The Charlotte News
Tuesday, April 14, 1959
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Senators this date had expressed reluctantly a growing belief that Secretary of State Dulles might have to resign soon, there having been well-founded reports, including some from persons who had talked to Mr. Dulles, that he had failed to respond to treatment for his cancer. If fresh medical treatments planned at Walter Reed Army Hospital did not show results, the general expectation among members of Congress was that he would step away from his official job quickly to clear the way for appointment of a successor. Mr. Dulles had returned unexpectedly on Sunday from a Florida rest to reenter the hospital for further checks and treatment, and the President had visited him for 45 minutes the previous day, delaying a decision on his future. White House press secretary James Hagerty had said later that Mr. Dulles had not resigned, adding that "pending additional medical evaluation there will be no further statement from the President." But several Senators said that if Mr. Dulles found that he was not going to be able to attend the scheduled East-West foreign ministers meeting in Geneva starting May 11, they believed he would want the U.S. representative there to carry the full title of Secretary of State. In his absence, that representative appeared certain to be Acting Secretary Christian Herter. Senator Thomas Kuchel of California, the assistant Republican leader in the Senate, said that there was no question in his mind that Mr. Dulles would "eliminate himself if his medical advice indicates physical inability to resume his full responsibilities."
In Bonn, West Germany, it was reported that, according to the U.S. Embassy, Soviet planes had buzzed an American Air Force transport in another incident in the air corridor to Berlin. A spokesman for the Embassy said that two Soviet jet fighters had harassed an Air Force double-decked propeller transport on its way back from a routine cargo delivery flight to Berlin on April 10. The incident had occurred a week after Soviet fighters had buzzed an Air Force C-130 turbojet transport on both legs of a round-trip to West Berlin. The C-130 had been flying at 25,000 feet and the Russians contended that allied planes had to fly at 10,000 feet or below in the air corridors between West Berlin and West Germany. The spokesman said that on April 3, the big military version of the Boeing stratocruiser had been flying at about 12,000 feet when two Soviet jets came up from behind and began cruising, each about 100 feet from a wingtip of the U.S. plane. The Russian fliers had then swapped positions, one going over and the other going under the transport, at which point the American pilot had reduced altitude a little, seeming to satisfy the Soviets, as they had flown away, the whole encounter having lasted only a few minutes.
At Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, it was reported that Discoverer II, a 1,600-pound satellite, was in polar orbit this date, carrying in its nosecone a space capsule which the Air Force hoped to recover in the air near Hawaii. The recovery experiment might be attempted later this date. The capsule was described as a miniature of the type which one day might be used to bring men back from space stations. Discoverer II was launched from the Vandenberg missile base the previous day while across the nation fellow scientists were experiencing a disappointment. At Cape Canaveral in Florida, the Air Force had tried unsuccessfully to put three satellites into orbit from a single launch vehicle, Vanguard III. But the second stage of the Vanguard had failed to ignite on schedule and officials at the Cape said that the cause of the trouble was unknown. If Discoverer II achieved proper stability, its instrumental nosecone was scheduled to be cut loose on command from ground tracking stations and float earthward beneath a parachute. Eight Hawaii-based C-119 Flying Boxcars were awaiting orders to swoop on the descending parachute and try to drape it across a 30-foot-long trapeze bar suspended beneath each plane, the parachuting capsule then to be reeled into the plane. The parachute would come into range of the Air Force C-119's at about 20,000 feet, with the planes having ten minutes to snatch the parachute from the air, and if that failed, the capsule would be fished from the ocean by Navy vessels patrolling the recovery area. The capsule contained instruments to supply its oxygen and control its heat and atmospheric pressure. Other instruments would check how effective those environmental systems were. They were designed to keep small animals alive in future satellites, though there was no animal aboard Discoverer II. Regardless of the outcome of the recovery attempt, spokesmen said that they were elated by the second successful orbit in the Discoverer series. Discoverer I, launched on February 28, had circled the earth for 17 days before falling back into the atmosphere and burning up. No attempt had been made to recover that satellite.
The President dedicated a towering Capitol memorial this date to the late Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, praising him as a man who had generously and unstintingly given of himself "for the good of all America". He honored his former political rival and ally at ceremonies at the base of a 100-foot bell tower erected at the foot of Capitol Hill in memory of the Senator. The President said that Senator Taft had been a liberal in championing individual rights and the symbol of conservatism in everything affecting the national economy. Former President Herbert Hoover and high Government officials had also participated in the dedication ceremony. Vice-President Nixon and House Speaker Sam Rayburn had arranged to accept the marble tower on behalf of Congress. The President, in a brief prepared address, voiced his personal gratitude to Senator Taft for "the priceless gift of friendship" and the wisdom and experience offered by the Senator "whenever I needed him most... He was, by his own definition, a politician. An admiring nation now acknowledges that he was infinitely more."
In Indianapolis, it was reported that six lawyers and a judge had developed the final instructions this date for the jury in the case of the woman accused of murdering her former lover. The trial was adjourned until Wednesday when the jurors would hear final arguments of counsel and instructions from the court, after which they would receive the case to begin their deliberations. The questions to be put to them was whether the 45-year old divorcee had ruthlessly planned to kill her 54-year old married former lover because he was breaking off their 15-year romance to pursue a young secretary, or whether her pearl-handled French revolver had gone off accidentally in a struggle after she had threatened to commit suicide in the man's Cadillac the prior July 31. One of the primary issues in the conference regarding jury instructions was a defense request that the jury be allowed to return any verdict down to simple assault. The judge had said he would provide only three choices for the jury, if they were to find the defendant guilty, those being first-degree murder, with the death penalty or life imprisonment available, second-degree murder, with life imprisonment, or manslaughter, with a period of imprisonment of between 2 and 21 years. The defense had also requested that the judge's instructions place more weight on the option of ruling between accidental death or self-defense, opposed by the prosecution. The defendant said on Monday, after her testimony was completed in the month-long trial, that she remained hopeful that the jury would acquit her. The prosecutor said that they still felt it was a case of first-degree murder and that they had introduced sufficient evidence to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. The defense said it was confident of acquittal. Three doctors had testified for the defense on Monday that partial paralysis of the defendant's right arm probably had been caused by a severe wrenching of the arm, supporting her story that her lover had beat her just before the shooting had occurred. The deputy prosecutor sought to undermine the testimony of the three physicians, however, until they admitted that the paralysis also could have been caused by the defendant lying unconscious for 19 hours after a suicide attempt by consuming 19 capsules of a sleeping medication.
In Fayetteville, N.C., it was reported that a discharged jailer, involved in the aftermath of a recent jailbreak, had participated in a drinking party with prisoners on his last night at work, according to the Cumberland County sheriff this date. The 39-year old jailer had been indicted the previous day for having non-tax paid whiskey in the jail during the farewell party. He previously had been charged with harboring the two prisoners who had escaped from jail on April 3. One of the prisoners had died in a hail of bullets when he attempted to run a police ambush. The sheriff said that the jailer had admitted taking food and blankets to the two fugitives who were hiding in a swamp. Also indicted the previous day on a charge of harboring the two escapees had been the jailer's brother and another man, being held in lieu of $5,000 bond each. The sheriff said that the two other men had admitted helping the jailer carry food and blankets to the escapees. The two escapees had tricked the jailer into opening their cell and had fled in his car. The surviving escapee had been charged with theft of the car and would be tried in Superior Court during the week on another charge of car theft on which he was being held when he escaped.
Jerry Reece of The News reports that local farmers, coming out of an unseasonably wet and cold weekend, had been watching their weather vanes this date in the hope that the wind would not die down. A low of 32 degrees and possible frost had been forecast for this night, and the wind which had been blowing most of the day could keep young crops and fruit trees from being damaged. Reports from Mecklenburg, Cabarrus and Union Counties this date indicated no major crop damage yet, but a severe temperature reduction and heavy frost this night could do a lot of damage.
Bob Slough of The News indicates, in the first of a series of reports, that in recent years, physicians and social workers had noted a substantial increase in the number of white, unmarried teenage mothers, for the most part "nice girls" from respectable, upper-middle-class homes. Concern had been expressed over the steady drop in the average age of the unmarried mother during the previous decade, a national trend which had become a local problem. At the Florence Crittenton Home in Charlotte, 190 babies had been delivered the previous year to unmarried girls between the ages of 12 and 19. Over 58 percent of the 205 unmarried mothers at the Home during the year had been under 20 years old. The average age of unmarried mothers in Mecklenburg County ten years earlier had been 19 and was now 17, according to a local physician. The Federal Children's Bureau had reported an increase of approximately forty percent in the number of unmarried mothers between the ages of 15 and 17 during the decade between 1946 and 1956. The previous year, a girl 12 years old had become a mother in Charlotte, having been one of 205 girls at the Home in 1958. Three girls who had gone to the Home to await the arrival of their babies had been 13, three had been 14, ten, 15, twenty-two, 16, another twenty-two, 17, twenty-seven, 18, and thirty-two, 19, as indicated by a local physician close to the problem. A 120 percent increase in live births to unmarried mothers nationwide and in Mecklenburg County during the previous 22 years had been recorded, with a total of 716 babies born to unmarried mothers in 1957, including babies born alive, but not including those born to girls who married before the baby arrived or girls who had already married someone not the child's father. The average age of unmarried mothers, according to the predictions of reliable social agencies, would drop to 15 within the ensuing five years. In addition to the lower age for unmarried mothers, the divorce rate and the rate of venereal disease, criteria used by social scientists to determine the health of the community, had an alarming increase in Mecklenburg County during the previous decade. In 1957, 51 percent of all brides had been 21 years of age and 40 percent of all marriages had been between partners under 21, according to a local doctor. Of all the divorces, 60 percent were in that latter age group, which had a divorce rate 6 to 10 times higher than those who were over 25 when married. It was estimated that a third of all marriages between teenage couples were doomed to end in divorce. The increasing number of teenage, unmarried mothers had caused the most concern. Some social workers continued to be amazed at young people's acceptance of the fact that an unmarried girl was expecting a child. In one case, the schoolmates of a young high school girl could not understand why relatives would not permit them to give their friend a baby shower. (They might drown the poor baby.) In some instances, unmarried girls expecting a child were offered marriage as a possible solution, but counselors pointed out that marriage often was not the solution. One girl had gone steady for a long time, with the relationship ending with her expecting a child and the boy offering to marry her, whereupon she refused, pointing out that she had discovered that she did not love the boy and could save herself, the child, and the boy from further emotional conflict after the baby was born. One counselor in Charlotte had pointed out that most unmarried girls who had children emerged more mature and with a higher regard for the total meaning of life and love, but added that it was a high price to pay for maturity. There was, of course, no discussion of the possibility of abortion, as that remained criminally forbidden. If you in it place, so sublime, you are going to live with the sin for the rest of time—for is it accident that "womb" and "tomb" rhyme? Did not Shakespeare say that in Romeo and Juliet?
On the editorial page, "The 'Inner Conflict' of Charlie Jonas Lights Signal Fires for Both Parties" indicates that one of the unwritten rules of politics was that an incumbent was granted broad poetic license when discussing either retirement or a voting record.
Examined in that light, the declaration of Representative Charles Jonas that he was considering winding up his Congressional career would ordinarily be taken with a grain of salt. But, it finds, Mr. Jonas was no ordinary politician and not a student of the rule book, but a man of simple integrity and personal honor. For years, he had conducted his political business with the same openness and the same stern Protestant morality which characterized his dealings with Lincolnton clients and neighbors. It finds that he had no Machiavellian streak. Consequently, when he said he was thinking of quitting, he was.
Much of the excitement of Congressional service was gone and his influence in Washington had waned. As the lone Republican in the state's Congressional delegation, his lot had never been easy. Since the 1958 midterm avalanche for the Democrats, his legislative role had become even more difficult and necessarily obscure. He also realized that when North Carolina lost a congressman after the 1960 census, an attempt would be made to gerrymander him out of his job. He also did not enjoy campaigning and in the previous campaign, had faced the most vigorous opposition of his political career from David Clark, a Lincolnton neighbor, who had already announced that he would again be a candidate in 1960, subject to the will of the Democratic primary. That would virtually assure another hard contest and that the extremely tender sensibilities of Mr. Jonas would again be methodically bruised.
It finds that if he did finally drop out from running again, it would be a good shock for the Republican Party in Mecklenburg County and in the Tenth Congressional District as a whole, for in the seven years since Mr. Jonas had first been elected, the Republicans had made no serious effort to groom any likely successor, being content to coast.
It finds that Mr. Jonas had brought some vitality to the local political scene but that it was ridiculous to suggest that he had built a serviceable two-party system in the area, as his had only been a personal triumph. Democrats provided his large Mecklenburg majorities, who for the most part had refused to switch their registration to Republican. They had also refused to go down the line for other Republicans who had cared or dared to enter other local races. What little organizing had been done at the grassroots had been in terms of personal loyalties rather than party loyalties.
A genuine two-party system necessarily involved partisan competition at all or most levels, which was not present in the district. If Mr. Jonas could spur such a movement, he would be making a lasting contribution.
The Democrats had shown more life during the 1958 Congressional campaign than the district had seen in years with the young and vigorous Mr. Clark as leader, possibly to have a soul-cleansing rebirth of its own. Local democracy, it finds, was healthiest when two competing parties were operating at full strength, an ideal toward which everyone ought work. The alternative was stagnation and possibly bad government.
"What in the World Is a 'Moderate'?" indicates that it was no longer possible to exclude the "Southern moderate" from the persons populating the South's human tragedy, with the moderate's role attracting worldwide attention, about which Max Freedman had written eloquently on the page this date from the Manchester Guardian. The moderate had been pictured the prior week as the best hope of the region by Virginia's Lenoir Chambers, in an address abstracted in the April 10 edition. The moderate had also been "discovered" and denounced by several Northern journalists who had recently visited the South. Equally vehement recognition had come in the form of verbal brickbats from assorted racists in the South and elsewhere.
It thus finds that the "moderate" had arrived, but wonders who the person was and how that person had come to be called a "moderate". It questions whether the person was moderately for civil order and obedience to the law, as moderate on the question of cannibalism as on integration, that if he had lived during the Spanish Inquisition, whether his position would have been that people ought not to have burned too many heretics or none at all.
It finds the nomenclature absurd and that it ought to reflect better the spirit and attitudes of Southerners who were risking everything to save the South from chaos and destruction, men and women whose purpose was to attain unity, harmony and civilized relations between races and regions within the framework of the law. They opposed coercive Federal action and opposed violence in any form and for any reason. "They know the South, its people and its traditions and they know that time, understanding and great patience will be required to effect social change. They know, too, that reason alone guides meaningful progress." It concludes that, based on those ideals, the "moderate" was an "extremist".
The problem in time became that moderation had come to be associated with only more delay, and as President Kennedy articulated eloquently in June, 1963, when he put forth his proposal for the civil rights bill which, in 1964, became the Civil Rights Act, 100 years of delay had resulted in many black people in the South, unable to earn a decent wage equal to that of white people in the same job and unable to attend the best school available, disenfranchised for all practical purposes through such machinations as literacy tests, impossible for even college graduates and people holding graduate degrees to pass, suffering in consequence in entrenched generational poverty and hopeless struggle, having become embroiled in the "fires of frustration and discord" across the land.
And if you think for one moment that the new Republican Party under Donald Trump is not seeking a repeat of those times in 2026 as fast as they can, you are kidding yourself. It is a retreat to the 1950's and earlier, obviously what these racist clowns mean when they say "Make America Great Again". They wish to disenfranchise not only black citizens, but any and all Democrats who disagree with their plan of corporate control of society for the betterment of the well-heeled Republicans at the top, the entrenchment of the wealthy at the top and the increasing diminution of their serfs below. It is no joke and is quite sinister in its intent, the ultimate intent being to establish a dictatorship by these fools, while their lead sales-pitch artist babbles to the rabble.
"Of Spiked Heels and British Industry" indicates that it had noticed with more than passing interest the spiked heels which women had embraced, "murderous-looking weapons", which it had had been informed concealed a metal core to prevent them from breaking. It finds that it was probably necessary because of the number of times it had seen women trapped in sidewalk ventilation grills.
There was word from England that industry was fighting the fashion trend, as Lever Brothers, for instance, had banned the stiletto footwear in its London office where 2,000 women were employed. The company had made a thorough study of the case and calculated that a 105-pound female wearing spiked heels exerted a floor pressure of a ton per square inch and that a 224-pound male, with his weight spread over his entire shoe, exerted only 28 pounds per square inch. London dance halls were also considering a ban on the heels. A dance floor was supposed to last seven years, but the heels were cutting the life expectancy in half.
It indicates that Charlotte industry and arenas of music perhaps ought take note of that painstaking survey, which it was backing for personal reasons, as only the previous week, a "sparrow-sized female reversed engines in a cafeteria line and spiked down on the big toe of ours. We've had a bad starboard limp ever since."
A piece from the Louisville Courier-Journal, titled "Romancer", indicates that in a scholarly editorial treatise on tipping, the New York Herald Tribune had touched on a mystery which had always confounded it, saying: "… As for restaurant tipping, the vicious myth has grown up that 'because of inflation' their traditional 10 percent is no longer an adequate tip. Any schoolboy ought to be able to see that inflation inflates the size of the tip just as much as it does the price of the food, and that if 10 percent was adequate in 1940, it ought to be just as adequate now—what was 15 cents on a $1.50 meal becomes 30 cents on a $3 meal now. But does any customer try to buck the nonsensical expansion of tipping?"
It finds that apparently the average customer did not, as, without complaint, he had added not only to the cost of the meal but also a little bit to his problem in mental arithmetic when paying the check, positing that perhaps the philosophy was the same as that of Walter Scott a century earlier when he said: "I like to tip postilions and waiters rather more liberally than perhaps is right. I hate grumbling and sour faces; and the whole saving will not exceed a guinea or two for being cursed and damned from Dan to Beersheba."
It indicates that because a dirty look from a waiter would have interfered with Mr. Scott's digestion, he probably had saved himself more than a guinea or two in doctor's bills and in that manner had cleared a nice profit on every tip he bestowed. It suggests that perhaps the profit was as much as 15 percent.
Drew Pearson, writing from Mexico City earlier during his tour of the Caribbean and nearby countries, indicates that Mexican President Adolfo Lopez Mateos was a former schoolteacher who liked to rise early, as a boy, having walked 7 miles to school each way while getting there on time. As President of Mexico, he also believed in getting to work on time and wanted other bureaucrats to do likewise. When he found that a lot of his officials did not arrive promptly at 8:30 a.m., he complained about it, and their reply had been that they were stuck in traffic jams. Thus, recently, he had done something about relieving the traffic, ordering a drastic cut in the tariff on small automobiles, with large cars still paying the same tariff. Two American cars had been affected, the Nash Rambler, which had been cut in price by $756, and the Studebaker Lark, which had been cut by $705. Of the 14 European small cars benefiting, several would cost less in Mexico than in the U.S. Those included the Opel, produced by G.M. in Germany, and G.M.'s British Vauxhall, as well as Ford's English Anglia. But a Cadillac Eldorado convertible sold for $38,000 while the Mexican price for a Continental hardtop was $25,000, contrasting with the Lark and the Rambler, selling in Mexico for $2,494 and $2,270, respectively. The President of Mexico did not fancy large cars cluttering up the highways.
Pope John XXIII confided recently to a leading Latin American former President, Galo Plaza of Ecuador, that he planned to effect a total revision of Catholic Church policies throughout Latin America. He was blunt in criticizing church authorities in Latin America for failing to join in the worldwide religious revival and "not maintaining true spiritual contact with the faithful." He had noted that undue political activity by the Church, especially in Argentina, Colombia, Peru and Chile, had been responsible for loss of prestige and influence. The happiest and most fruitful relations between the Church and any Latin American people, according to the Pope, had been in Mexico where there had been rigid separation between church and state and where the Catholic clergy had been strictly out of politics for 30 years. The Pope expressed the hope that other Latin American church leaders might follow Mexico's example.
Max Freedman, Washington correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, provides a portrait of the South, indicating that the worst victim of the quarrel regarding segregation was the child whose education was in peril. "Outside the South, the simple fact often is eclipsed by doctrine and dogma; in the South it is an enduring reality which can be forgotten by no one."
He finds that black children were unable to shelter themselves from the disquiet which surrounded them, and that the parents of white children in four Southern states were faced with the approaching hazard of having public schools closed completely. The resources of private schools were inadequate and already overburdened, with some buildings being constructed quickly, with unemployed or retired teachers as members of the faculty to accept pupils from harassed parents, while the debasement of standards under such conditions was inevitable.
After his visit to the South, he had mixed impressions, some encouraging and others melancholy. The memory of Little Rock and Norfolk had left a serious scar. The people of the South had not lost their pride and they shrunk from having their communities exposed to the harsh judgment of outsiders, with their own problems exported with great emphasis to distant places. Even those who had a rooted objection to integrated classes in public schools were eager to restrain an upsurge in prejudice leading to a display of force, realizing that a way to dull the North's concern was to have things remain quiet in the South. Local politicians, busy with racial mischief, and the White Citizens' Councils were so restless in their frightened accusations that they were sources of embarrassment because of the vulgarity with which they conducted their campaign. The mature judgment of their own communities was against them and business leaders knew that industry would shun those states where racial unrest continued, while their pleas for prudence were not strong enough to prevail as they hesitated to enter the public debate.
The impact of Virginia in making a start on integrated schools had, nevertheless, been felt everywhere in the South, and resistant states such as Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina sensed that they were involved in a lost cause. In Georgia, the omens were not all bleak and minatory. Atlanta Constitution editor Ralph McGill, who had just completed 30 years of service for that newspaper, had inspired liberal debate throughout that state and most of the Georgia newspapers had met the ordeal with courage and honor, resulting in an important debate even when the verdict had finally been given against the liberal forces. The existence of that opposition had tempered the restrictive decisions. Meanwhile, every Southern state, with only the four exceptions, had at least begun the process of compliance with Brown v. Board of Education from 1954 and 1955.
But, although some lawyers had shown fortitude in trying to purge the public debate of the venom born of ignorance, many members of the profession appeared to have defaulted on their obligations to state the legal issues with precision and without prejudice. The legend was now universal that the Supreme Court, without warning or cause, had decided Brown in departure of the principle of separate-but-equal, established in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, a statement constituting an almost unbelievable caricature of the history of the Court, which no one other than lawyers could reveal regarding its absurdity in all its dimensions. But too many of them had remained silent. All the more admiration, therefore, belonged to the minority which had opposed the lessons of judicial precedent to the embattled cries of political controversy.
Another disappointment had been the discovery of a hardened temper among black leaders. At the beginning of the dispute, it was possible to find many leaders who expressed the view in private that some type of voluntary segregation would be the best solution following the shame of compulsory inferiority being removed. Once the constitutional right of equality had been conceded, black parents would be content to send their children to greatly improved segregated schools, with perhaps token integration in a few districts. But the controversy had grown too inflamed and challenging to allow those moderates to speak with authority and they also would now agree to a voluntary abridgment of the practical enforcement of their rights only when those rights were no longer controversial.
He finds that the deepest and most vivid memory was of the white Southern moderates, who had stood bravely against the massed irritation of their neighbors, to defend Brown and uphold the rule of law as the foundation of civilized society, and to work for a peaceful and constructive transition to a new status of the public school system. Their position, while consigned to a distinct minority, had not become unpopular and hazardous. But they were reluctant to retreat from their own high standards.
He concludes that if there was any hero in the tragic affair, it was the Southern moderate of both races, who had received such lack of encouragement and help from the White House during the difficult years. "It is to these moderates that the North should extend the full tribute of its compassion and admiration."
Robert C. Ruark, in London, says he did not know how he had avoided being a juvenile delinquent but was not knocking his luck because the National Education Association had just issued a tip sheet for educators on how to spot an incipient delinquent, with words such as "ain't" and "don't hardly" being indicative of a rising trouble-maker. The NEA said that another sign of budding delinquency was tattooing on a male relative of the possible jailbird, not seeming to mind that the young student had a tattoo but frowning on male relatives having an overabundance of them. He says it was guilt by association and he resented it, as he came from a long line of seagoing stock and it was a "poozly" member of the salty family who did not have a bird's eye view of Sidney across the left kidney, as the song went.
He says that there was a four-color advertisement appearing in most of the slick-paper journals featuring a crop of he-men who were tattooed on the back of their smoking hand.
The NEA also said that kids who dressed "jazzy" or "hip" and who affected "offbeat" haircuts were also potential candidates for juvenile delinquency. He differs, indicating that during his youth, his jazzy, hip-type clothes had been the talk of the drugstore-cowboy set, and he remembered pants with 26-inch cuffs, a red felt turn-up-all-around hat and a "yaller slicker with more jazzy mottoes tattooed on the back than were ever graven into the briny hides of my seagoing kinry." He says that he may have been blackballed by his Hi-Y Club, who were a bunch of squares, but he had "never done no time".
He also finds the offbeat haircut complaint of the NEA to be out of line because a couple of generations of the prison crop or crewcut had already been spawned and if what they called the "flattop" was not offbeat, he had not seen anything offbeat. "I don't hardly ever remember seeing anything offbeat. Especially when it is taken up by grown men with gray hair who generally seem to work on Madison Avenue in New York."
If one possessed all of the stigmata which the NEA had suggested as placing pupils in a "primary reference group", he had never heard any such thing, even in Uganda, where all of the gentlemen and ladies seemed to be fearfully tattooed. The men especially, with their right arm tattooed when slain in battle and the left arm of the ladies who were knocked off for interfering with a bachelor beer party.
He had asked his wife whether she had ever heard of a primary reference group and she said she had not, unless it was a polite word for "cage". But she had also said that the NEA might have something in its prognosis, saying that he had been practicing for a second childhood for years and she was sure that when it finally hit, he would be delinquent in his senility. She had stated: "If you continue to follow the pattern you have traced during most of the adult years I've known you, I don't hardly see how you can miss."
He notes the "don't hardly" for the NEA and says that if there were a rumble around 1970, he and his wife would be in it.
Mr. Ruark, because of his drinking
problem, would be dead from cirrhosis of the liver by 1965 and so
would not live long enough to see such problems as Kent State in
1970, though we do not class antiwar protests as a manifestation of
juvenile delinquency, even if Mr. Ruark, based on some of his
right-leaning writing through time, might have. Moreover, he would,
before his departure, make mock of the Beatles in 1964, belying his
knock on the NEA for knocking "offbeat"
There is, incidentally, no mention in the newspaper of it being both the 47th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic and the 94th anniversary of the assassination of President Lincoln, twice 47 being 94, thus a kind of special doubleday anniversary.
This night, "Naked City" would, however, air this episode
A letter writer indicates that Charlotte did not need a female mayor, the prospect having arisen when City Council member Martha Evans had entered the race. He believes that a female appeared out of place in City Hall with a group of men or when going to the airport to meet distinguished visitors and welcoming them to the city. It appeared to him that women were trying to take over politics and ought to "stick to their knitting and let the men run the government."
A letter writer finds that there was a need for a police commissioner in Charlotte, and at least three police substations.
Framed Edition
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