Gas Pains

The U.S. motorist, onetime King of the Highway, looked more like a funny-cartoon pedestrian each week. A great many Eastern gas tanks were dry, and hell had seen no furies like the motorists who did not have enough gas left to drive around to a service station for gas that was not there.

Stalking gasoline trucks on their way to filling stations became a new East Coast game. Like rats after the Pied Piper, cars followed trucks up to filling-station pumps, drained out fresh supplies in an hour. Motorists lined up quickly in queues of 50 cars wherever gas was being sold. Each demanded his legal six gallons.

Many threatened to prosecute dealers who refused to sell them, or who sold out first to old customers by surreptitious appointment early in the morning or late at night.

X, B-3 and A card holders alike were forced to take a trolley, pack into a bus, bum rides or walk.

New Rules. OPA increased prices 2½¢ per gallon for gas, unveiled new ration rules on permanent cards to be issued next week. Next probable move: to extend rationing westward to include 93 more counties in New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland and Virginia.

> All citizens in rationed areas must apply for new cards before July 11. All will get an A book, good for 16 gallons a month, 192 gallons a year. All A books are divided into 60-day periods to prevent accumulation.

> If they can prove hardship—but only then—they will get an additional B book which is adjustable to proved needs. Such books will go only to workers without any other means of transportation, who promise to share their cars to capacity with fellow workers.

> C books, also adjustable, will go only to war workers in vital companies who need even more gas. These books are good only for three-month periods.

To cut down chiseling and bootlegging, OPA suspended the supplies of many gas dealers who failed, according to Leon Henderson's snoops, to punch ration cards.

Windshield stickers must bear the letter (A, B, C) of the car's ration card after July 22.

But two-thirds of the nation could walk to work if all automobiles, busses, trolleys, subways and trains stopped running, reported the Gallup poll. The rest of the country would average a four-mile trip each way (excluding farmers).

U.S. Ingenuity. Some citizens found new ways to travel:

> A motorcycle-propelled beach chair complete with liveried chauffeur propels one dowager around Newport at a rate of 70 miles per gallon. Younger Newporters tear around on motor scooters and bicycles.

> Surreys, sulkies, buggies, phaetons, tally-hos, Meadowbrook carts, buck-boards, tandems, victorias and broughams are sell-outs at high prices.

> Checker Cab Co. is doing a flourishing business in buggy rides in Boston. The Hub city granted its first hitching-post permit in 300 years last week, planned horse troughs at central gas stations.

> New York City's old, discarded elevated railroad cars were bought by the Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, N.J. to be used as a shuttle service in the 2,500-acre reservation, to save tires and gas.

> An Albany, Ga. shoeshop reported an alltime high in low-heeled shoe sales.

No Yachts