Americano

Notes on U.S. customs, habits, manners & morals:

P:With earnings dropping sharply from wartime peaks, New York's taxi owners resolved to ask their irascible drivers to shave more often, dress better, and substitute a smile for the wartime snarl.

Small fry spat out their bubble gum and rushed to get a new bubble-blowing outfit which produces bubbles four to five feet in diameter, and with the consistency of Cellophane. One shortcoming: when punctured, the bubbles collapse with a despondent whoosh instead of a pop.

P:Illustrator Norman Rockwell roundly endorsed the suggestion of Massachusetts' Representative Edith Nourse Rogers that U.S. paper money be printed in different colors as an aid in distinguishing one denomination from another. The Treasury's response was guarded. Said one official: "It's questionable whether there aren't more color-blind people in this country than there are illiterates."*

P:In East Boston, the 33,400-ton battleship, U.S.S. New Mexico, onetime "queen" of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and veteran of two wars, went up for sale as scrap.

P:Some 1,200,000 copies of the Manhattan telephone directory were distributed to subscribers, including an extra supply for booths in Times Square, Grand Central and Pennsylvania Station, where the average book lasts only two days (because readers tear out the pages). Students noted the shortest listing (a firm called "A"), an increase in "atomic" listings to 35 from last year's 19, including the "Atomic Undergarment Co."

*Number of illiterates: 10,000,000.

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