January 2011

It is the summer of 1941. The United States still has a few months of peace left, but these American soldiers have just achieved a triumph unique in military history—and its luster is only slightly dimmed by its not having taken place in time of war. John E. McDonough tells the story:

“My father, who is the treasurer of the 43rd Infantry Division Veterans Association, asked me to tell you about this picture. It was taken in Louisiana sometime during the 1941 war games. These are men of A Battery, 169th Field Artillery, 43rd Infantry Division. On this day they were told to hook up their guns and get in their trucks and move to another position. They drove on for some time without incident, but just as they were rounding a curve at the crest of a hill, an “enemy” tank appeared, heading their way. Just how an enemy got this far behind the lines or A Battery got this far forward is a question that probably will go unanswered for all time.

In our August/September, 1980, issue, Joseph Kastner gave us the story of a great American native—corn. Now, Laurent E. Beaucage of Lewiston, Maine, reminds us of a charming by-product—the corncob pipe, another American native:

“The corncob pipe is a product which has spread throughout the world. Durable, inexpensive, sweet-smoking, the pipe typifies American homespun utility. In the marketplace, it competes successfully with the most lavish pipes carved from the most ancient burlwoods. It was smoked in peace by President Herbert Hoover (who always insisted on paying for any pipes sent to him as gifts), and in war by General Douglas MacArthur, whose ever-present pipe boosted the corncob’s status a hundredfold.

Two recent color portfolios we presented deserve some amplification. The first, “Art of the People” (February/March, 1980), included a painting entitled View of the Schuylkill County Almshouse Property, at the Year 1881 and brought us a letter from Elwood M. Young of Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, which serves to underscore the fact that most folk art has to endure years of mild ridicule before coming into its own:

“This picture ‘shook me up,’ you might say, when I saw it for the first time. You see, my great-grandfather, John Morgan, was one of the three Schuylkill County Poor Directors in 1881. My mother’s family laughed about it over the years and often joked about it being a ‘masterpiece.’ Were they alive today, they would realize their error.”

Henry Ford builds a museum …

“Get everything you can find!” the Motor King instructed his agents. And so they did—old boots and cowbells, spinning wheels and saw mills, schoolhouses and wayside taverns —everything that would help to recreate the nineteenth-century world that Ford’s own Model T had done so much to destroy. It all came together in Greenfield Village, Michigan, one of the most remarkable museums in the world. Walter Karp gives us a tour of the place—and a penetrating glimpse into the life of the man who made it.

Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson remembers …

Of the two great wars of our century, we naturally remember the more recent one most vividly, and, in moments of crisis, we look to it for lessons in fighting—or avoiding—another war. From time to time, most often when the Soviet Union makes one obnoxious move or another into someone else’s country, we are reminded of the “Lesson of Munich,” when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is said to have met Hitler’s aggression with “appeasement” and so to have helped to bring on the Second World War. But now, some scholars are arguing that taking a hard line is not so likely to check aggression as it is to make the world repeat the tragedy of the First Great War.

The Alcotts The Fall of Fortresses Rufus Porter, Rediscovered

by Madelon Bedell
Clarkson N. Potter
20 illustrations
384 pages, $15.95

It is doubtful that any family has ever chronicled itself as abundantly as the Alcotts. Bronson’s diaries alone fill sixty-one fat volumes, earnestly recording his every thought. His wife, Abba May, and the four Alcott daughters also kept journals. Madelon Bedell has used this torrent of material to build a portrait of this intense, eccentric family.

Francis Albertanti, assistant sports editor of the New York Evening Mail, considered baseball, boxing, and horse racing the meat and potatoes of the sports section. College football received respectful attention during its season, and Albertanti kept a headline standing in type to take care of tennis. It read: TILDEN DEFEATS RICHARDS AGAIN.

One day Theophilus England Niles, the managing editor, called Albertanti into his office and asked why golf got no space in the Mail.

“It’s an important game,” Niles said, “very popular with the Wall Street crowd.”

“Then put it on the financial page,” Francis said.