January 2011

Oscar Hammerstein I, the great theatrical impresario of the turn of the century, once famously said that “there is no limit to the number of people who will stay away from a bad play.” Hammerstein, who had his share of flops, knew what he was talking about, and his dictum remains every bit as true today.

Of course, in Hammerstein’s time, the opposite—that there are strict limits on the number of people who can come to a good play—was equally true. Only about 1800 people can fit into even the largest Broadway theater, so a sellout show has to run well over a year before a million people can see it.

Today, technology has changed that completely. A hit movie can be seen simultaneously in thousands of theaters, several times a day. Titanic has been out only about a year, but something on the order of half the human race has seen it already.

Musings by professional historians about their calling are rarely front-page material, but in their own way they matter. When the results of their self-scrutiny trickle down to the curricula that your children and grandchildren will be taught, they can matter a great deal. It is for that reason, readers, that I am emboldened to give this month’s column to a summary view of a new book by Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, The Presence of the Past: The Meaning of History in American Life. The very fact that you hold this magazine in your hands shows that you have a lively interest in the subject, and, as a life-long “popularizer” of history, so do I.

The article about the inaugural Russian satellite in our October 1997 issue brought back some memories for Dr. Joseph N. Fisher. “I was a medical officer serving in the United States Army in Japan when Sputnik was launched,” he writes. “It was obviously big news there, as it was everywhere. Nevertheless, I was amazed to witness this scene, which I photographed in the Matsuya Department Store in Tokyo two months later. Santa had a new sleigh!”

On December 23 the Troy, New York, Sentinel published an unsigned poem under the heading “Account of a Visit From St. Nicholas.” A prefatory editor’s note confessed, “We know not to whom we are indebted for the following. …” The poem, better known today as “The Night Before Christmas,” was an instant hit, and the Sentinel , along with other newspapers, began reprinting it every Christmas. In January 1829, responding to a query about who wrote the poem, the Sentinel described its author as “a gentleman of more merit as a scholar and a writer than many more of more noisy pretensions.” For those who were stumped by the Sentinel ’s word games, an 1837 anthology finally identified the poet, an affluent New York City landowner and classical scholar named Clement Clarke Moore.

On December 2, in his annual message to Congress, President James Monroe declared North and South America to be off-limits for any further European colonial expansion. “The American continents,” he said, “by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” Those powers could keep the American colonies they still had, Monroe said, but any attempt to expand them, establish new ones, or retake old ones, anywhere in the hemisphere, would be considered an act of hostility toward the United States. The President called his principle the American System; in the 185Os it became better known as the Monroe Doctrine.

On January 4, 1949, residents of Southern California awoke to find lawns covered with frost, pipes and car radiators frozen, and breath condensing into clouds when they ventured outside. On the way to work, drivers wrestled with the unfamiliar sensation of skidding on frozen pavement. The worst cold wave in anyone’s memory had brought unfathomable temperatures across the entire region: 28 in Los Angeles (that’s Fahrenheit), 23 in Pasadena, 22 in Palm Springs. Even San Diego recorded an overnight low of 27. A dense layer of smog covered the area, this time not from cars but from ten million kerosene heaters lit by citrus growers in an effort to save their crops. Although the smog was thick enough to close Los Angeles Harbor and Long Beach Airport and leave an oily film on clothes and furniture, the heaters were mostly futile against temperatures that plunged into the teens in many farming districts.

Earlier this year, Time magazine celebrated the end of the 20th century and its own 75th anniversary together with big parties and statistics. Here are one, or two, of the numbers: The man who appeared most often on the magazine’s cover, 55 times, was Richard M. Nixon; two women were tied, appearing eight times each, Princess Diana and the Virgin Mary.

Is there more to say?

Established in 1946, SAC really began its life in earnest when Curtis LeMay arrived as its chief in the , fall of 1948. He took over a force of 837 mostly aging aircraft and their ineffective crews. When he left in 1957 to become vice chief of staff of the Air Force, the numbers were 3,040 aircraft and 258,703 people. The bombers included 1,362 B-47s, 380 B-52s, and 22 of the older B-36s, as well as numerous tankers, transports, fighters, helicopters, and other support craft. Twenty percent of the bomber fleet was on “scramble"-style alert at all times, and a dozen bombers were always in the air to avoid any danger of being hit on the ground by a surprise attack. In addition to bases in Texas, Michigan, California, Arizona, Maine, Kansas, North Dakota, and Massachusetts, SAC bombers flew out of Guam, Greenland, North Africa, Spain, and England.

“Do you realize there are 1500 babies born a month in SAC?” says Jimmy Stewart, playing a B-36 pilot in the 1954 film Strategic Air Command. I was raised among those babies. I grew up near Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, during the Cold War, amid the presence of the Strategic Air Command and the eagle vision of Curtis E. Lemay. I spent the first few years of my life with great silver B-36 Peacemakers flying overhead. “Silver overcast,” they were wryly called. I went to kindergarten on the base, where each morning one student was designated officer of the day, and I attended air shows where the latest planes were on display, like the F-106A Delta Dart. I was surprised that the edge of the F-106's wing didn’t cut my finger when I furtively touched it. We were carried up in helicopters with open doors and, hovering, looked down on the planes laid out on the tarmac, huge crosses and arrowheads. We passed the “climactic” hangar that could reproduce the conditions of bases in Greenland or the steamy tropics.