New Britain herald., 1926-10-16
THE 'OBSER YER Makes Random Observations
 On the City and Its People

what the thing means until you in- vestigate closely.
 Red means to stop. but does 1t? Green means to go, but where? Am Der means-well, ask a cop; you never can tell.
 The left turn is responsible for most of the trouble. In former years all that you had to do to make a left turn was to rotate your steer ing wheel in a certain direction and, if the car was functioning properly, around the turn you went. Now you must have a guide book, a tele- scope, and Sam Lloyd's genius for solving puzzles.
 In some places you discover that you should make your left turn when the red light is on; you gen. orally find this out after waiting until the green light shows and then scuttling around the corner to be rammed by q truck. All turns are made on green at other corners. In few locations you find that the amber light is labelled left turn" and when this flashes a veritable mery- -go-round Of cars whirls into action from all sides. And then, just when you think you have the combination. you come to a traffic light only to discover, printed on the base, "No left turns" But the best fun of all comes when there are no printed directions to explain the colors; then everybody makes his own guess, and the result is cross between a hill-anddale race, the battle of Verdun. and the end of the world.
 Yet withal we negotiated all these dangerous corners without attracting the enraged notice of any police men, and then we came back to New Britain to discover a change in regulations with which we believ- ed ourselves familiar and to earn a firm reprimand for trying to turn down Church street when the red l. light was flashing at the National Bank corner.
 Taking a page from Nathaniel Hawthorne, the moral seems to be that if you must be bawled out there is no place like home,
 Mob psychology has always been a puzzling feature to even the most learned scientists and philosophers. The workings of the minds that comprise most mobs cannot be de- ciphcred by any scientific eXperl- nents and scholars have long been handicapped by the fact that mobs cannot be analysed at the time they are acting foolishly, and when they are fit to be analysed they have re- lapsed into so many normal human beings.
 An especially instructive case of mob psychology concerns a cer- tain student of the University Of Illinois who was found to be able to carry an inflated bladder over a good many white lines towards a couple of poles stuck in the turf. i E,verytime the student crossed the last white line a man on the side lines placed a huge six over the blank space that indicated the score of the University of Illinois. In a short time these siXcs mounted up alarmingly and when another man in white knickcrs finally blew a whistle signifying that there would be no more running that day every body tossed their hats in the air and yelled And today we have, as a product of many 6's being placed on the score board and much yelling and hat throwing, a young man with a hair of the shade approximately classcd as Titan earning more
 money than we can never hope to
 obtain.
 Red Grange"-every boy on the streets can tell you who he is and
 just how good he is. Nearly every
 man about town knows the nam.
 and envies him in his advertising success. Every college man or girl
 knows his picture better than that
 of Benito Mussolini who has
 been making some spectacular plays
 for Italy lately. And Red" Grange
 the all powerful, is probably very
 sorry for himself at times.
 He has a right to be. When he
 trots out on the field to comply with
 the terms of his contract that stip-
 uate that he must play the game for
 so many minutes, the crowd imme-
 diately wants to see him put down
 down, down. They want to see him
 tackled for some big losses; they
 want to see him stopped for no gain
 every time he touches the ball. Fans who have, two minutes before, paid
 money to see him play, have a fine
 time booing every slip that the great
 star might make, good part of the price they slapped down on the
 board to obtain that slim strip ot , pasteboard was invested in the hope that he will either make a 60 yarC
 run or get thrown for 20 yarc loss. And who can decipher sucl
 reasoning as that?
 If he rips through the opposing , team for long gains, the stands bug:
 with the eXclamations that thu . other team is out-classed. If ht slips on the get away, they bot
 hoarsely and slap each others back,
 in glee at the flat footed stiff" l he is tackled with a short gain they claim he is no better than any
 one else. If he stoops to tie loose shoe lace they Lombard hin with sundry and faintly humor ous "wise cracks" He can't ge mad; he can't pay any attention t anyone; he cant talk to any on or he's 'big shot." And when h | pays attention to the game an ] nothing else he's Thigh hat"
 This red haired youth once pea e died ice during the summer. Ii t picked a job that would keep hir S out of doors and give him an op = portunity to keep in physical condi c ton. Immediately ice wagons, ic e tongs, ice houses and ice picks be 1 came some sort of a symbol to tn