Americana

MANNERS & MORALS

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

P: Eight big Jap mines turned up along Oregon's coast* last week, were detonated by the Coast Guard, bringing the month's total to 14.

P: Forty-nine-year-old Alfred Nessler of Schenectady made a new world's record by keeping his pipe going without relighting for 87 minutes and 55 seconds. P: One out of every four workers in U.S. factories is a woman, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. In 1947, 3,100,000 women worked in factories, 800,000 more than in 1939.

P: Two eleven-year-old girls from Sarasota, Fla., one carrying an indigo snake, the other with a 6-ft. corn snake wrapped around her neck, appeared at the White House and asked to see the President. Gate guards held them at bay. The idea, said the girls, was to show the public that most snakes are not only harmless, but downright useful in killing rats and mice. P: Fed up with "high prices and no homes," 18 men, women & children sailed from Los Angeles in a 73-ft. tug to establish a colony on Chirote, a jungle isle 20 miles off the coast of Panama. P: In Manhattan, the nation's cage-bird breeders held their fourth national show with 2,021 entries, mostly canaries, including such varieties as curly feathered frills, big Norrich plain-heads. An Indian hill myna, who will outtalk a parrot any day, welcomed visitors with: "Hello, Joe! You can go to hell, too." P: Twenty men wearing American Legion caps burst into the La Crescenta, Calif, home of retired Fruit Grower Hugh Hardyman, who was holding a meeting of the local Democratic Club. The invaders addressed the audience as "Progressive Citizens of America," announced that they would allow ten minutes for the meeting to break up. Then they withdrew. Arrival of the police kept them from returning. P: Coughing, stamping and singing God Bless America, a group of veterans forced adjournment of a Communist rally in Bridgeport, Conn. Gerhart Eisler was the scheduled speaker.

*Oregon was the only state in World War II to suffer civilian war casualties (six killed by a Jap balloon bomb), and except for California, the only state to be shelled by Jap subs.

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