Americana

P: U.S. non-fiction readers, the New York Times reported, now prefer Sexual Behavior in the Human Male to Peace of Mind.

P:After the longest run a musical ever had on Broadway (2,202 performances), Oklahoma! will close this week.

P:The Raleigh County (W.Va.) board of education upheld the right of a school principal to whip pupils who came to class smelling of ramp (wild onion).

P: For the first time in its 103-year history, the U.S. Naval Academy selected a war widow to be color girl for June Week ceremonies. The girl: Mrs. Katherine Wainwright Austin, 26, a registered nurse of North Andover, Mass., whose husband, a Marine flier, was killed at Okinawa.

P: A New York department store advertised: "Choose Your Panty Girdle for Summer Action."

P: When she refused to withhold taxes from the wages of her 40 employees, the U.S. Government claimed and got $1,-685.40 from the Westport, Conn, bank account of Industrialist Vivien Kellems. Spinster Kellems promised to sue the bank, organize business men and women into a "mighty crusading force to abolish the withholding tax."

P: In Oklahoma City, James Bodard, n, and Robert Peterson, 12, stole an airplane (Ercoupe), flew it 120 miles to Cheyenne, Okla., landed it perfectly. Reported a flabbergasted state trooper: "They said it was easy. They'd looked at comic books that told all about it. They thought we were silly not to know how."

P: U.S. citizens are spending $10,000,000 a month for gift parcels to Germany. Mil itary Government officials called it "the most extensive spontaneous relief effort in history."

P: Zanesville, Ohio, schoolboys took over the city government for a day, promptly broke up a poker game, raided a numbers bank and were fixing to raid a brothel when embarrassed officials stopped them.

P: Heliotrope, a freshly caught frog from the Sierra Nevada foothills, outleaped some 150 rivals to win the annual Jumping Frog Jubilee of Calaveras County (Calif.). The winning jump: n ft. 5 in.--no record.*

P: After sorting through 40 crates of the late Harry Hopkins' papers, Author Robert E. Sherwood published the latest collection of recollections about Franklin D. Roosevelt. Items from the first installment (now running in Collier's):1) in 1939 Hopkins seriously considered himself a likely candidate for President and thought F.D.R. did, too; 2) Winston Churchill, admiring Hopkins' ability to get conferences down to brass tacks, called him "Lord Root of the Matter."

P: In their unending search for a solution to crossing accidents, roadbuilders have evolved complicated, twisted approaches to mainline highways. But the human element is still the same. One night last week Driver Peter Motola blundered on to the wrong approach to the Union Turnpike in Queens, N.Y., drove into the wrong oneway lane on the turnpike. Result: a head-on crash (see cut). The toll: six dead; five injured.

* "Dan'l Webster," the famed frog of Mark Twain's story, who could "get over more ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see," lost to another freshly caught frog when the rival owner filled Dan'l full of quail shot "pretty near up to his chin."

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