Americana

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

P: In Lumberton, N.C., James Bledsoe, a 33-year-old member of the Croatan Indians, was jailed for slashing two of his fellow tribesmen and drinking their blood.

P: U.S. teen-agers were in the throes of a new fad: squirting each other (and unwary teachers) with repeating water pistols. The junior gunmen got the idea from some of their fathers, who used the same weapons on women's legs at the American Legion Convention in Manhattan. But they had improved on the older generation's technique: they loaded up with ink, perfume, turpentine, ammonia, oil, whiskey, beer and bleaching fluids.

P: In Cincinnati, a poll revealed that 30% of the townspeople had never heard of the United Nations.*

P: The National Office of Vital Statistics reported two new alltime records: 2,285,539 U.S. marriages and 613,400 divorces in 1946. This was six times as many marriages and 60 times as many divorces as were reported in the postwar year 1867.

P: In Des Moines, Iowa, a 21-year-old mail-carrier named William C. Woodward testified that his wife did not want a baby, was granted a divorce decree which gave him custody of their unborn child.

P: In the Colorado Rockies, three zoo-bred bear cubs, Solo, Shorty and Blacky, from the Denver zoo, sat up and begged for peanuts when they saw three hunters. The hunters shot them.

P: In Washington, a famed chemist, Dr. James I. Hoffman, gave a sure-fire method for thwarting Halloween window-waxers: rubbing a thin coat of vaseline on glass surfaces before the young fiends arrive. Once windows are waxed, he explained, they can best be cleaned with gasoline, kerosene or turpentine.

* For news of other ignorance last week, see EDUCATION.

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