September 1946

NEW UNDER THE SUN

A RECENTLY patented oily spray, nitroacenaphthene, developed by Drs. C. V. Bowen and L. E. Smith, of the U.S.D.A., is rated as 25 percent better than lead arsenate for controlling codling moth, major insect pest of apples. Unlike lead arsenate, the new material does not leave a poisonous film that must be removed before the fruit can be eaten safely.

Among Ourselves

When we commissioned Victor Civkin to create this month's Five Star home, we awaited preliminary sketches with impatience. True to his reputation as an architectural trail-blazer, he entered a comparatively new field, producing the split-level home on page 44. It's unusual, but it provides a direct answer for many design problems.

Now's the Time to Concentrate on Enduring Values

IF YOU have taken a look at an index of prices and incomes recently, you must have done some thinking about values. I have. I started off trying to figure out how much our money would buy, and then wondered what it would buy, and finally what we needed. "Things," I told myself, "are coming back on the market.

Television This doming Year

From $125 to $2,500 (plus installation), depending upon which picture size you choose, the quality of the picture (its brilliance and steadiness), cabinet, tone, tuning features, whether it will receive stations in all 13 television channels, and upon whether your set also includes a radio (AM or FM cr both) or a radio-phono combination.

Want a Room of Your Own, Girls?

Tips for California Travelers

NOT least among the many reasons for seeing California in the fall is the inestimable advantage of visiting this popular state after the summer tourist rush is over. That rush has broken records' during the months just past. There is indication it will subside, but will by no means end, this fall.

Twenty People to a Bathroom

IF IT hadn't been for the conduit across the basement ceiling, the bugs could have made it all right, but when they came to the conduit in the dark they lost their grip and fell, and that's how come they were always dropping in on Bert Larson and his young wife when they were in bed. There wasn't any place to move the bed to, because Larson had been able to rent only one corner of the grocery-store basement to live in, and the rest of it was full of groceries; and Larson's wife had lived quite a protected life in a small town where there were enough houses to go around, and now she was three months pregnant and sometimes nauseated.

They Use Every Inch

Basement--to Have or Have Not?

Modern NEEDN'T BE STARK

THE term "Modern," as applied to contemporary home design, means many things to many people. It may mean, for example, broad, view-framing areas of glass, a conscious striving for spaciousness thru use of a minimum of functional furniture, a casual, pleasant relationship of indoor-outdoor living.

Here Are Ideas in New Curtains

Fall's The Time for California

CALIFORNIA at any time is like Grandma's trunk in the attic-- full to its curved top with pleasantly old and excitingly new things.

Never Such 'Mums Before!

IF YOU'RE one who likes "the feel of a good smell," you like chrysanthemums. You associate their clean, sharp odor with bright fall days when the sun feels good across your shoulders. It's tied up with football, maybe. Or planting tulip bulbs. Or getting back home from a picnic with the good smell of wood smoke still clinging to your jacket and hair.

NEWS IN WOOL RUGS

NEW textures for new effects are the big news features in today's wool carpeting. In the stores you'll find various types of looped piles, nubby surfaces, carved and shaggy textures-- all woven with a view toward practicality.

A Home on a Slope

SUPPOSE you own a lot. It isn't on the side of a hill, but it isn't level either. It has a nice, gentle slope that would be beautiful with the right house on it. And you would like to make use of that slope.

The Housing Shortage 1607 to 1946

POLIO

I HAVE seen polio panic at work. It was last fall. Polio was on the loose across the front pages of America. In some places schools were closed, whole counties quarantined, whole towns sprayed with DDT by plane.

Make Your Garage Pay Off in Better Living

Our Town Presents

THERE are more than one thousand Little Theaters in the United States. They present, on the average, three plays a year. But these are only some of the amateur theatrical organizations that are busy. There are high-school and university dramatic circles, women's drama clubs, and thousands of lodges, businessmen's organizations, and veterans' posts that regularly produce plays. One play-publishing house says the nation has 200,000 amateur theatrical groups.

Change About Is Fair Play

Furniture Designed for the Veteran

From Barn to Dream to Home

FROM the hop-barns of Oregon to the salt-water farms of Maine, the red barn is as American as Old MacDonald. We saw them everywhere, huge old barns so often given! the best location on the farm. Perhaps leading a hog's life wasn't so bad.

P-f-f-f t! to Funny Ruffles

MAKE your kitchen dance with these amusing little wallpaper cutouts..." That's the final, not-so-amusing straw!

Here Are the 1946 Vacuum Cleaners

WHAT improvements will you find when you go vacuum shopping? The 1946 cleaners are improved in efficiency, improved in beauty and design. New materials have come into use. New precision methods, gleaned from building war equipment, have been adopted in the manufacture of this very important equipment.

Garlic Vinegar IS A Gourmet Touch

GARLIC'S like the atom. It must be harnessed and controlled. Tossed about with gleeful abandon, it may easily become a subject about which your best friends are noncommittal. She who places a garlic clove here and there with a familiar, confident hand may one day chew a sizable piece, and the impact is terrific!

What Do You Know About Dishes?

HERE they are: answers to your questions on the how-when-where-and-what of buying dishes. There's more to it than selecting pretty patterns. What is your mode of living? How will your dishes be used? Is it best to have more than one set of dishes? What's the minimum number of items needed in a starting set? Should dishes be of the same period as your dining room? You'll want to know the answers to all these so that your dishes will give you maximum pleasure and satisfaction.

How Good a Host Ae You?

YOUR guests will have a better time-- and you'll have an easier time --if you know what makes successful entertaining.

My Kitten Is Fun!

I SPEND most of my day in the kitchen, so it has to be fun to keep my "Mary mind and Martha hands" from going stark, raving mad. Meals and dishes, and more meals and dishes-- with floors, cupboards, and silverware to keep clean. This, need I tell you, can be monotonous!

Look What a Yard or Two of Leftover Fabric Can Do

Life Begins With Forty Acres

"FOR sale-- 40 scenic acres overlooking Huron Valley." This, in the Ann Arbor, Michigan, paper, caught my eye one summer morning.

Bean-Patch Cottage Brought Up to Date

WHEN Faith Green, a Pasadena, California, librarian, bought property in Laguna Beach, the Three Arch section had only six residents. Miss Green's other neighbors were thousands of bean plants, cultivated on adjacent property by a large ranch company.

Place Mats You Can Make

Gather Winter Bouquets Now

Scissors in Your Kitchen!

Perfect Cocoa or Hot Chocolate!

Where to Get It

Page 58. Bakeware Terracotta by Prof. Eugene White (University of Southern California) available from Stein Importing Company, 712 S. Olive Street, Los Angeles, California; copper fruit container from Robert Pierce, 15th Floor, Merchandise Mart, Chicago.

WELCOME NEWS: The "Little Bulbs" Are Back!

Glass Is More Than a Window

The Trescotts' Crabgrass Party

OUR lawn is the envy of passers-by. But for five summers we've been the laughing stock of the community. Here's how it came about.

Supper on Sunday--A family Affair

THE idea was born when my husband said "Sunday's the one day the family's together. It's a shame for you to spend so much time in the kitchen with the rest of us in the living room. Why not do the roast and any long, complicated things on Saturday; then all pitch in to finish up on Sunday?"

Home Fire Extinguishers...

IN FREDERICK, Maryland, a woman was doing a dry-cleaning job in the bathroom, with the tub one-third full of gasoline. The stuff ignited, probably from static, but she got out unharmed, closing the door before running to call firemen.

Victoria Catches Her Second Wind

Yews Do Everything

Longer Life, More Beauty From Your Trees

BIG and sturdy, forest trees manage to survive many of the troubles that bring early death to city and town shade trees. But intelligent care can add years to the lives of your own trees, can even make them big and sturdy. Six hazards are likely to shorten drastically their lives: diseases, insects, gas injury, drouth, starvation, and mechanical injury. Here's what scientists recommend to minimize injury from these sources:

2, 4-D, Slow but Sure Give It Time to Kill

How to Line a Drawer With Cedar

Mrs. Wood Cuts Her Ironing Time in Half

AROUND 3:30 the other afternoon I dropped in on my new neighbor, a pretty little mother of three youngsters. Mrs. Wood looked as rested and rosy as her young Timmy just up from his nap, even to fresh nail polish and a whiff of cologne. She invited me into the dining room where she was about to start the ironing.

Thru the Shops

Rooms With a View

OUR summer cottage, facing Lake Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, is surrounded by some of the most magnificent scenery I have ever seen. When we decided to remodel it for year-round use, the problem was how to take full advantage of the views.

Speech Night

WE DURLINGS are learning poise-- and it's fun! It was all Dad's idea.

Are Their Feet at Fault?

BILLY had the poorest posture of anyone in the sixth grade. "Walk erectly," his teachers told him. "For heaven's sake, hold your head up," his mother said over and over at home.

The Merry-Go-Round

ONCE there was a little Jack Rabbit who wouldn't wash his ears. Whenever his mother tried to wash them for him, he would cry rabbit tears all over the front of his furry coat.

Make your Own Flagstones

YOU can make your own flagstones. Not only that, you can make them far more cheaply than you can buy them, they'll be easier to place, and you can design them yourself.

THE DAIRY OF A Plain Dirt Gardener

Sept. 1 The wind blows hot across the land and light clouds scud. And leaves are beginning to blow off the flowering-quince hedge at the rear side of the lawn so that I can begin to see thru it. Ah me-- I fear that fall is on the way.

Buttons From the Wild

September Garden Guide

SEPTEMBER is the time to plant, replant, and revamp. For the South and West, it begins a new gardening year with the planting of fall vegetables and flowers. Even in the North, it's time to think of 1947's garden. Perennials that bloom in May and June should be planted in their permanent homes in September. Planted now, they will become well rooted this fall.

Annuals to Take in Now

FROST need not end your annual garden. Vigorous young plants, potted and brought in before frost, will bloom thru most of the winter.

Do You Know Your Flowers?

Bigger Decorative Fruits

How I Maneuver My Husband

EARLY in marriage I vowed I would not be a nagging wife. But at that rose-glow stage I didn't know what stubborn creatures men can be-- even good-natured Will.

How I Like to Be Maneuvered

HANDLING a tired, hungry husband isn't the easiest job a wife has. Even we men will admit it.

Never Give a Dog Away

THIS month's title, "Never Give a Dog Away," sounds selfish, doesn't it? But is it?

THE MAN NEXT DOOR

My neighbor in the old mansion with its face lifted says his wife flabbergasted him slightly the day they left on their vacation. She was two hours behind schedule for the departure. But when he stopped at the filling station she bawled him out quite logically for not having the car gassed up.