Davy's Time

In New England woods the fiddlehead ferns were unfolding, and blankets of wisteria spread over the houses. Outside Santa Fe, ribbons of green laced the brown adobe on the flatlands, and here and there the full-flowering lilacs formed purple buttons. On riverbanks of the Northwest, wild rhododendrons, spiraling up to 30 feet, were spreading red and pink and white blooms two hands wide. Spring was full-blown in the U.S., and the nation's prevailing mood seemed to be as bright as its blossoms.

The people of the U.S. had never been so prosperous (see BUSINESS). Never before had the breadwinner taken home so much money; in March and April, aftertax pay of the average factory worker with three dependents was around $70 a week. Not since the first delirious, mistaken weeks after V-J day had there been so much expectancy--with caution, this time--for peace. The fishing was good too. In the gulf, off the coast of Louisiana, speckled trout were swarming in the bays and bayous, and tarpon appeared a full month earlier than usual. Said Bill Tugman, editor of the weekly Reedsport (Ore.) Port Umpqua Courier: "The salmon are running and the trout and striped bass, and they even say the shad feel like taking a fly this year. So let Moscow do its worst." The Last Sardine. This was no sudden mood that had swept across the nation.

It had been growing for months. Bomb shelters were on sale in Los Angeles, but hardly anyone was buying them. Californians were more interested in buying swimming pools--at the rate of 25,000 a year. Mrs. C. T. Higgins of Portland, Ore., who four years ago had the city's first private, backyard underground shelter, granted that the family had been thinking about converting it into a walk-in Deepfreeze. Oregon Journal Staffer Doug Baker made an admission in print: he had eaten the last can of sardines out of the family survival kit.

The people were spending. For the man who. wanted to pace the floor with his hands in his pockets while he talked, the telephone company was selling a phone equipped with a special speaker. In Los Angeles a cab driver announced happily that, "Everybody's tipping big today, even women." The highways were lined with the most spectacular parade of new cars in history, from Ford Crestliners in magenta and ivory to Cadillac Eldorados in "goddess gold" and Wedgwood green.

There was a waiting list for Cadillacs in New Orleans. Said a stenographer in Austin, Texas: "I just bought an air-conditioned Ford. I know I couldn't afford the air conditioning, but then I couldn't afford the Ford to begin with, so I just went ahead and got both." The probability that she would manage to pay for it was very high.

Although parents worried about growing juvenile delinquency, it was the best spring ever for millions of young Americans. Bus loads of high-school seniors from the country and town schools rolled into the cities, crowded the corridors of the state capitols, jammed parks and painted their message on wall and trestle: "Class of '55--Watch Our Smoke.'' For college graduates, the babies of the Depression, there were more job offers at higher pay than ever before. The University of Colorado had calls for 12,500 teachers, could offer only 600. Said Fred Ajax, head of Georgia Tech's placement service: "Representatives of 650 companies have visited our campus and have conducted 23,000 interviews. Now I am just about sold out for this year." A black spot on the bright surface of the nation had been a huge, jagged patch of drought, spreading over large areas of the west, south and southwest. But last week, on much of the parched land, rain fell. At Hale Center, Texas, clouds that swept up from the gulf dumped six inches of rain in two hours. In other Texas cities, men and women stood and let the rain soak them to the skin, while children played in the swirling waters of overflowing gutters. The day after Secretary of State Dulles made his television report on international affairs, the top headline in the Omaha World-Herald exulted:

RAINS UP TO 3 INCHES SOAK STATE'S DRY AREA.

The Deep Undercurrent. To those who did not know the U.S. or who did not look closely, the mood of May 1955 might be mistaken for fatuous euphoria. But beneath the glass surface there was a deep undercurrent, a persistent concern for country. In Kentucky's Pennyroyal, where farmers were just finishing their tobacco-setting, a middle-aged farm wife apologized for paying too little attention to world affairs, then demonstrated that she had a remarkably clear understanding of what has been going on. "There seems to be a little less fear around," she said.

"Fear's sort of lost its power. I thought it was pretty good that Mr. Dulles seemed to have gained what he's been struggling so hard for. He's been trying so hard for footing and he seems to have got it." Robert E. Nichols, TIME'S San Diego correspondent, reflected last week on the mood of his community and concluded that the amazing upsurge of the Davy Crockett myth was more than a publicity man's dreamboat, and no accident.

Myths have meaning, and Nichols wondered why Davy Crockett, whose story has been around a long time, should suddenly click as a meaningful figure to Americans, young and old. Crockett's is no fat and happy success story. He had a lot of fun, but he never expected to be safe. He kept moving, and he never let his hand get far from his rifle. Concluded Nichols: "Davy Crockett is the epitome of a man who can lick any problem with his wits and his own two hands." In the spring of 1955 the U.S. people were confident, but far from smug. Eisenhower and Dulles had not ended the cold war, nor had the people been lulled into thinking it was ended. What had ceased was the chronic crisis, the futile nail-biting, the frustrated tensions that previously surfaced in such phenomena as the pro-and-con McCarthy yawpings. Now, the U.S. had the idea that something constructive could be done about foreign affairs--and the idea of doing something constructive is the idea with which Americans feel most at home.

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