Waiting & Watching

"Venus," murmured Mrs. J. E. Thomson in San Francisco, as she gazed out the window at the night sky. "You don't know what's coming to you." Said Anthony Balestreri, a Milwaukee artist: "There's been a kind of awakening. I hope to God it continues. I noticed it in church a couple of weeks ago, when the priest mentioned Cuba. What we need is more of it. Instead of announcing from the pulpit that the bowling league will meet at such and such a time, let's hear how the news may affect us personally." Ray Hollenbeck, regional sales manager of a drug firm in Kansas City, shook his head in wonderment: "Who would have ever thought that an African postal clerk named Lumumba would be a bigger crisis here at home than farm parity?"

There had been space shots before and riots before, but last week the news somehow became very personal. "With all the funny names and the comic-opera behavior," said Myrtle Carr in Atlanta, "I'm not sure we really believed the stories about the Congo until we saw people fighting right in the United Nations." Customers on the television floor of Marshall Field's department store in Chicago watched the incredible U.N. riot on a floor model. Said a salesclerk: "They were stunned. They just stood there with their mouths open. They didn't believe it. One woman thought it was an old movie being rerun." In Atlanta, the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr., father of the Negro leader, got a call from a white matron after the U.N. riots: "Can't you do something about these people?" she demanded. "They're ruining our country!"

For some, the feeling of imminence was too much. "When I was younger and my husband was still alive," mused Mrs. Jeannette Monaghan in Milwaukee, "I saved headlines--the big ones, the important ones. I thought it would make learning history easier for the kids. It got to be a habit, and even after they finished school I still saved them, but I don't any more. History happens too fast now." Others were frankly bewildered. "What can you do? What can any single citizen do?" asked Mrs. John Freter in Los Angeles. "The events seem far beyond my control. I'm afraid I end up wondering what they're selling pot roast for this week."

TIME correspondents in city after city found Americans thinking well beyond pot roast as they measured personal involvement with news. Said Sam Weller, a Salt Lake City book salesman: "We're going in the right direction now. There is no need for the United States merely to be caught up in events. We can control them." And nearly every eye was on Washington to see whether "we" -- mean ing the President of the U.S. -- would. "God. I hope he's up to it, " said a Los Angeles housewife apprehensively. In Albuquerque, Alice Schaab, wife of a tax lawyer, was confident: "There's a funny feeling around now. We supported Kennedy, and now our Republican friends are pointedly coming over to say they approve of him so far. These events have people sort of waiting and watching. We feel the really big and serious things haven't come along yet."

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