Americana

P: After two months of almost unbroken heat, the weather got hotter & hotter. A 40 & 8 band from Flint, Mich, marched in an American Legion parade in Detroit in diapers and baby hats. In big-city slums, thousands slept on rooftops and fire escapes. Then over the weekend, a cold air mass moved in at last and made life bearable.

P: Bookkeeper Joseph Binns, 45, of Long Beach, Calif., went to jail last week to serve a 30-day sentence for stealing $1,272 from the used-car firm that employed him. When he gets out, said Employer Douglas Dennard, Binns will not only get his job back but will be presented with a $100-a-month raise to help him pay back the embezzled funds.

P: Now that unemployment-insurance payments were costing the State of New York $7,500,000 a week, the State Labor Department made a harsh decision: from now on, the jobless would have to stay home instead of having their checks sent to vacation spots from the Catskills to Florida.

P: The nation's newest parlor pastime has its hazards, the convention of the National Chiropractic Association was told in Chicago. Television viewers who slump in their chairs invite "telesquat"--aches in the back. Those who strain for a better look are suckers for "telecrane"--neckache, headache and eyestrain.

P: Ohio, mother of Presidents, is the only one of the 48 states which does not have a street named after it in the nation's capital. But when Ohioans last week proposed renaming Georgetown's Canal Road, the Georgetown Citizens' Association rose up in wrath. It had been Canal Road since George Washington's day, and the Georgetowners wanted to keep it that way.

P: The liner Italia steamed into New York harbor last week with some unwanted cargo--six stowaways and a wayward Philadelphia war veteran named George Saddich. Saddich, complained Captain Ugo Chinca, had taken to throwing things overboard: ten fire hoses, six fancy ashtrays, two fire extinguishers, ten 50-lb. potted laurel trees, several dishes--and himself. Of all these, only Saddich was recovered from the sea.

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