January 2011

Given that the full written history of man encompasses approximately 2500 years, the lesson of the century may be calculated proportionally as 4 percent of the wisdom of the ages. Although movie stars do better, in this instance 4 percent of the gross from dollar one is a major assignment for someone who at mid-century was three years of age, but I think that even then what I now see as the century’s most important truth began to come clear for me, although of course I did not know it.

On March 6 the General Court of Plymouth Plantation convened to dispose of a number of routine matters. It settled a child-custody case, directed the inhabitants of three towns to pay for the construction of a bridge, granted licenses to sell wine, and authorized payment of some witness fees. One colonist was charged with “letting … an Indian haue a gun” and two others with receiving stolen goods. Then came the case of Mary Hammon and Sara Norman of Yarmouth, who were accused of “leude behauior each with other vpon a bed"—in other words, committing a lesbian act.

Music lovers and trend chasers thronged New York City’s Aeolian Hall on February 12 to hear Paul Whiteman and his twenty-two-piece Palais Royal Orchestra present “An Experiment in Modern Music.” The unconventional concert was scheduled to include works by Irving Berlin, Victor Herbert. Jerome Kern, and others, as well as a performance by the pianist Zez Confrey, writer of “Kitten on the Keys.” To top it off, a brand-new composition was promised from an upand-coming young songwriter named George Gershwin.

The idea of the concert, Whiteman’s manager had explained, was “to point out …the tremendous strides which have been made in popular music from the day of the discordant jazz, which sprang into existence about ten years ago from nowhere in particular, to the really melodious music of today which —for no good reason—is still being called jazz.” By bringing jazz and popular music into a formal concert hall (a daring notion at the time), Whiteman hoped to show that those genres were worthy of serious consideration, especially when played by his tightly rehearsed, clean-cut (and incidentally all-white) orchestra.

On February 14 Drs. Leslie H. Gay and Paul Carliner, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, announced a cure for something that had plagued mankind since the very beginnings of civilization: seasickness. Like many momentous medical advances, their discovery had come about by accident. The doctors had been testing an experimental antihistamine prepared by G. D. Searle & Company on a woman suffering from hives. The patient was also prone to motion sickness, but she noticed that she never got sick on the streetcar ride home from their office if she took a dose of the antihistamine first. Intrigued, Gay and Carliner arranged to test the drug on soldiers traveling to Germany on a troopship.

On February 5, as the nation struggled with Watergate, food shortages, and the energy crisis, John Tower of Texas took the Senate floor to address a topic of more immediate concern: chili. The previous week, in a speech at the National Press Club, Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona had said: “I have heard that the club serves only Texas chili. Tell me this is not true. A Texan does not know chili from leavings in a corral.” Harsh words, perhaps, but extremism in the defense of chili is no vice. In the Old West such intemperate remarks might have led to a shootout, but Tower confined his weaponry to ridicule ("Comparing Arizona chili to Texas chili is like comparing Phyllis Diller to Sophia Loren") and challenged his opponent to nothing more dangerous than a cook-off. Goldwater eagerly accepted. Years before, he had been Tower’s mentor, but some things are bigger than politics, even in Washington.

Robert C. Post replies: I received numerous letters taking issue with my article; Mr. Lietwiler’s was more thoughtful and substantial than most. He provides a neat summary of Bradford Snell’s accusations but renders them no more credible. Yes, National City Lines conspired to monopolize the sale of buses, tires, and petroleum products, and it was convicted of antitrust violations. It was never convicted of conspiring “to destroy the street railway industry,” which was already adept at self-destruction.

I am appalled by Robert C. Post’s grossly inaccurate and inflammatory article “The Myth Behind the Streetcar Revival” in the May/June 1998 issue.

Your cover illustration of American pilots on the carrier Lexington is the greatest photograph ever published.

When I saw your November 1998 cover showing the Navy pilots, my first reaction was: I knew these guys somewhere. Then I read that they had just returned from aerial combat near the Marshall Islands, intercepting a number of Japanese planes en route to Tarawa. Tarawa was my first battle experience as a Navy landing-boat officer, taking the 2d Marine Division into the bloody battle for that Gilbert Islands atoll.

No doubt I and many others owe our lives to those fliers; the Japanese pilots would have bombed and strafed the landing force had they been successful in getting through.

No names of the pilots were given. But across the years, my thanks to each of you!