Before the Thunderstorm

No matter what shortages might afflict the U.S. people, they found themselves last week with the world's greatest supply of the gear and sites necessary for celebrating New Year's in the American Way. Football stadia and dozens of marching bands stood ready for the bowl games; so, for the night before, did hundreds of nightclubs and hotels, endless shelves of whisky, thousands of waiters, bartenders, jugglers, tenors and striptease dancers, and a fortune in fizz water, paper horns, tow cars, aspirin and ice bags.

Millions prepared to put the equipment to some use while they still could. Every beer parlor, bar & grill, nightclub and theater from coast to coast would have its quota of what U.S. newspapers habitually described as "merrymakers." Some would pay dearly for their headaches: an evening's fun for one at Manhattan's Stork Club or at Los Angeles' Giro's would run at least $25, at Chicago's Chez Paree, $20.

Refuge. As 1950 drew to a close, much of the U.S. looked and acted--even if it did not feel--surprisingly like a country without a care in the world. A few big official parties, such as the inaugural ball which had been planned in honor of South Carolina's Governor-elect Jimmy Byrnes, were canceled. New Yorkers began the wildest scramble for new automobiles which car dealers had ever seen--one Nash dealer with a normal Saturday sale of five cars got rid of 26 in a few wild hours. Chester Thurston, a citizen of Albuquerque, proudly announced that he had just finished construction of a combination fruit cellar and atomic refuge with a roof of 24-in. reinforced concrete. But, in general, the noisy placidity of U.S. life was undisturbed.

Bevies of pretty young girls in white ballroom gowns were introduced to society on schedule at Philadelphia's Assembly Ball, the Chicago Cotillion, the Cotillion and Christmas Ball in Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria and at other smaller affairs. Cole Porter's new musical Out of This World opened on Broadway (see THEATER) , and was all but eclipsed on its own opening night when members of the audience spotted the Duke & Duchess of Windsor during intermission and swarmed around them thrusting out pencils and scraps of paper. Not all audiences were that boisterous. New Yorkers crowded Manhattan's begrimed Old Metropolitan Opera House to hear a new production of Die Fledermaus. Across the nation millions observed the holidays by going to church.

The Thing. Philadelphia was in an uproar over the career of a ghostly gunman who was making a practice of sniping at citizens from no one knew where. The winter exercising and drinking season was beginning, with skiers heading for New Hampshire, Sun Valley and Yosemite, the bathing suit and dark glasses set for Florida and Palm Springs. Variety reported that the stress of holiday sentimentality had pushed Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to first place on the list of bestselling sheet music; The Thing had slipped to eighth.

American inventors, however, had cause to hang their heads in mortification. According to a news story out of London last week, an English colonel had invented the gadget which seemed most suited to the mood of the U.S.--a mechanical "morale raiser" which cried "Bravo! Well done! Good show!", clapped its owner on the back in a friendly way and burst into uproarious laughter when he told a joke.

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