Matt Weinstock, July 14, 1959

Morbid Morons It isn't a nice thing to say but an indignant Hollywood hillsider said it and hoped it might be repeated here. He lives a few ridges away from Friday's holocaust in Laurel Canyon. He said, "If we'd had to evacuate, and we were ready, we'd never have gotten out because the streets were so clogged with morbid morons who drove up to the area to see a house burning, preferably one with a hysterical mother clutching a child, with their clothes aflame, running out of it." They came roaring up the side streets adjacent to the fire zone the moment the smoke mushroomed into the sky, he said, and kept coming despite constant appeals by firemen over radio and television, urging everyone to stay away. Hillside residents, he added, are still shuddering at what might have happened but for the efficiency of the firemen. It's a sad commentary but there are people like that. :: THE SENTIMENT was echoed by John Paley, who lives at 7900 Willow Glen Rd., at the corner of Woodstock. The fire burned to his fence but his home was saved by firemen and neighbors. He was evacuated. Yesterday, as firemen continued to patrol the area, putting out hot spots, sight-seers with picnic lunches invaded the area and an ice cream wagon set up in business. He heard one woman say disappointedly to her companion, "Look, there are two houses still standing!" He calls them "spooks" and hopes the hungry wild animals roaming the devastated area may nip them in the rear. :: AND THEN there was the hillsider who told a friend, "When they said to evacuate I grabbed my two dogs and my unemployment insurance card and went." :: RETIREMENT of Officer Bill Shurley after 28 years on the LAPD reminded J.M.M. of the Troublesome Thirties, when Main St. was Shurley's beat. "I never saw him rough-handle a man," recalled J.M.M., a bartender at the time in the old Belmont bar at 5th and Main Sts., "and there were some real characters running loose at the time." Among them were white-bearded, white-robed, barefooted John the Baptist, a turbaned Indian who claimed to be 350 years old, and a black-bearded Russian known as Baron Gunpowder. The Baron would appear at the Belmont several times a week and order vodka, then virtually unknown. He would pull the lead up from a .38-caliber shell with his teeth, pour the powder into the vodka and gulp it down. Meanwhile he would tell of being chased out of Russia during the revolution, although there was a rumor that he sold papers at anintersection in Eagle Rock. One night the regular bartender was off duty and the substitute watched in amazement as the Baron drank three gunpowder cocktails. But some of the gunpowder spilled and the bartender touched a few grains of it to his tongue. "Hey!" he exclaimed, "it's nothing but crushed Sen-Sen!" It was then recalled that the Baron had always put the shells and bullets in his pocket after using. He was never seen again. :: ONLY IN L.A. -- G.B.'s thought while driving at night on San Diego Freeway in West L.A. near the Santa Monica Blvd. turnoff: The tower of the nearby Mormon Temple looks like a rocket at Cape Canaveral about to take off, with the golden angel Moroni and his trumpet as the nose cone. :: AROUND TOWN -- A relucant youth en route to summer school was listening to a transistor radio, just like his luckier, non-flunking mates at the beach, while sitting on a bench, waiting for a bus on WPico Blvd. . . A new sign on Indian Springs swimming pool in Montrose states, "No sharks here. Come in." And a swimming pool outfit on Ventura Blvd. "guarantees they can't get into their pools either" . . . Inflation note: Remember when you used to be "nickleled to death" by the gradual disintegration of your old car? A man at a gas station was overheard remarking he was being "dollared to death" by his jalopy . . . Ted Quillin of KFWB said it: "Help keep Los Angeles clean -- send your garbage to San Diego."