July 2004

75 Years Ago 

On September 24 Lt. Jimmy Doolittle made the world’s first completely “blind” flight—taking off, flying a prescribed course, and landing on instruments only. He was in a Consolidated NY-2 “Husky” biplane with two cockpits. Doolittle flew it from the rear cockpit, which was covered in canvas so that he could not see out. In the front cockpit was a safety pilot, Lt. Ben Kelsey, who could take over if necessary. Kelsey held his hands in the air during the flight to show that Doolittle was controlling the plane.

Why do they usually avoid holding conventions in New York?

This summer marks a sea change in the traditions of American party politics. For the first time the Democratic National Convention will be held in Boston, and the Republican National Convention will be held in that great Babylon, that hole of sin and abomination, New York City.

Actually, the Republicans have never held a convention in Boston either, which is rather surprising when one considers that right up to the Great Depression, Massachusetts was a rock-ribbed Republican stronghold. The reasons were probably as much logistical as well as political. The city that has hosted far and away the most major-party conventions is Chicago, with Philadelphia a distant second. This is not surprising, since both cities were important rail hubs and pretty much the only two large metropolises to burden their citizens with competitive political machines in both parties.

Home and Family

With American Heritage approaching its fiftieth birthday in December 2004, we’ve asked five prominent historians and cultural commentators to each pick 10 leading developments in American life during the last half-century. In this issue Paul Berman, a contributing editor to The New Republic and the author of Terror and Liberalism, published by W. W. Norton & Company, selects the 10 biggest changes in the American home and family life. In other issues this year our authorities offer their choices of the half-century’s biggest transformations in politics, popular culture, business, and innovation and technology.

What have been the 10 greatest changes in American home and family life during the last half-century? I think the first of these changes has turned out to be the deepest of all—the change that set into motion all the other changes, the prime mover. This was, oddly enough, the change mandated by the Supreme Court in its 1954 ruling on …

The mid-1970s Holiday Inn slogan, “The best surprise is no surprise,” may have reflected a comforting predictability in road travel, but it also signaled a decline in one of its greatest pleasures: being in a place very different from home. Before long, backlit plastic replaced the Holiday Inn’s exuberantly tacky “Great Sign,” and another roadside icon transformed itself into an interchangeable component of a nationwide neighborhood. In Duluth, Georgia, a prototype Holiday Inn has begun an impressive effort to reclaim the sprightly spirit radiated by the original sign.

September 11, 2001, was my daughter’s first day of kindergarten—a new school a long subway ride up the spine of Manhattan. Rebecca’s inaugural school day consisted of half an hour meeting other children, followed by a four-hour walk home. When the school opened again, her teacher told me, “She’s going to build something. Just watch—they’re all going to be building things.”

I nodded, not quite knowing what she meant. But sure enough, before long Rebecca pulled out from the most desolate reaches of her closet a canvas bag full of big wooden blocks in which she had never before shown the feeblest glint of interest, and went to work in the living room. Soon there was a persuasive little city there, dominated by two tall wooden shafts standing close beside each another. “Don’t touch it,” Rebecca commanded her mother and me, and we didn’t.

A couple of mornings later she appeared with a carefully folded paper airplane, a line of windows with passengers behind them crayoned along its sides. “Watch this.” She sailed it into one of the towers. It snubbed softly against its target and dropped to the rug. “There,” said Rebecca. “That time nobody got hurt.”