Riotous Fun

Sacking a city has always been one of man's favorite forms of fun. About the only peacetime substitute is a good riot--and riots just don't happen every day of the week. They are beginning to happen on Labor Day weekend, though, regularly enough to constitute a new teen-age folkway. This year's rash of riots included:

> A series of brawls in the Falmouth-Hyannis area of Cape Cod, Mass., in which 160 young people were arrested --among them James Collins, 19, from Wethersfield, Conn., on charges of killing Stephen Gilligan of Newton, Mass, (whom he had never seen before) by hitting him so hard with a table leg that pieces of it penetrated his skull.

> A teen-age free-for-all at Hampton Beach, N.H., in which the town police force had to be augmented by firemen, state troopers and military police, using fire hoses, tear gas and six police dogs.

> The arrest of 60 youths at Lake George, N.Y., for public intoxication, disorderly conduct and drinking on the street--a relief to the authorities compared with the serious rioting in 1961.

>The arrest of 135 youngsters at Ocean City, Md., accused of violating a midnight-to-6 a.m. curfew, which the city council had imposed to avoid repetition of last year's riot.

>A revel of hot-rodders at Indianapolis' Raceway Park that took 25 state troopers to control.

>A riot of 2,000 teen-agers at Seaside, Ore., eventually dispersed by club-swinging police and National Guardsmen, who made 50 arrests.

A Swing from a Chandelier. The weekend's most elegant--and most destructive--riot broke out at Southampton, Long Island.

It began with one of the best debutante parties of the year, given for pretty, blonde Fernanda Wanamaker Wetherill by her stepfather and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Donald Leas, at their estate. In all, some 800 of what Vogue likes to call The Beautiful People disported themselves amid pink marquees to the music of Lester Lanin, Mark (not Meyer) Davis and an 18-piece twist band. At about 6 a.m. the party broke up, but some 65 of the boys and girls chipped in $5 per couple to hire the twist band for three more hours of fun at a big, old, vacant mansion, which the Leases had rented to house the out-of-town stags.

As the after-party rolled merrily along into the morning, things began to get a bit out of hand when some of the boys began dancing on the mantelpiece and climbing around the rafters. Then somebody tried a swing from the chandelier, and--surprise, surprise--it came apart in his hands. But all hell didn't really break loose until after 10 a.m., when the music packed up and most of those not staying there went home.

Somehow in the next hour or so, the house was turned into a shambles. About 200 windowpanes were broken, curtains were torn down, telephones torn out, rugs were scattered, a refrigerator and various lamps were turned over, and most of the furniture ended up on the beach. The police took about 30 of the young bloods down to the station house for a few hours of questioning. About a dozen of them admitted doing the damage, tentatively estimated at $2,000 to $3,000.

The Affluent Delinquents. Authorities think that the upsurge of teen-age rioting can be traced in part to the example set by the recent racial violence. Others blame the excessive availability of strong drink. Labor Day is a long weekend and the last fling of summer. But Labor Day rioters are a new kind of delinquent--not underprivileged but relatively well-off. And in the case of Southampton's top-drawer vandals, there was margin to spare. In Harlem or Chicago's South Side, they would have landed in court and perhaps in a reform school, but in Southampton last week, no one was so ill-bred as to press charges. It must give every affluent J.D. confidence to know that whatever damage he does, Daddy --or somebody--will pay.

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