THE PEOPLE: This Side of Paradise

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It would be the biggest, noisiest New Year's Eve in a long, long time. Manhattan's bars would stay open until dawn, U.S. roadhouses would be neon-lighted after dark years, and the stiff white shirt front would be back once more, a gleaming and irresistible target for females with an urge to write with lipstick. Between the last tick of 1945 and the first tock of 1946, U.S. citizens would consume enough alcohol to float a rinkful of ice, and the thin, happy bleat of paper horns would echo from time zone to time zone in pleased disregard of the atomic age and all waiters.

It would be a great night for the spilled highball, the cigaret burn, and the lamentations of teetering women who had just lost a high heel from one slipper. Shrill words would be spoken before dawn. At least one famous actor, writer or politician would get punched in the nose, and automobiles would collide with an abandon almost forgotten during the stodgy years of gas rationing. The morning-after consumption of aspirin, raw egg and Worcestershire sauce would rise again in proof of man's infinite capacity for hope.

Anti-Climax. Yet it was an odd time for a celebration. New Year's Eve would inevitably come as an anticlimax to the wild triumph and relief of V-J day; the new era of peace would hardly have begun.

If there were to be postwar equivalents of the flapper and the lounge lizard, the short skirts and Oxford bags of the 1920's, they had not evolved yet. The only really distinctive style note was the transitory costume—half uniform, half civilian clothes—of discharged servicemen. The new automobile, refrigerator, and radiant heating system were still just pictures in advertisements; whiskey was 65% neutral grain spirits, and butter was hard to find.

But if Jan. 1, 1946 seemed to ride in on a backwash of shortages, tie-ups, Missouri politics, old union contracts and recapped tires, most Americans were still willing to guess that the future would be vast and exciting. If not, the time for worrying would come soon enough The average citizen still had money, and his wife still had some perfume and a permanent wave. As the clock struck twelve he would probably think of a fine way of toasting the future and toning up his stomach.