Americana

MANNERS & MORALS

P: Slight, 42-year-old Jerome Morris felt irascibility building up inside him during his whole three months as the superintendent, meter reader and one-man complaint department of the Cleves (pop. 1,981), Ohio water works. He had to work ten, twelve, sometimes 24 hours a day at his $69-a-week job--partly because his predecessor had run off with $4,300 in water funds. Morris' work increased when drought taxed the water system's wells. On top of all this, the town paid him on the first and third Monday of the month, and he kept running out of money before the fortnight was up. Last week he not only failed to get an expected raise; he got no wages at all. His enemy, the calendar, had caused a three-week gap between paydays. He went home broke and disgruntled. There was nothing but macaroni and butter beans for dinner. He choked them down. But he rose during the night with a glitter in his eye, got his wrench, opened four hydrants and let every drop in the town's 183,000-gallon reservoir slosh merrily down the streets. "You're fired!" cried Cleves's Mayor Fred Pontious the next morning, while the town clerk worked to get up water pressure again. "I'd do it again," said ex-Water Superintendent Morris. He seemed spiritually refreshed.

P: The "fix-it-yourself" fad that has gripped U.S. homeowners is leaving a good many of them in need of fixing. The American Mutual Liability Insurance Co. announced that some 630,000 people suffer disabling injuries every year while engaged in home repair work.

P: The Arizona Cattle Growers Association, in collecting evidence of vandalism by deer and elk hunters, heard from one rancher who found a cake of soap floating in his galvanized iron cattle-watering trough this fall, and then discovered a pit containing wood ashes beneath it. A luxury-loving hunter, he deduced, had not only taken a bath in the trough but had carefully heated the water first. Another hunter, according to the association's files, rode out on the range in search of game, dismounted to reconnoiter, sighted an animal, shot it, rushed up, knife in hand, to slit his quarry's throat, and discovered that he had done in his own horse.

P: Five Spanish-American citizens of Winslow, Ariz. (pop. 6,500) complained in federal court that people of Mexican or Latin descent are permitted use of the town swimming pool on Wednesdays only, while "Anglos" are allowed to swim on the other six days of the week. The pool's water, they added, is always changed on Thursday.

P: With Christmas approaching, the 3,000-grave Henno Memorial Pets Cemetery at Glen Ellen, Calif., prepared for its gayest season of the year. The Henno cemetery's clients maintain a high degree of active pet-remembrance: one departed dog is interred on an innerspring mattress, a good many other animals, birds & snakes are buried in infants' caskets and have granite or marble headstones with such inscriptions as "Resting on the Trail" and "Our Baby Girl." Over the holidays, however, many survivors also set up decorated Christmas trees or holly wreaths for the "little sleepers," and one San Francisco Chinese regularly spreads a post-mortem feast of cupcakes, fruit, lamb chops, boned chicken, hamburger, malted-milk tablets and Coca-Cola over the graves of two defunct dogs.

P: During 21 years of scrabbling for a living in the rough, picturesque Black Hills of South Dakota, Negro Rancher Roland Kercheval and his wife Beatrice have "never met" Jim Crow. Kercheval, in fact, is considered to be of pioneer stock--his grandmother was General George Custer's cook at Fort Dodge, Kans.; his father came to the Black Hills in the gold rush of '76. His three children have won innumerable ribbons in the Pilger Valley Gophers 4-H club, and the two oldest are noted locally for their musical talent. This year, nevertheless, his wife began urging that they move away from their half section on the Elk Mountains' rim--life was hard, their three-room cabin was uncomfortable. Last week it looked as though the Kerchevals were licked; the cabin burned down. But on the next day a neighbor brought them temporary housing: two sheep wagons stocked with food and clothing and beds all neatly made up. They had offers of 22 stoves. Roofing, cement, building materials appeared from nowhere; neighbors arrived with a tractor to start construction on their new house. "He's been looking for an excuse to stay--now he's got it," said Mrs. Kercheval. "But I want to stay, too." Said her husband: "I'll have to stay here the rest of my life to show them my appreciation."

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