MANNERS & MORALS: Americana, Jul. 28, 1947

Notes on U.S. customs, habits, manners & morals as reported last week in the U.S. press:

¶ In Los Angeles, sharp-tongued Mrs. Jesse Brink stormed into a county welfare office, threatened to go back to Oklahoma with her husband and nine of her eleven children because the family relief check had been cut from $278 to $126. “Only rats could live on that,” she cried. “It won’t pay for our gasoline.” Last week, after five years in California, the startled Brinks found themselves rolling eastward. California authorities had not only taken Mrs. Brink’s dare but had bought four new tires ($125) for their 1931 La Salle sedan and had deposited expense checks ahead at Phoenix, El Paso and Abilene to be quite sure that the Brinks kept going.

¶ In New York, a manufacturer proudly advertised the ultimate in labor-saving devices for U.S. women: “Flexible rubber separators to keep your toes apart so polish dries thoroughly without smearing.”

¶ In San Diego, well-to-do Mrs. Alfred W. Ingalls was found guilty of keeping her 57-year-old Negro maid, Dora Jones, in bondage for more than 30 years. Mr. Ingalls is a former member of Boston’s Watch & Ward Society.

¶ Manhattan milliners, after years of trying to make the American woman look like a helicopter after a crash landing, finally did it. Observers at autumn style shows came away feeling top-heavy. Some hats looked like dishpans swathed in varicolored mosquito netting, others like sour-milk hotcakes. Most of them were as big as barrelheads. It seemed almost certain that by spring U.S. women would have neck muscles like Jim Londos.

¶ Thirty-four Puget Sound seaplane owners startled residents of Port Townsend, Wash, by converging on it soon after dawn, landing their aircraft along half a mile of beach, and then leaping out for the world’s first “seaplane breakfast.”

¶ In Portland, Ore., the Colonial Mortuary offered a new super deluxe service: sound recordings of funeral services as keepsakes for the bereaved.

¶ In Washington, members of the National Institute of Diaper Services crowded into the Hotel Statler to witness a demonstration of the Darrah-fold, the newest method of solving the oldest problem of infant care. Their conclusion: the new technique, which applies five thicknesses of cloth where they are most needed, might revolutionize diaper-folding.