Americana

P: The two surviving members of the New York Department of the Grand Army of the Republic (one aged 106, the other 104) decided to get together for its 82nd annual encampment, then dissolve it forever.

P: Chicago landlords were being offered the following "inducements" by apartment hunters: free dental care for life, a refrigerator, a television set, a year's free voice and piano lessons, a set of bathroom fixtures, contact lenses, an outboard motor, $500 worth of interior decorating.

P: Baltimore, which had prayed for the Confederacy while Union troops held the city during the Civil War, reasserted its sentimental attachment to the South. Confederate flags flew and V.M.I, cadets paraded in full dress. Reason for the celebration: dedication of what Baltimore believed to be the "only double equestrian statue in the world"--a bronze work depicting the parting of Robert E. Lee and "Stonewall" Jackson on the eve of the Battle of Chancellorsville. In the dedicatory oration Douglas Southall Freeman, author of Lee's Lieutenants, called them the "greatest American combat team."

P: The Gideons added a realistic touch to 2,000 Bibles which they presented to Chicago's Stevens Hotel--the cover of each book was alcohol-proof.

P: The captain and first mate of a Chesapeake Bay ferry zigzagged among anchored ships for three spectacular hours while passengers donned life jackets and awaited the worst. The boisterous pair finally ran the ferry aground, were arrested for operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of liquor.

P: The Public Health Service announced that U.S. mental hospitals are crowded 16.3% beyond capacity.

P: A Hempstead, N.Y. judge ordered one Anthony Koskakowski to cease blowing his automobile horn at girls on the street. At the press of a button, the horn cried "Woo-woo!"

P: Under the hypnotic influence of the beauty salon and the fashion magazine, U.S. women had started wearing their hair short. Harper's Bazaar explained: "Manes and mops are being chopped . . . and shaped . . . into slicks and swirls. The wisps of the feathercut are out of mind. In every case, the look is small, the finish is polish."

P: After gossip columnists haughtily cried "Bad taste!" Ciro's nightclub in Hollywood banned Comic Peter Lind Hayes's newest skit. Hayes and his wife had been imitating President Truman and daughter Margaret. Hayes played the Missouri Waltz and pretended to sell neckties. His wife kept crying, "You're living in the past!" Said Hayes, answering his critics: "We tried it at the hardware convention in Cincinnati and they kept coming back night after night."

P: Friends of a Fort Worth bookkeeper named George Stephens heard him preach his own funeral oration--from records he had prepared before his death. Stephens' voice was charged with emotion as it began, calm as it concluded: "There will be no burial service." His body was sent to a medical school for dissection.

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