AMERICANA: Ways of the Natives

Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Military College in Chester asked the cops for help in warding off bands of teen-age girls who roam the campus between 7 and 9 p.m., send up she-wolf calls, toss stones through open dormitory windows wrapped in such distracting teen-age messages as “Why don’t you come out and have some fun?”

California. Los Angeles cops were on the track of the vengeful author of 1,500 postcards mailed to U.S. travel agencies and chambers of commerce, who pictured Los Angeles as “a city of thieves and criminals, ruled by the underworld.”

New York. Delegates to the Manhattan convention of the National Council of Women of the U.S. heard the Kinsey Report on sexual behavior denounced for “endangering relations in the home instead of improving them.” Moreover, said the speaker (the chairman of the Committee on Moral Welfare), “Most of us are shocked by Dr. Alfred Kinsey, himself …”

Oregon. In his 18 bedridden years, George Nelson’s main diversion had been the trains going by his house in Canby on the main Portland-San Francisco run of the Southern Pacific railroad. In the daytime he would wave from his window to trainmen; at night he blinked his bedroom light and the engines whistled back. Last week George Nelson, 32, and his mother boarded the Southern Pacific’s Cascade as guests of the trainmen, who had passed the hat, raised enough money to pay for a week’s sightseeing in San Francisco—by ambulance.

Illinois. Running for office (he is the Republican nominee for Cook County treasurer), Bank President John Brenza offered a $100 prize for the best poem extolling Chicago as “the city of opportunity.” A 21-year-old secretary, Nancy Anne Jaeger, won over 501 other entrants. Sample stanza from the winning poem:

CHICAGO

is a stallion wild,

wind-streaked, unleashed, untamed,

flinging out a challenge,

to those with dreams inflamed.