Americana

Notes on U.S. customs, habits, manners & morals as reported in the U.S. press:

P: Daylight Saving Time was back, mostly in the urban East--many rural towns and 32 whole states in the South and West still refused to have any truck with it.

P: Summing up a batch of recent studies comparing U.S. women of today with those of 50 years ago, the New York Times found that women now are taller and thinner, live longer but get grey earlier, have bigger feet, eat less but do more heavy drinking, are less prudish, less weepy and less moral, marry earlier, cook better meals but make poorer mothers, are much less satisfied "with their lot as women." Independently, Dr. Marynia F. Farnham, Manhattan psychiatrist and coauthor of Modern Woman: The Lost Sex, proclaimed that U.S. women are the unhappiest in the world.

P: In Barberton, Ohio, 1,200 employees of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. walked out on strike, explaining that, after more than three months of fruitless bargaining for a new contract, they were suffering from "negotiations fatigue."

P: The rumor of the week was that a man could get a new Ford car in exchange for a 1943 copper penny. Thousands of citizens bothered Ford dealers to find out if it was true. It wasn't. (And only steel-zinc pennies were minted in 1943.)

P: After many a swan song, Manhattan's venerable old Murray Hill Hotel, a seedy symbol of the Mauve Decade, finally closed its doors. J. P. Morgan Sr. used to sip coffee in the Murray Hill's lobby; Mark Twain often used its decorous billiard room. Now its eight stories of brownstone will be torn down. In its place (on Park Avenue a block south of Grand Central) will go a 30-story office building,

P: In Philadelphia, two cops who spotted a stolen car were shot dead by the driver, William Hallowell, 23, an orphan reared from infancy by Child Psychologist Dr.

Dorothy Kern Hallowell. When Dr. Hallowell visited her adopted son, wounded in the shooting, he screamed: "Get away from here. I want to die alone."

P: In Chicago, the National Restaurant and National Coffee Associations announced plans to spend upwards of $10,000 to find a sure-fire method for making a good cup of coffee.

P: In Manhattan, a survey conducted by the Allied Restaurant & Entertainment Industries showed that, day in & day out, hamburgers outsell all other menu items.

P: Since Joe Palooka's girl, Ann Howe, got lost in the mountains of Wyoming after a plane crash last December, Cartoonist Ham Fisher has been flooded with more than 40,000 anxious inquiries and offers of help. They came from Senators, mayors, police chiefs, Legion posts. Even Harry Truman asked, when Fisher visited the White House: "When's Joe going ta find that girl?" By last week, Ham Fisher had had more than enough. In a special panel in his cartoon strip he assured Palooka fans: "JOE WILL FIND HER."

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