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Show BROADWAY AND MAIN STREET What to Seal in Cornerstone? Gold Piece, Balloon, G-String I -By BILLY ROSE ' If anyone is going to lay a cornerstone in 1950, I would suggest he seal up the following items for the benefit of the folks in 2050. 1. A COPY of The Congressional Record. It will make dullish reading. read-ing. I grant you, but it will prove that our legislators could get up on their hind legs and sound off on anything from the price of asparagus to the plight of the Zuni Indians. And if what's happening in Europe or Asia is the shape of things to come, it will undoubtedly interest our descendants to know that there once was a time when a legally elected representative could shoot off his face without being shot an hour later. 2. A 520 GOLD PIECE. At the i rate we're going, by 2050 a pound worth more than a pound of printed print-ed money, and there's no telling how much the lucky finder may be able to buy with 20 bucks worth of the yellow yel-low stuff. ourselves. And a copy of the Kinsey Report to show the kinds of answers we are getting. 8. A TQY BALLOON filled with hydrogen to prove that this destructive destruc-tive gas was once used in the public pub-lic interest. 9. A PRINT by Picasso. This cultural cul-tural left-over may amuse our 21st century friends, and if it doesn't it will at least teach them that there once were countries where even a Communist could paint as he pleased. 10. A COVEK of Time magazine the one with the picture of Mark III, the electronic computing machine ma-chine developed at Harvard. Also the accompanying article suggesting, suggest-ing, on the basis of Prof. Norbert Wiener's new science of cybernetics, cybernet-ics, that the world may eventually be ruled by this machine's offspring, off-spring, since the machine's brains are getting larger and larger while man's brains are getting smaller and smaller. It will probably startle the cellar-dwellers of 2050 to learn that there was a time when people were only thinking of the machines taking over. U. A SNAPSHOT of the immigration immi-gration buildings on Ellis Island. Generations hence, people may be curious to know what the island was used for, because by then it will probably be a launching platform for robot missiles, and similar knick-knacks. Next to the snapshot, an 8-by-10 glossy of the new U. N. building on First avenue, wrapped 3. A PAY Biu CHECK, com-; com-; plete with stub showing all tax de-j de-j ductions. It's my hunch that it will amaze the folks of the future to realize that back in 1950 a guy did have a few bucks left after the government was through with him. I 4. A COPY of the New York I classified telephone directory to show how enterprising 8,000,000 people peo-ple used to be when their enterprise enter-prise was really free and frolicsome. frolic-some. 5. A G-string and a length of cord used in a lynching two examples ex-amples of what the 20th Century was capable of doing when given enough rope. 6. A PHONOGRAPH record of "Mule Train," with Frankie Laine's whip alongside it. The song won't make much sense, but I'll bet a cup of uranium it'll whistle better than the Concertos to Collectivist Agrarianism which future Shostako-viches Shostako-viches will compose. 7. A COPY of James Thurber's "Is Sex Necessary?" to show the kinds of questions we are asking certain that the curtain is on the model that bit of cloth which makes it possible for one to vote without a cop peeking over his shoulder. This little curtain, I suspect, sus-pect, is darn near the most important import-ant piece of equipment we have in 1950, and judging from what's happening hap-pening to it elsewhere in the world, it may be as rare as the dodo by the time another cybernetic century cen-tury rolls around. in a copy of the song hit, "But I Can Dream, Can't I?" 12. An architect's model of a voting booth. And with it, instructions in-structions on how you can pull a lever and vote a straight ticket, or flip off any candidate you don't like and flip on the one you favor for a particular office. I'd take it kindly if the man laying lay-ing the cornerstone were to make |