Nation: CULTIVATING THE AMERICAN GARDEN

CULTIVATING THE AMERICAN GARDEN

FOR a rare moment, most of the U.S. seemed to be soothed and quiet. Except for the death and destruction wrought by Hurricane Camille, as summer drew to an end the nation basked in unwonted and unfamiliar calm. In California, President Nixon golfed and tended to minor matters of state with equal equanimity. The nation found solace in the reassuring trivia of routine. President and people took their cue from one another; each appeared to turn aside from grave national concerns to private delights of leisure. While it was scarcely the best of all possible worlds that Voltaire’s caricature philosopher Pangloss envisioned, Americans were heeding Candide’s advice: “We must cultivate our gardens.”

U.S. campuses were largely empty for the summer, and the questing young —more than 400,000 strong—gathered in upstate New York for a weekend rock festival that unfolded without violence in an Aquarian instant of communion and discovery (see TIME ESSAY). The ghettos stayed quiet, the number of significant uprisings well below that of the last four long hot summers. Last week, much of Negro America turned its eyes to a token of black pride, the newly crowned Miss Black America, a title won by New York’s Gloria Smith from among 16 black beauties.

Viet Nam is no less of a morass, and the flag-draped coffins still come home to Oswego and Oakland from Cu Chi and Da Nang; yet the nation has decided, without its President’s precisely saying so, that it is all over except for a bit more shooting. After the prodding rhetoric of John Kennedy and the strident goading of Lyndon Johnson, Americans, for the moment, are at unaccustomed ease.

Swingers and Salamanders. The new mood of lotus eating is nowhere more in evidence than in Washington, which was refreshed by a respite from the humid August heat but remained in virtual shock from the novel simultaneous exodus of President, Cabinet and Congress. White House staffers brazenly dare a set or two on the presidential tennis court, or lock themselves in their offices for a cherished hour of uninterrupted reading. West Wing telephones now sometimes ring a dozen times or more before anyone answers. The Georgetown swingers have abandoned Clyde’s on M Street, and the venerable waiters at Harvey’s on Connecticut Avenue say that the customers have not been happier—or fewer—in years. Like Paris in August, the capital of the world’s most powerful nation is closed for the month.

It was much the same all over. In Greenfield, Iowa, seven-year-old Craig Baudler made the paper for running his collection of salamanders up to 16. In Chicago, where a year ago this week the confrontation of cops and youthful demonstrators polarized the nation, the talk in blue-collar saloons and on the commuter trains was of the Cubs and Ken Holtzman’s no-hitter against the Atlanta Braves. Atlanta’s Mayor Ivan Allen casually headed for a ranch in Wyoming where he can get in touch with his city hall only by a horseback canter out of the woods to a telephone. In Los Angeles, the fizz and even the anti-fuzz had gone out of this month’s Watts Festival, the annual community commemoration of the 1965 riots that were the first of the recent major race riots; everybody in Southern California was at the beach. “We’ve had a pretty good summer,” said Patrolman Nick Giordano as he handed out an occasional ticket for jaywalking in Manhattan’s Union Square. “Quiet. I only hope to God it will stay that way.”