Swing (Jan-Dec 1946)

TIME was— when the kiddies shot off a few firecrackers and we called it July. But that was before. It wasn't enough that since 1776 we'd had bunting and speeches and some skyrockets. 'This is the twentieth century — well on its way to the twenty-first — and America had to take it big. For the celebration of this independence month — nothing less than an atomic bomb — and the biggest explosion ever known in the history of any independence won from whatever enemy! This is another of the devious avenues down which man pursues his ultimate happiness. On the calendar as we knew it before the atomic bomb, this is the seventh month — the pleasant compound of picnics and sparklers, ice cream and sunburn and spankin' white sails . . . chiggerbites and the splash of cool water . . . sticky Sunday mornings in church , . . band music in the street . . . white jackets and crew cuts . . . and the girls in their summer dresses. The days blaze like a sulphurous fire in a crucible. And in the early morning, an hour before the sun, the blackbirds come, whistling and fiendish, like old cackling charwomen, to scrape the crucible of day clean of the burnt black night. That's July as it has been and will be in all the forever any of us will ever know. But in the new reckoning of time, this is the end of a year. The first twelve months of the atomic age have passed. The old year dies in the midst of a month hot and golden as brandy held against the sun. And over Bikini the first movement ends in furious crescendo. JULY, iy46 NO. ARTICLES Minnesota Vacation D. W. Hodgins 3 Barnyard Rhapsody Betty and William Waller 7 Sterilized Heartbreak Kay Lyman 11 Try Tipping John Warington 15 Send a Cow by Radio John Quinn 19 Blood and Thunder Harry Van Demark 23 Impresario of the Impossible. . .Charles H. Hogan 27 What's in a Name Jack Andrews 41 The Seedless Herb Lewis C. Hodgins 45 This Shrinking World John H. Furbay 47 It Was So Easy Joseph Kantor 5 1 MISCELLANIES Bourbon in Bondage Marion Odmark 22 Jest a Minute Tom Collins 40 OUR TOWN TOPICS Swing's Man of the Month, R. J. (Hap) Gardner 37 July's Heavy Dates in Kansas City 2 Ports of Call in Kansas City 63 SwiNGiN' With the Stars 66 Swing Around 67 OTHER TOWN TOPICS Chicago Letter Nort Jonathan 53 Chicago Ports of Call Marion Odmark 55 New York Letter Lucie Ingram 57 New York Ports of Call Jeanne Taylor 59 PICTURES Inside Front Cover — Garden swimming pool at the home of Attorney Enos Hook, 4940 Summit. Back Cover, Liberty Memorial Mall, Kansas City, Mo. Page 33, Ava Gardner, courtesy Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Center pages, Lenna Alexander; Page 36, R. J. (Hap) Gardner, by Hahn and Millard. • JETTA CARLETON Bditor DAVID W. hodgins Managing Editor DONALD DWIGHT DAVIS Publisher TOM COLLINS Humor NORTON HUGHES JONATHAN . . Chicago Editor LUCIE INGRAM New York Editor JOHN T. SCHILLING . . . Circulation Manager PHOTOGRAPHY: Harold Hahn, Dick Millard, Brooks Crummett, J. C. Turney, Norman Hobart, Louise Putnam. ART: James Gantt, Don Fitzgerald, Frank Henley, Betty Schultheis. Swinff published monthly at Kansas City, Missouri. o Address all communications to Publication Of' fice, 1120 Scarritt Building, Kansas City 6, Missouri. 'Phone Harrison 1161. 247 Park Avenue, New York 17, New York. 'Phone Plaza 3-9327. 333 North Michigan, Chicago 1, Illinois. 'Phone Central 7980. Price 25c in United States and Canada. Annual subscriptions. United States, $3 a year; everywhere else, $4. Copyright 1946 by WHB Broadcasting Co. All rights of pictorial or text content reserved by the Publisher in the United States, Great Britain, Mexico, Chile, and all countries participating in the International Copyright Convention. Reproduction for use without express permission of any matter herein is for« bidden. Swing is not responsible for the loss of unsolicited manuscripts, drawings or photographs. Printed in U. S. A.