Super-Colossal

Summer was here. In its outward manifestations it was about average. There had been heat--nothing sensational--but enough to make an undertaker sweat and a dog hunt shade. Big city subways were beginning to smell, tenement fire escapes were draped with bedding, park benches were solid with sitters. Bugs were back and committing suicide on a million windshields. Theaters boasted: "Cool Inside." The ice was about gone from high western lakes. Crab grass was invading lawns, screen doors already needed repairs, school was out and at least 53,487 small fry had been stung by bees or splotched by poison ivy.

But this year these were only minor effects. Summer, 1946 would be super-colossal. There would be more trips, more sunburn, more automobile wrecks, more beach bonfires, picnics, fancy diving and moonlit romances than ever before. The kissing in canoes, front-porch swings, automobiles, motorboats and tree-shaded lanes had already used up lipstick by the bucket. Baseball was wonderful again and dance bands were improving--grandstands and pavilions were crowded. Summer stock and borsch circuit vaudeville were splashed with big names. If the fishing was not the best in history, a million mosquito-bitten men would never admit it.

Pop & Ice Cream. Some of the props for this extravaganza were hard to find. The average pop drinker would get only 30 bottles of his favorite carbonated beverage (as compared to a prewar plenty of 50). Marshmallows were short. So was beer. Buying a fly rod called for more negotiation than ordering a pound of opium. But ice cream production was up; the U.S. would eat 850 million gallons (mostly chocolate and vanilla) as compared to 400 million in 1945. And the briefest, trickiest women's bathing suits yet appeared on window dummies and good-looking girls from coast to coast.

The average citizen didn't seem to care much, one way or another, about all these manifestations, just so he went somewhere. By last week--after months of frantic scheming--millions were vacationing. Long-shuttered estates of the rich were being reopened at Southampton, Easthampton and Newport. New England resorts and beach hotels from Bar Harbor to Sea Island were awash with guests. Most desk clerks were not discussing reservations--except for the summer of 1947.

The rest of the country was just as vacation crazy. Minnesota's lakes were rimmed with refugees from offices and kitchens. Western dude ranches were bright with the stiff new levis and multicolored shirts of amateur buckaroos. The bears in national parks were stealing garbage by the ton--the parks expected 25,000,000 visitors by autumn. Everywhere, summer homes, beach shacks, swimming clubs, tennis courts, golf courses were fully occupied.

Rivets & Crops. All this involved endless private problems in logistics. The average citizen solved them by backing out the family automobile, crossing his fingers and heading for the open road. Whatever else happened, gas pumps were full. Highways were acrawl with cars. By summer's end, 60 million people would have made trips in 20 million automobiles. But for all this brave show, motoring in 1946 was not unlike motoring in the day of the Stutz Bearcat. Motors failed. Tires collapsed. Lodgings were hard to find. Many a family took a tent and a gasoline stove and were glad of it; all learned to hunt tourists camps at noon, get up before dawn to start driving.

But for all the nation's vacation hunger, the summer of 1946 would be remembered for more than roadside photographs. In Manhattan and many a big city the half-forgotten chatter of rivet guns sounded once more from the bare girders of new buildings. Crops were making a comeback; in Iowa the corn was pushing up 'way ahead of last year.

And there was a renascence of sprightlier activity. In Los Angeles one Jim Moran, who had once sold an icebox to an Eskimo, was sitting on an ostrich egg. He wore a feather headdress, a pair of "hatching pants" and thought he would bring forth a small ostrich in 25 days. Newark had a "pants burglar," who came in through windows like a wraith, left a penny on the floor for his victims. In Ellensburg, Wash, an ex-cowpuncher named Larry Hightower was preparing to push a wheelbarrow around the world.

Other things were going on too--the Big Four's conference of foreign ministers was meeting in Paris and the Bikini explosion was soon to come. The average citizen was aware of both, but he was certain--now that the strikes seemed to be over--that the world was safe until fall. Also, his nose seemed to be peeling a little.

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