The Visigoths

Except for the high-speed antics of hot-rodders and last fall's normal quota of noisy football parties, U.S. youth had been relatively quiet ever since college pantie raids ran their nylon-pennoned course last spring. But last week the volcanic nature of the young erupted in two curious tribal gatherings--one at Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the other at Balboa, Calif.--as thousands of students, freed from their books by Easter vacations, swarmed seal-like to the two towns' beaches to swim, fight, drink, woo, bask in the sun and howl at the southern moon.

Fort Lauderdale, a quiet resort town (summer pop. 43,000; winter pop. 115,000), had been drawing small crowds of collegians since 1940. This year 10,000 young men & women leaped into automobiles, scorched the highways south, and spilled into Fort Lauderdale--varsity Visigoths entering a stucco Rome.

As darkness fell, they clotted along Atlantic Boulevard near the ocean, blocking traffic, emitting their distinctive cries, and sniffing the heady air of freedom. Dawn--and every subsequent dawn--brought proof that they had not been idle. Greek letters appeared on the municipal water tower, coconuts crashed through windows, a dead shark materialized in the Horizon Hotel's swimming pool, and two students were pinched for swimming in the buff. At 1 :30 on Easter morning a car driven by a boy from Ohio careened into the wrong lane and hit a girl from Missouri and a boy from Delaware. Both died.

In California, Balboa and nearby Balboa Island (combined pop. 4,873) were inundated by an even greater flood of noisy youth--35,000 boys & girls from schools in the Los Angeles area. For ten days they swam, sailed, necked, danced, drank, clogged traffic with their cars. Up the coast at Palos Verdes, a youthful promoter got a big crowd of youngsters at a dollar a head to watch a gasoline-drenched jalopy set afire and pushed off a cliff.

Balboa's harried cops arrested 36 minors for possession of liquor, 122 for lesser offenses, and fired 150 others back home to their parents for safekeeping. Before the week ended, many an irate citizen in both Balboa and Fort Lauderdale was crying that all the tourist money in the world didn't compensate for the uproar.

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