Mr. Podger always particularly enjoyed the last night of each summer at Loon Lake.
The narrow fringe of sadness that ran around it only emphasized the pleasure.

The evening was not always spent in the same way.
This year, on a night cool with the front of September moving in, but with plenty of summer still about, the Podgers were holding a neighborhood gathering in the Pod.
The little cottage was bursting with people of all ages.

In the midst of it all, Mr. Podger came out on the Pod porch, alone.
He had that day attended a country auction, and he had come back with a prize.

The prize was an old-fashioned, woven cloth hammock, complete with cross-top pillow, fringed side pieces, and hooks for hanging.
Mrs. Podger had obligingly pushed things around on the porch to make room for it, and there it was, slung in a vine-shaded corner, the night breeze rippling its fringe with a slow, caressing movement.

Mr. Podger sat down in it, pushed himself back and forth in one or two slow, rhythmic motions, and then swung his feet up into it.
He closed his eyes and let the unintelligible drift of voices sweep pleasantly over him.
Suddenly one young voice rose above the others.
"But", it said, "do you always know when you're happy"?

The voice sank back into the general tangle of sound, but the question stayed in Mr. Podger's mind.
Here, in the cool, autumn-touched evening, Mr. Podger mentally retraced a day that had left him greatly contented and at peace.

It had begun with the blue jay feather.
Walking along the lake before breakfast, Mr. Podger had seen the feather, and the bird that had lost it in flight.
The winging spread of blue had gone on, calling harshly, into the wood.
The small shaft of blue had drifted down and come to rest at his feet.
All day long Mr. Podger, who was a straw-hat man in the summer, had worn the feather in the band of his broad-brimmed sunshield.
Would a blue feather in a man's hat make him happy all day?
Hardly.
But it was something to have seen it floating down through the early morning sunshine, linking the blue of the sky with the blue of the asters by the lake.

Then, since the auction was being held nearby, he had walked to it.
And there, on the way, had been the box turtle, that slow, self-contained, world-ignoring relic of pre-history, bent, for reasons best known to itself, on crossing the road.
It was doing very well, too, having reached the center, and was pursuing its way with commendable singleness of purpose when Mr. Podger saw hazard approaching in the shape of a flashy little sports car.
Would the driver see the turtle?
Would he take pains to avoid it?

Mr. Podger took no chances.
Taking off his hat and signaling the driver with it, Mr. Podger stepped into the road, lifted the surprised turtle and consummated its road-crossing with what must have been a breath-taking suddenness.

The turtle immediately withdrew into its private council room to study the phenomenon.
But Mr. Podger and the driver of the sports car waved at each other.
Here in the cool darkness Mr. Podger could still feel the warmth of midday, could still see the yellow butterflies dancing over the road, could still see the friendly grin on the young, sun-browned face as the driver looked back over his shoulder for a moment before the car streaked out of sight.

Where was the driver now?
What was he doing?
And the turtle?
Mr. Podger smiled.
For a few brief minutes they had all been part of one little drama.
The three would never meet again, but for some reason or other Mr. Podger was sure he would always remember the incident.

Then there had been the auction itself.
Mr. Podger heard again;
at will, the voice of the auctioneer, the voices of the bidders, and finally the small boy who had been so interested in Mr. Podger's hammock purchase.

"I like them things, too", he had said.
"We got one at home.
You know what?
If you're lyin' out in the hammock at night, and it gets kinda cool -- you know -- you just take these sides with the fringe on -- see -- and wrap 'em right over you.
I do it, lots o' times -- I like to lie in a hammock at night, by myself, when it's all quiet.
The wind moves it a little bit -- you know."

Mr. Podger had thanked him gravely, and now he made use of the advice.
As he pulled the fringed sides up and made himself into a cocoon, Mr. Podger saw that thin, attractive, freckled little face again, and hoped that the boy, too, was lying in a cool, fringed-wrapped quiet.

Alacrity, the Podger cat, came by the hammock, rubbed her back briefly against it, and then, sure of a welcome, hopped up.
She remarked that she found the night wind a little chilly, and Mr. Podger took her inside the fringe.
Soon her purring rivaled the chirping of the tree crickets, rivaled the hum of voices from inside the Pod.

Mr. Podger was just adding this to his pictures of the day when the screen door opened and Pam burst out.
"Dad"!
She said.
"It's getting so chilly we've lighted a fire, and we're going to tell a round robin story -- a nice, scary one.
We need you to start it.
Why are you out here all by yourself?
Aren't you happy"?

Mr. Podger opened his cocoon and emerged, tucking Alacrity under his arm to bring her in by the fire.
"Of course I am", he said.
"Never happier in my life.
I just came out here to know it".
Dallas

As the South begins another school year, national and even world attention is directed at the region's slow progress toward racial equality in the public schools.

Desegregation is beginning in two more important Southern cities -- Dallas and Atlanta.
In each city civic and education leaders have been working hard to get public opinion prepared to accept the inevitability of equal treatment.

These programs emphasize the acceptance of biracial classrooms peacefully.
The programs do not take sides on the issue itself.
They point out simply that "it is the law of the land".

The two cities have the examples of Little Rock and New Orleans to hold up as warnings against resorting to violence to try to stop the processes of desegregation.
Even better, they have the examples of Nashville and Houston to hold up as peaceful and progressive programs.

In each case there was an initial act of violence.
In Nashville, a school was dynamited.
In Houston, there were a few incidents of friction between whites and Negroes, none of which were serious.

In each city quick public reaction and fast action by the city government halted the threats of more serious incidents.

The Nashville plan, incidentally, has become recognized as perhaps the most acceptable and thus the most practical to put into effect in the troubled South.
It is a "stair-step" plan, in which desegregation begins in the first grade.
Each year another grade is added to the process, until finally all 12 grades are integrated.
The schedules are flexible so that the program can be accelerated as the public becomes more tolerant or realizes that it is something that has to be done, "so why not now".

The program has worked well in both Nashville and Houston.
It met a serious rebuff in New Orleans, where the two schools selected for the first moves toward integration were boycotted by white parents.
Another attempt will be made this year in New Orleans to resume the program.

Generally, throughout the South, there is a growing impatience with the pattern of violence with which every step of desegregation is met.

Perhaps the most eloquent move toward removal of racial barriers has been in Dallas.
During the summer, Negroes began quietly patronizing previously segregated restaurants and lunch counters in downtown retail establishments.
It was part of a citywide move toward full integration.

So successful has been this program, worked out by white and Negro civic leaders, that further extensions are expected in the next few months.
Hotels, for example, are ready to let down the bars.
Already, at least one hotel has been quietly taking reservations on a nonracial basis.
Several conventions have been held in recent months in hotels on a nonsegregated basis.

This is a radical change in attitude from the conditions which prevailed several years ago, when a series of bombings was directed against Negroes who were moving into previously all-white neighborhoods of Dallas.

It is also symptomatic of a change in attitude which appears to be spreading all across the South.
Southern whites themselves are realizing that they had been wrong in using violence to try to stop Negroes from claiming equal rights.
They insist they are ashamed of such violence and intimidation as occurred in Alabama when the Freedom Riders sought to break down racial discrimination in local bus depots.

All across the South there are signs that racial violence is finding less approval among whites who themselves would never take active part but might once have shown a tolerant attitude toward it.

There are many causes for this change.
One of the most important is economic.
Business leaders are aware now that they suffer greatly from any outbreak of violence.
They are putting strong pressure on their police departments to keep order.
In the past these same Southerners were inclined to look the other way.

And as the businessmen have begun to act, a real sense of co-operation has sprung up.
This co-operation has emboldened other Southern whites to add their voices to demands for peaceable accommodation.
They realize that by acting in concert, rather than individually, they will not be picked out as objects of retaliation -- economic and otherwise.

Since moving from a Chicago suburb to Southern California a few months ago, I've been introduced to a new game called Lanesmanship.
Played mostly on the freeways around Los Angeles, it goes like this:

A driver cruising easily at 70 m.p.h. in Lane A of a four-lane freeway spies an incipient traffic jam ahead.
Traffic in the next lane appears to be moving more smoothly so he pokes a tentative fender into Lane B, which is heavily populated by cars also moving at 70 m.p.h.

The adjacent driver in Lane B has three choices open to him.
He can (1) point his car resolutely at the invading fender and force the other driver back into Lane A;
(2) slow down and permit the ambivalent driver to change lanes;
or (3) alternately accelerate and decelerate, thus keeping the first driver guessing as to his intentions, thereby making a fascinating sport of the whole affair.

The really remarkable thing to me is that most California natives unhesitatingly elect to slow down and permit the invading car free access.
Whether or not this is done out of enlightened self-preservation, I don't know.
But it is done, consistently and I'm both surprised and impressed.

This could never happen in my native Chicago.
There such soggy acquiesence would be looked upon as a sure sign of deteriorating manhood.
In Chicago, the driver cut out would likely jam his gas pedal to the floor in an effort to force the other car back.
Failing this, he would pull alongside at the first opportunity and shake his fist threateningly.

This negative explanation of courtesy on the freeways, however, does an injustice to Southern California drivers.
At the risk of losing my charge-a-plate at Marshall Field and Company, I would like to challenge an old and hallowed stereotype.
After three months of research, I can state unequivocally that Los Angeles drivers are considerably more courteous and competent than any other drivers I've ever encountered.

During one recent day of driving about Los Angeles there were actually a dozen occasions when oncoming drivers stopped an entire lane of traffic to permit me to pull out of an impossible side street.