Matt Weinstock -- March 6, 1959

Lost Chords A PTA meeting at Center Avenue Elementary School in Inglewood opened Tuesday with a salute to the flag, after which the audience remained hushed as a Girl Scout choral group assembled for a song and the accompanist approached the baby grand piano. The accompanist raised the keyboard cover. She lifted the movable music rack. A puzzled expression came over her face. She tried them again, then crouched and peered underneath, then into the instrument. She was no longer merely puzzled, she was baffled, even desperate. At this point Principal Irene Hoban went to the rescue and, amid laughter from the many community youth groups present, joined in the search. In a moment Miss Hoban announced that some men scheduled to give the auditorium a much-needed renovation had apparently started the job that afternoon without her knowledge, by removing the piano keys. But all went well nevertheless. The choral group sang without accompaniment and the proceedings were graced throughout with a nice light tone. * * ANYONE WHO has visited General Hospital knows about the colored lines on the floors and sidewalks which help people find their way from one section to another. The other day staff members at the City Health Department's new center at 2032 N Marengo Street, a short distance from the hospital, were surprised to see several persons dodging traffic in the middle of the street. They turned out to be patients instructed to follow a line from the main hospital to the children's unit. Somehow they'd gotten off the line and onto the center white line. They were retrieved in the nick of time or doubtless they would be hiking out Highway 66. * * CORRECTION He who hesitates is lost, They taught me that in school. But that is wrong I learned today- They hadn't filled the pool. G. C. McHose * * WHEN HE WAS 16, Steve Allen writes in Look, he bummed around the country and learned what hunger and poverty meant. "I remember walking along a road in California one day and finding a half-empty can of beans by the side of the road. I picked it up but was disappointed to see that it was crawling with ants. Within seconds I had shaken and blown the ants out of the can and finished the beans." A remarkably forthright statement from a man in a realm where everyone is supposed to have a fairy godmother arranging his life. * * BANK NOTES -- Two women met in a Sunset Boulevard bank and Frank Barron heard one say, "Isn't it funny, the only time I ever see you lately is either here or at the drugstore." "Yeah," the other said wryly, "every time I make a withdrawal I get sick" . . .  A woman cashing a check in a Westwood Village bank asked for new $1 bills. The teller told her she didn't have 25 new ones but could give her new fives. "Oh no," the woman said, "then I'd have to take dirty bills in change somewhere else." * * AROUND TOWN-- Larry Brown of the SC golf team misfired a ball over the fence at Wilshire Country Club and was looking forlornly at it when an officer in a patrol car came along Beverly Boulevard, took in the situation, stopped and tossed it over the fence. Yep, the long arm of the law . . . As anyone could have guessed, votes against the death penalty in this paper's poll on capital punishment have been received from rogues signing Caryl Chessman, Harvey Glatman , Stephen Nash and Elizabeth Duncan . . . Anyone else notice that the newspaper photos of the collapsing Vanderbilt Apartments, 334 S Figueroa St., showed a scrawled "Z for Zorro" on it? . . . The magazine Thy Kingdom Come, which circulates among flying saucer groups, has the slogan "Be active today or radioactive tomorrow" . . . A mortuary ad in El Pueblo offers a "courtesy discount" to city employees.