The Urge

It was one of those weeks when the U.S. citizen re-experienced the urge that had assailed him annually since the day of the Apperson Eight and the Pope-Toledo. He wanted to go somewhere in an automobile. He wanted to breathe exhaust fumes and fresh spring air just for the tonic effect. He wanted to speed or crawl as the spirit moved him; to read new Burma-Shave signs, flip cigarettes at rural mail boxes, or park and fall into a stupor with the sun on his neck.

He yearned for a new convertible with the top down--something with the weight of a cruiser and the look of a juke box. But he backed out of the garage in whatever car he had and set out. There were a million places to go.

Hot Tar & Bluebonnets. In Virginia it was Garden Week, and ancient and hedge-bordered Tidewater estates were open for inspection; bluebonnets bloomed across the sandy distances of west Texas; forsythia blossomed under budding trees from New England to the Northwest, and golden California poppies dotted the fields near Los Angeles. Highways everywhere echoed to the wham-wham-wham of people tearing along at a cunning five miles above the speed limit to stare at flowers.

The feel and smell of spring were as definite as the fine odor of hot tar of highway repair jobs; in many areas the sky was bright blue and white clouds sat motionless as mashed potatoes on the horizon. Early bugs died on windshields on Connecticut's Merritt Parkway. Sunbathers gathered in tentative knots along Los Angeles beaches despite ocean fog. Across the Midwest, spring plowing went on day & night; tractors with headlights rumbled across fields after dark like one-eyed monsters. From coast to coast men pulled on high boots and went fishing.

Other People's Houses. Millions of citizens could not get out of town but they went motoring anyhow. In Kansas City, thousands spent their evenings driving slowly through the suburbs, critically eyeing other people's new houses. Great crowds drove to the race tracks and the ball parks. Zoos, parks, botanical gardens, got their full share of the army of spring-struck automobile owners. By night youth took to the highway; couples parked in Pittsburgh's Schenley Park, in the foothills above Albuquerque, and along a thousand Old Ox Roads.

Last week, as during any week since the end of World War II, the U.S. citizen had plenty to worry him: Russia, prices, the fear of a depression and the damned atom hung like grey fog just in back of his everyday thoughts. But when he got into his car and hit the highway on a warm spring day he felt no pain at all.

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