban crimes on the decrease (down 2.3%). In rural areas, rape cases alone jumped 13.6% in the first six months of 1947. As of April 30, the U.S. had 1.75 cops for every 1,000 inhabitants, an increase of 4.8%.

P: In Brooklyn, St. Luke's German Evangelical Reformed Church was about to move to new quarters. But before moving, the Rev. Benney Benson "deconsecrated" the old building with a service of his own devising (among other things, he threw a bottle of ink at an effigy of the devil). Reason: the athletic club which had bought the building planned to set up a bar on the premises.

P: At Staunton, Va., City Manager W. Guy Ancell hoped that, by raising the water level in the city's North River dam, he could save the $300,000 it would cost to build a new reservoir. So he tried bombing cumulus clouds with dry ice. But no rain fell. All that happened was that citizens started calling him "Old Rain-in-the Face" and an elderly constituent sternly advised him to "leave God's work alone and straighten out the traffic mess."

P: Walter Winchell caught up on hep-talk. Samples from the hot-jazz sector of Manhattan, with Winchell equivalents:

To scarf--to eat.

To fall out--to sleep.

Gassed--tickled pink.

To be nowhere--to be broke.

You're gone--you're great.

P: New Orleans businessmen bought a four-column ad in the New York Times to assure "worried friends" that, despite the hurricane (TIME, Sept. 29), their town was still on the map. To be sure, there were "some windows broken," but "reports of storm-damage were, fortunately, vastly overestimated." Said the come-hither caption on one of the ad's four post-storm pictures: "All the historic landmarks--the lacy balconies and secluded patios--still are here to delight our visitors."

P: At Atlantic City, Mrs. Edna Lamb, 23, a professional oyster opener from Maurice River, N.J., won the U.S. clam-eating championship by downing 186 cherry stones in 30 minutes. This was 30 clams better than the national record hung up last year by a jitney driver named Izzy Weintraub. Defending Champion Weintraub's score: 144.

/- A primitive, white-kerneled corn carefully guarded against crossbreeding with white man's corn.

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