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Political activity, by contrast, was desultory. In San Francisco, a demonstration against alleged police harassment of the White Panther Party drew fewer than 100 protesters, while some 5,000 people turned out to watch a city police team beat a Gay Liberation team at softball, 19-15. In New York, where officials are still struggling to avoid bankruptcy, the endurance act of the week was won by Michael Boodley, 17, of Trenton, N.J., who rode the famous Coney Island Cyclone roller coaster 1,000 bone-rattling times to break the old record by 228. And on a hill above a pasture near Macon, Ga., about 150 Ku Klux Klansmen, many of them mightily fortified by swigs of whisky, caused no alarm at all when they burned a huge cross for the first time in eight years.
But the nation's outward appearance of relative calm was to some extent deceiving. Beneath the surface, TIME correspondents in interviews across the country found considerable disquiet, particularly about unemployment and inflation. Said West Los Angeles Art Historian Aimee Price: "People are happy that nothing's happening, but they're also worried." In Los Angeles' Watts section, for example, last week's tenth anniversary of the 1965 riots was celebrated with the traditional music and soul food, but the festival committee is in debt this year, and just a mile down the road from the music, long lines of unemployed people wait to get their food stamps. Elsewhere, similar frustrations contributed to racial clashes. The most serious were in Boston, which has been racked for a year by disturbances over court-ordered busing to desegregate public schools. Last week some 800 blacks, trying to assert their right to use public beaches, fought twice as many whites with fists, rocks and bottles on Carson Beach in lower-middle-class, mostly white South Boston. There were also racial incidents on a lesser scale in a number of other cities, notably in Atlanta and Newark.
Turning Away. Outside the nation's ghettos, however, most Americans were intent on taking a respite from the problems of the U.S. and the world. Internal strife in Portugal, movement toward an agreement in the Middle East, the kidnaping and rescue of Sam Bronfman—such matters dominated the front pages. But the vast majority of Americans temporarily turned away as best they could to enjoy the few days remaining before Labor Day. America was on vacation.