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NOTES on a day that will never happen again ... It may be that war will break again. It may even be that that war will have an ending which is not total destruction by atom bombs or the next miracle of man's devising. But there will never be another Tuesday like that Tuesday in midAugust, when at exactly five seconds after the appointed hour, the end of World War II was announced. That was a day! It fell in the midst of the August cold snap. Here in the middle west, about the time of the Au' gust moon, the nights turn cold and brilliant, and
the days bloom all dazzling blue and yellow and the trees are spankin' clean and the sun shatters on the leaves.
It was much that sort of a day, Tuesday, August 14, 1945. The sun went down grandly in a very voluptuousness of red-orange. And over the city V-Night came softly with an adolescent moon but no one noticed. It didn't take long for the tin horns, the paper hats, the confetti, the tumult and the shouting to emerge. On Times Square there had been celebration since the day before. But we here in the middle west are slower. We're the conservatives. And there was little jubilation in our town until the official and undeniable announcement came. Then the furore.
On a wall flanking a parking lot a middle aged workman stood attentive to a row of bottles— six of them, with the seals unbroken. It was his booty acquired just before the closing of the bars. His explanation was simply a grinning, "I'm gonna get drunk!" . . . Along Grand Avenue a quietly blissful sailor wandered by himself among the crowd, wearing an absurd pur
pie paper hat. ... In the Phillips Hotel some of the ones who invari' ably confuse celebration with destruction ripped open the pillows and snowed feathers on the mob below. . . . Others, from the Phillips, the State, and the Muehlebach, expressed their joy in the war's ending by pouring gallons of water onto the heads of the crowd. But no spirits were dampened. . . . Probably a good half the thousands of people swarming the streets were happy-drunk, noisydrunk, or skonk-dronk. . . . Everybody kissed everyone. ... A banker we know, a sweet and joyous gentleman, trundled up the stairs in the wee small hours singing, "Did You Ever See a Dream Walking!" His wife appeared on the landing. "Not up to now," she said. . . . Around 1 8th and Vine, colored people stood on the streets, quiet, a bit stunned by it all. . . . One lone man sat out the celebration in a downtown theatre, the only person in the house for the last half of the picture. . . . Our favorite bon vivant spent most of the evening transporting people who couldn't get where they were going by ordinary means of transportation. His pick-ups included two ladies and a little boy who were trying to get to the Union Station from downtown; a pretty waitress trying to get home with four gift bottles of liquor; a soldier and his bride en route, under hazards, to their hotel; and two fnjihtened nuns trapped at the Union Station with no way of getting to the haven of St. Francis Xavier. With the waitress and the bottles in the front seat and the two little nuns in the back, our man drove his gay red convertible all over the east end of town, trying to find the convent. He found it, with the help of a policeman who he says was right out of a book — one of the jolliest on record. . . . One of