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Rivets & Crops. All this involved endless private problems in logistics. The average citizen solved them by backing out the family automobile, crossing his fingers and heading for the open road. Whatever else happened, gas pumps were full. Highways were acrawl with cars. By summer's end, 60 million people would have made trips in 20 million automobiles. But for all this brave show, motoring in 1946 was not unlike motoring in the day of the Stutz Bearcat. Motors failed. Tires collapsed. Lodgings were hard to find. Many a family took a tent and a gasoline stove and were glad of it; all learned to hunt tourists camps at noon, get up before dawn to start driving.
But for all the nation's vacation hunger, the summer of 1946 would be remembered for more than roadside photographs. In Manhattan and many a big city the half-forgotten chatter of rivet guns sounded once more from the bare girders of new buildings. Crops were making a comeback; in Iowa the corn was pushing up 'way ahead of last year.
And there was a renascence of sprightlier activity. In Los Angeles one Jim Moran, who had once sold an icebox to an Eskimo, was sitting on an ostrich egg. He wore a feather headdress, a pair of "hatching pants" and thought he would bring forth a small ostrich in 25 days. Newark had a "pants burglar," who came in through windows like a wraith, left a penny on the floor for his victims. In Ellensburg, Wash, an ex-cowpuncher named Larry Hightower was preparing to push a wheelbarrow around the world.
Other things were going on too—the Big Four's conference of foreign ministers was meeting in Paris and the Bikini explosion was soon to come. The average citizen was aware of both, but he was certain—now that the strikes seemed to be over—that the world was safe until fall. Also, his nose seemed to be peeling a little.