Nylon Wonderland

"Do you think anyone like us could ever have a house like that?" a Polish housewife asked her husband as they stood fn Poznan gazing wistfully at a snug, gadget-filled house typical of middle-income U.S. suburbia. "Not in a thousand years!" came the answer from another gawper near by. "And even if they let you have it, the housing authorities would jam two other families in with you."

The speakers were just two of the 50,000 Poles who each day last week filed in from all over the nation to look in wonder at the U.S. exhibit in Communist Poland's annual International Trade Fair.

Under the Dome. It was in the wake of the same fair last year that the riots broke out which started Poland on its path of quasi-independence from Moscow. Present for the first time at Poznan, the U.S. exhibit was by all odds the hit of the show, and dominated the entire fa11" grounds. Except for the model house and some outdoor turntables on which stood a gleaming selection of U.S. cars (with prices posted), it was housed beneath the gossamer translucence of one of Designer Buckminster Fuller's nylon-covered geodesic domes, a silvery half-grapefruit rising above the fair grounds a full 50 feet. Forced for the first time to take potluck instead of arrogantly demanding the choicest location, the Russians' exhibit stood glumly at the far end of the grounds, and attracted thousands fewer. Even those who came stared apathetically at the cans of "Khrushchev corn," the cream-colored Volga car with its white-walled tires so obviously painted, and the dresses and fabrics which Poland's women sniffed at as far below local standards.

But at the U.S. exhibit the Poles swarmed in at 9 every morning, often staying with sandwiches to "have lunch in America," as they put it. Towards the end of the week, when the numbers rose to an average of 20,000 every hour, the Americans were forced to close the mezzanine for fear it might collapse.

Do-it-Yourself. Once inside the U.S. dome, the Poles were confronted with an outlay of consumer goods as inviting as a mirage in Wonderland--the output of 323 different manufacturers. There were hi-fi radios, sewing machines with pretty demonstrators to show how they worked, a whopping big jukebox blaring out the latest in rock 'n' roll, washers, driers, electric ranges, electric can openers, a continuous fashion show with girls modeling U.S. ready-to-wear dresses at $20 and under. Out in the back of the model house was a home workshop stuffed with power tools which none of the Poles could really believe were just for do-it-yourself fun and not state property. Their womenfolk gaped in equal unbelief at a huge display of elaborate American toys--no Communist state can afford to waste production means on such frivolity as that--and the kids themselves reveled in a forest of vending machines, happily buying Cokes, candy and gum with nickels and dimes passed out gratis by the management.

A few hard-line Polish Communists dismissed the display, gathered together by the U.S. Department of Commerce, as mere vulgar American ostentation. The Polish Fair management was outspoken in its disappointment at the lack of heavy industrial machinery. But Mr. and Mrs. Poland, trooping through this transplanted sampling of American life with their hearts in their eyes, had no complaints beyond the wish for more. Even the appalling blare of the American music seemed to cheer them. "Where we've been for so, long," said one, "a choice of such music, as that could mean freedom."

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