Matt Weinstock, July 10, 1959

Unfriendly Frisco My San Francisco spy has smuggled through the mail a clipping of a sports column by Prescott Sullivan in the S.F. Examiner as follows: "Ingemar Johansson demonstrated that he is the possessor of a devastating right-hand punch when he upended Floyd Patterson for the heavyweight championship of the world. Last week the handsome, affable Swede demonstrated that he is also the possessor of an orderly, analytical mind. "In Goteborg, his home town, Johansson said it looked like Los Angeles would be the scene of his first defense of the title and that would be fine and dandy with him. 'I like Los Angeles because I've never been there,' he declared. "THINK IT over and you'll agree that never having been there is the best possible reason for anyone liking Los Angeles. What other reason is there for liking it? Can L.A. be liked for its smog, its monstrous freeway traffic jams or Charlie Park, the scorekeeper who did Sad Sam Jones out of a no-hit game? Is it to be venerated for its oppressive heat, its crackpots, the Dodgers or Braven Dyer? "For years we have been trying to puzzle things out. Now a young Swede, to whom the English language is strange and difficult, shames us by making it all look so easy. Ingemar Johansson likes Los Angeles because he has never been there and no one could sum it up more succinctly than that." My, my, such bitterness. They must really hate us up there. And we always say such nice things about S.F. Only thing to do is smile and whip out the population figures. :: "OH MEMORY, thou fond deceiver!" wrote Oliver Goldsmith. It certainly is. The boys on the copy desk were discussing the new sales tax on cigarettes, which make them 30 cents a pack in the office vending machine, and a 2nd World War veteran reminisced, "Gosh, remember how cheap they were in the Army PBX?" That's what he said -- PBX. :: JULY 4 has disappeared into limbo for most people but not quite for writer Alvin Sapinsley. He and his wife, Elizabeth, were having supper in the patio of their Sherman Oaks home around 8:30 p.m. when something hit with a sharp, cracking sound on the roof not too many inches away from his head and bounced onto the driveway. It was the nose cone of a .45-caliber bullet -- copper-colored and warm. Another panel you will never see in the sitcom legacy version of "Peanuts." The current legacy strip: "It's a Laugh Track, Charlie Brown." He went up on the roof and found a deep dent it had made. By fitting the slug into the hole he determined it apparently had been fired from somewhere around Mulholland Dr. and Beverly Glen Blvd. He called the police and an officer was sympathetic and made a report but said there wasn't much he could and actually there wasn't. The disturbing thing is that five minutes before the bullet struck, his wife had wondered if they could see the fireworks from the back yard. He'd said he didn't think so and suggested, he recalls with a shudder, they go up on the roof for a better view. :: BATHERS BEWARE Hark, hark, the shark -- All bite, no bark.     --LEN DRESSER :: A LADY NAMED Julia made the final payment on her car and remarked that she should soon be receiving the pink slip in the mail. At a question by Donna, 5 1/2, she explained the pink slip meant ownership of the car. Donna said she wanted to be there when the box came. "What box?" Julia asked. Turned out Donna somehow had gotten the idea that the pink slip was a ruffled pink seat cover. Breaking the news was like telling her there was no Santa Claus. Ah, those wonderful childhood misconceptions. :: PUBLIC AT LARGE -- Picture postcard from Terracina, Italy, from publicist Al Hix has the message, "This is just like Zuma Beach -- with pizzas." . . . Tom Cracraft can't understand why the missile people don't send gophers and moles up in rockets. "Out in Studio City," he says, "we're hardly ever bothered by monkeys."

Paul V. Coates -- Confidential File, July 10, 1959

Confidential File Mash Notes and Comments "Dear Paul, "Have you taken a close look in the mirror recently? "Well, we here at the Encino Summer Playhouse have. And do you know what we saw? "YOU -- as an actor! "Now we are prepared to offer you a deal. We'd like you to take part in our play, 'Laura,' which opens July 24 for two weeks. "How would you like to have your name up in lights in front of our theater? That's a pretty exciting thought, isn't it? Just think of the comment it would cause among your close circle of friends. "Your first reaction is probably something like this: " 'Aw, go on. I'm too busy writing a column and doing a TV program every day.' "Sure, you're busy! We're all busy! "But a true artist never thinks of that. All he can think of is the excitement of opening night -- "The blaring overture...A quick once-over of the script to make sure you know your lines...The butterflies in your stomach doing the minute-waltz incha-cha-cha time...The last minute touches to your makeup...Then, the creak of the curtain going up in all its faded glory...And there you are -- in the flesh -- for all the world to see!" (signed) Bill Dodge,Encino Summer Playhouse, 4935 Balboa Ave., Encino.     -- I'm not going on like that unless the rest of the cast does. :: "Dear Sir: "A compulsion drives many imperfectly educated men, like the writer, to put words on paper expounding theories and opinions that spring from the bottomless well of their imagination; an imagination that is renewed by contact with the works of literary giants and is similar to the method used by Antaeus to renew his strength. "A representative example of this compulsion follows: "Parkey Sharkey exists as the California counterpart of the British 'man who never was,' although neither run much danger of being tagged with a Social Security number. "There is one significant difference between these two illusions: the 'man who never was' played a vital role in a desperate war, while Parkey Sharkey is the embodiment of his creator's frustration, tinged with revulsion, which is the natural result when an imaginative writer like you is forced into contact with the helpless, the downtrodden and the foolish. "In short, a sensitive person must resort to such allegorical devices if he is to remain at all objective on the job in the face of the ceaseless waves of human misery beating against his desk... "That's it. Or rather, it's only it until the next time the trigger is pulled by a remembrance, an article, a word. What do you think?" (signed) Harold Parrow, P.O. Box 42507, L.A. 42.     -- What should I think? You've just told me that my best friend in the whole world is only a hallucination. :: "to Paul, "I have two jobs now, when I get through cleaning up the Oasis bar, I deliver Chinese dinners for a Chinese resterant. "The other night I asked the Chinese cook, what you got for supper??? "He ran off a list of Chinese dinners which I had never heard of before. I had never had a Chinese dinner before, Paul, so I said Chow Mein, without the chopsticks. I can't eat with them. "Paul, my wife is driving me nuts. "The other day she walked a 82-year-old man home from a bar. He was drunk. They were crossing the street at a signal when his pants fell off him, and my wife had to pull his pants up for him in the middle of the street." (signed) Parkey Sharkey, c/o Oasis Bar, Menlo Park.     -- Lies! Lies! Lies!

Matt Weinstock, July 9, 1959

Way, Way Out The Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs of America have been sending me daily notices concerning their convention here this weekend and, although I am open-minded on flying saucers, I simply don't know how to handle thisoverwhelming situation. As the boys say, it bugs me. One featured speaker, a press release states, will be Kelvin Rowe of San Jacinto, "who reportedly has flown into outer space more than 350 times." The release blandly adds, "Rowe's contacts have been primarily with people from Jupiter and Pluto." Just like that. Another will be Daniel W. Fry of West Covina, "who in 1950 rode in a spaceship from another world from White Sands Proving Grounds, N.M. to New York City and back in half an hour." Another will be Hope Troxel, Altadena interior decorator, "who has enjoyed many remarkable incidents involving extraterrestrial life." ANOTHER WILL BE Reinhold Schmidt, Bakersfield grain buyer, "who on Aug. 14, 1958, flew from the Mojave Desert to the Arctic Circle and under the ice pack in a spaceship from the planet Saturn." Schmidt's experiences, which required a whole page for the telling, continue: "On Nov. 5, 1957, he was contacted by aSaturnian spaceship and invited aboard by its crew of four men and two women outside Kearney, Neb. Schmidt has since had many contacts with his friends from outer space."  Many aviation and military authorities are quoted as expressing belief that there's something up there all right, doubtless from outer space. Of a sighting in Rome, Clare Boothe Luce said, "I did see an object. I don't know what it was." The AFSCA also raises some interesting questions, including the following: Was the star of Bethlehem a spaceship? Did Moses receive the Ten Commandments from outer space? Was the Red Sea parted by extraterrestrial technology? Are there more than nine planets in our solar system? Honest, fellows, I don't know. Somewhere along the line I seem to have lost my childlike credulity. :: LET US LOOK IN on an exciting drama of conflict and emotion in a suburb and hope we don't disturb it. There's a campaign in this town to cut down trees for one reason or another, mostly beauty of what is called progress. A certain woman announced she was going to take out a crooked fig tree at the side of her house. She feared it would crack the sidewalk. Not only that, it looked dead. Suddenly, the tree has busted loose with leaves and small figs. She can't understand it. A neighbor can. A tree lover, she has been secretly watering it at night. ::  AFTER MANY years of drinking as he pleased, a movie studio worker recently saw the light. His doctor held the lamp for him. Stop or drop, he warned. Dead, he meant. Four days after he quit the liquor store he'd patronized for 14 years had a sign in the window, "Going Out of Business." The poor guy now has a guilt complex. He is brooding about the possibility that he may have undermined the economic foundation of an Inglewood shopping center. ::   HARDEST KIND The most difficult work that     I have to go through, Is trying to look busy when     I've nothing to do.     --RALPH FREEMAN :: A CABDRIVER named Dick Vasquez tells of the time he picked up a passenger who had misplaced his car while busy relaxing and suggested they cruise around looking for it. They went up one street and down the next but it was nowhere in sight. As the cabby turned a corner the passenger said irritably, "We've been on this street before. Gosh, you're dumb!" "Yes, sir," Dick said, "but my cab's not lost, is it?"

Paul V. Coates -- Confidential File, July 9, 1959

July 5, 1959: Ira Cockrum is arrested in the death of his grandson. Confidential File About a Grandpa Who Killed Michael Gary Cockrum, a stocky little kid with blond hair and desert-brown skin, was buried yesterday. After 14 years of being alive, he was laid to rest in Lancaster Community Cemetery. And all the family was there to pay final respects. All except his Grandpa Ira, who blasted Michael to eternity with his shotgun last Friday. Grandpa Ira's in jail. You probably read in the papers over the week end how deputies picked him up and booked him for murder of Mike and for injuring Mike's brother, George Jr., 10, in a family feud over a $12 electric iron. I read it, too, but somehow, I forgot about it until I got a call yesterday from the dead boy's father. George Cockrum Sr. phoned me shortly after he, his wife and his three other sons, Georgie Jr., Charles, 9, and Dennis, 4, had left the cemetery. "About my father killing my son that way," the 44-year-old hod carrier told me, "I'd kind of like to straighten out some of the things that was said." The reports in the papers said that Cockrum, who arrived at the scene minutes after the tragedy, was restrained from attacking his father with a baseball bat. "What happened," he explained, "was that I did pick up that baseball bat. And I was walking at my papa. But nobody got in my way. "By myself, I dropped it. "I knew, before I reached him, that if I hit him, God would punish me." Cockrum told me that his father was a big, strong man for his 64 years. 'Pa Had a Bad Temper' "He drank and he had a bad temper," he said. "Pa always had a bad temper. When I was a kid, he used to beat on my mother something awful. "But he was an awful hard worker, and he paid the bills. My father would be good sometimes. He could be real good, too." Then George Cockrum talked about his dead son. "Michael was a good boy. He wasn't a tall boy. He was stocky, but there was no fat on him. "Strange," Cockrum recalled, "but my father always did kindly favor Michael. In fact, Michael had been helping him work on his house until just lately, when Michael told me he'd rather not go over there no more. Grandpa was cussing at him too much, he said. "I told the boy that if he didn't want to, he didn't have to. "My papa's been worse lately," the dead boy's father continued. "His father -- my grandpa -- died two or three years ago. He grieved over that. Then, two months ago, my mother died. That hit him. Extra hard, I guess, 'cause of the way he treated her. "It got so he wouldn't listen to any of us. He told me just last month, 'Georgie, if you don't watch out, something's going to happen. It's going to happen to one of your loved ones.' 'I Hope He Finds God' "I said, 'Papa, you're sick. I'm going to take you to a doctor.' Last week I got an appointment for him. For the 10th of this month. I just got it too late." Cockrom cleared his throat. "If anybody was to ask me how I feel about my father, I'd have to say that I feel sorry for him. I hope and pray that he gets down on his knees and finds God. I hope God helps him, because I know he's a sick man. "I love my father. I loved my boy. He thought a lot of that boy, too. "Tomorrow," George Cockrum told me, "they'll be bringing him back here to Lancaster for his trial. I haven't seen him, but I hear he's been asking for cigarettes. I'm taking him a few, I guess. "But what I don't know," he added, "I just don't know why he done me this way."

Matt Weinstock, July 8, 1959

Mother's a Smuggler There is a nice old doll, maybe 60, who drinks along with the boys in a Hill St. bat cave. Every now and then some longtime friend calls her Mother, which leads to mutual merriment. The Mother story goes back perhaps 15 years, when she was a popular waitress in an all-night restaurant in Long Beach. One night a young lieutenant with a full head of steam was chatting with her when he noticed in horror that the booze-buying deadline had slipped by. She tried to hustle him a pint but had no luck. Here indeed was a crisis. He had to make ship, be awake and alert at a certain hour, without a drop to soothe his nerves which, he knew from experience, would be jumping. So they plotted. NEXT DAY the old doll got dressed in her best and met the ship's launch at the scheduled time and was taken aboard the battlewagon. She was greeted lovingly by the lieutenant, who introduced her to the captain and other officers as his mother. The captain invited her to lunch. All this took place under the eyes of scores of sailors who knew darn well she wasn't his mother but that nice hasher in Long Beach.  Meanwhile, she was nervously trying to deliver a fifth of whisky concealed in her handbag to her "son." She couldn't because of all the beaming brass eager to welcome the lieutenant's dear mother. Finally he managed to take her on a tour of the ship and somewhere in the tangle of the engine room she managed to slip him the bottle, which he stashed. Topside again, the lieutenant arranged to get his mother ashore, explaining that she was only in town for the day and had to catch a plane back to her home in Boston. Although seamen do not always revere officers, this has been a well-kept secret and to this day she is known to them as Mother. :: A BUNCH OF downtown office workers got into a discussion about ferocious denizens of the deep, and a girl named Helen came to the rescue of sharks and whales. Men had no ethical right to kill them, she said, because the sharks and whales were in their own habitat, minding their business and the hunters were not. This blew up a storm, led by a girl who disagreed vehemently, and later sent Helen this verse: These giant mammals     would agree That you excel in     sympathy. My daily prayer is     most devout -- You're never inside     looking out.  ::  THE REHEARSAL at a Huntington Park church for a CBS Church of the Air program went off fine a few days ago but when director Gene Webster began taping the show the choir upped the tempo, throwing off the timing. As a result, the program came out a few seconds short. When Gene pointed this out, the choir director shrugged, "Oh well, that's show business." :: ONLY IN L.A. -- The grim drivers, four abreast in the fearful 5 p.m. westbound traffic on Olympic Blvd., were on the pace to make all the signals when, near Catalina, an unmistakable whistling decrescendo rent the air. Someone had a tire puncture. The drivers looked about in alarm, each hoping it was someone else. A flat tire in rush hour traffic is almost a fate worse than death. The agonizing whistling finally stopped and was followed by the familiar thumping. One man, in despair, was seen wrestling with his steering wheel, the others happily darted off. :: FRAGMENT OF flighty conversation between two teenage girls overheard in a seaside restaurant by a gal named Muriel: "I don't know why I get so upset about it because I really don't care -- do you know what I mean?" :: AT RANDOM -- Tex Elgin of Oxnard says that when the folks around Lompoc, near the Pacific Missile Range, hear a roar they don't know if it's the Navy sending up a rocket or the Air Force exploding a publicity blast. . . . A station wagon with Ohio license plates on Harbor Freeway had a Volkswagen in tow instead of the usual trailer. Only thing Seymour Mandel could figure was that the couple and their children used it as a scout car en route in patrolling the prairie.

Paul V. Coates -- Confidential File, July 8, 1959

Confidential File How Secrets Filter From Me to Kozlov WASHINGTON, July 8 -- Allowing Soviet Deputy Premier Kozlov to visit the University of California's radiation laboratory at Berkeley has been called "soft-headed nonsense" by Rep. Lipscomb (R-Los Angeles). Lipscomb angrily demanded official explanations for the Russian's visit to the top security installation while American newsmen were excluded for security reasons. Rep. Lipscomb makes a good propaganda point in this Washington report, but as sometimes happens, the story is wrong. Newsmen DID tag along with Koslov. He raises a point, though, that shouldn't go unanswered. Should U.S. reporters be trusted with a lot of top-secret information? Or is a little knowledge a dangerous thing? I'm not speaking for all of us American newsmen. Just for me. But the way I look at it, Rep. Lipscomb should keep his nose out of our private battles with the State Department. If [Secretary of State Christian A.] Herter's hired hands want to show our nuclear secrets to the Russians and bar the door to us reporters, I say they've got their reasons. They probably figure that if they let us in and deny admission to Kozlov, the Kremlin would find out soon enough, anyway. Take me, for instance. Suppose I were admitted into the radiation lab at Berkeley as a newsman. I'd come home that evening and my wife would say, "What happened at the office today?" "I'm beat," I'd tell her. "What'd you do?" she would press. "Nothing." "Nothing," she'd snort. She would keep it up a while longer, and finally I'd blurt out: "If you must know, I was at Berkeley inspecting a double meglacyclotron atom smasher with powerglide. But it's top secret." Early the next morning the dry cleaning man would come by for his weekly pickup. She would hand him my suit. "He looks a little baggy in the knees this week," the cleaning man would say. Had to Get on Knees My wife would nod. "He was out at Berkeley inspecting a top-secret double meglacyclotron atom smasher with powerglide. And I guess he had to get on his knees to get a good look." The cleaning man would tell it to his cousin Sandra, who plays bass viol with Phil Spitainy's All-Girl Orchestra. And, on a one-nighter in Sioux City, Sandra would tell a stage-door Johnny who dates her because he digs bass viol, that her cousin, the cleaning man in L.A., has a customer who saw a top-secret double meglacyclotron atom smasher with powerglide. The stage-door Johnny, a salesman who travels in ladies cut-rate lingerie, would casually let it drop to the buyer at John Wanamaker in Philadelphia , who would put it in an air-mail letter to his aging mother in the Bronx, whose sister Jennie has an unmarried daughter, Sophie, who rooms with a girl named Tanya who is a waitress at the Russian Tea Room opposite Carnegie Hall on 57th Street in New York. During the post-lunchtime lull, Tanya would confide to another waitress that her roommate's mother's sister's son at John Wanamaker knows a salesman who dates a bass viol player with Phil Spitainy whose cousin, a cleaning man, has a customer who saw a top-secret double meglacyclotron atom smasher with powerglide. Cloak, Complete With Dagger She would be overheard by a girl with muscular calves and an almost imperceptible mustache who has a 10-minute glass-of-tea break from rehearsals of the Bolshot ballet next door. Now, this girl is not really a ballerina. She's a fink for Anastas Mikoyan. And she would promptly send him a coded letter. A few days later, at the regular 9 a.m. sales conference of the deputy premier in the Kremlin, Anastas would take Kozlev aside and smugly ask: "You just got back. Do you know about their double meglacyclotron atom smasher with powerglide?"

Matt Weinstock, July 7, 1959

Feverish Fourth Let us calmly reflect on the Independence Day weekend. July 4 came on Saturday and by all rights it should have been observed then and then alone. But a kind of fever now seems to grip people when a holiday weekend rolls around. There is a compulsion to go places or to gather in tribal ceremonies dedicated to food, drink and fierce relaxation. Nothing wrong with that except it becomes a big project. Many offices closed Friday, ostensibly to prepare for the event. And the siege at the supermarkets was awesome. Hardly a pound of ground round or a single wiener escaped the impetuous customers. THEN THERE was the repetitious, head-pounding propaganda about death on the highways. No one is against traffic safety and certainly no one is naive any longer about what he faces when he goes for a drive on such a weekend. One wonders if such overwhelming reminders are necessary. Almost completely lost in the celebration was the reason for it. July 4 used to mean something, something about a war that was fought and a document that was written. Perhaps it has become too safe and sane. A beach resident, anticipating a large family gathering Saturday, thought it would be appropriate to set off some fireworks on the beach. He'd heard that most of them were illegal so he phoned a sheriff's office and asked if he could set off a few safe ones. He described them, one by one. The deputy said no and read him the law. "How about sparklers?" the beach burgher asked. No, not sparklers either. "How about marshmallows?" the beach resident then asked, adding, "I mean if we make sure the edges don't catch fire when we toast them." :: THERE'S FRANTIC competition among radio stations for the attention of listeners and no gimmick remains untried. There's a story going around about a bright young man who rushed into the boss' office with a great idea for an attention getter. "We could make up our own weather reports," he said breathlessly, "then we'd have them exclusively." :: HAD YOUR frightening thought for today? Bill Duniway is haunted by the implications of the big Pentagon fire. It was one of those things that supposedly couldn't happen. But it did. Suppose, in the confusion and excitement, the fire had reached the inner inner secret sanctum and set off the panic button, sending our bombers winging for Russia. A real bigoopser. :: TRAFFIC BOUND residents of San Fernando Valley may be interested in this excerpt from a deed turned up by Denny Olinger of Title Insurance on a piece of property there, dated Dec. 28, 1910: "An easement for an automobile boulevard for the passage thereon and thereover of those vehicles generally known as automobiles and propelled by gasoline, electricity, steam or alcohol, said automobiles to carry passengers only and no such vehicles carrying freight nor any vehicles propelled by horses, mules or animals of any description shall be allowed to be on or use this easement." :: ALTHOUGH 560 million new Lincoln pennies were issued in the first six months of 1959 you don't see many of them and for a strange reason. The rumor has been spread that they're collector's items because of an alleged error in design -- the fact that the o in "United States of America" on the reverse side is in lower case instead of upper case as it was in the previous issue. Actually the o was deliberately changed to lower case as part of the new design. Anyway, some coin dealers are offering the new pennies for a dime and the word has been circulated that they may be worth 15 or even 25 cents. As a result they're being hoarded. Even the banks are having difficulty getting a supply of them. To repeat -- they're not worth a penny more than a penny. :: AT RANDOM -- Roger Beck said it first: "I wonder if the two dogs the Russians sent up there along with the rabbit were greyhounds? Maybe they're going to start a dog track" . . . Jack Jarvis, Seattle columnist, who creates fictitious organizations on his home printing press, is sending friends membership cards in the I Suffer So Beautifully Assn. . . . Famous last words: "Oh, but I don't burn, I tan!"

Paul V. Coates -- Confidential File, July 7, 1959

Confidential File Ensenada's Brooding About Tijuana's Sins For natives of Ensenada there's a long, lean summer ahead. The gaiety picked up a little over the Cuatro de Julio* weekend, but so far this year, the Baja California resort city has been suffering from more than the heat. Its problem is one of economics. Ensenada was conceived and weaned on the Mexican peso, but it grew city-big on the American dollar. And it's been the American dollar which has supported its relative prosperity in the last few decades of its phenomenal growth. Specifically, the American tourist dollar. But now, I'm informed, the economy is hurting badly. Visitors from north of the border -- once as reliable as San Juan Capistrano's swallows -- suddenly aren't reliable any more. In fact, they're avoiding Ensenada this summer like they're unaware that the overgrown seaside village exists at all. The reason they are, in case you can't guess, is that they're afraid.  Not afraid in the cowardly sense. It's just that they'd rather not take unnecessary chances on the strange brand of justice which too frequently is meted out by Baja California courts and police. The atrocious treatment accorded visitors in the border town of Tijuana and the publicity it received in recent months have influenced an awful lot of people to change any Baja California vacation plans which might have been formulating in their minds. Now that the pocketbook pinch is on, I'm told that the merchants of Ensenada are beginning to wake up to the fact that some terrible things have been happening to tourists in Tijuana. They're outright shocked, I'm told. They're stunned by the inhumane treatment being doled out to prospective paying customers. Now they're adding their voices to the cry of clean up Tijuana. And while I'm sad that the current economic squeeze might be hurting some of the small, decent individuals in Ensenada, I'm glad that the businessmen there are finally "aware" of conditions in the sin city 72 miles to their north. I'm glad, even if their compassion is inspired by the dollar signs. ::  Not just some things, but apparently everything is haywire in Gov. Long's domain these days. I received a letter this week from a longtime correspondent of mine in the Louisiana State Penitentiary. It was postmarked Angola, La. The date stamped on the envelope by the post-office canceling machine was Aug. 11, 1959. Maybe it's true, after all, that we damn Yankees are behind the times. *Cuatro de Julio: A holiday celebrated annually in Ensenada and Tijuana honoring Jorge Washington, whose picture is on the U.S. one-dollar bill.

Matt Weinstock, July 6, 1959

Drama in the Groove Between editions the other day reporters Roy Ringer and Jeff Davis invented a game they call Trite Trite Again. The idea is to recall a key scene or bit of dialogue in a movie or TV drama which tips off the entire plot. Try these: The spy story in which the sinister foreign smoothie says to the atomic scientist, "Your government is in no position to help you now, Dr. Conrad -- the brief case, please!" The heroic tale of the U.S. Cavalry in which the handsome lieutenant says, "You'll have to excuse my men, ma'am, they haven't seen a white woman since Ft. Laramie." The saga of the jungle or prairie in which the assistant scout says, "Sure is quiet out there tonight." And the scout says, "Too quiet." The saloon scene in which the crooked sheriff says, "Figure on staying in town long, stranger?" The stalwart hero retorts, "Mebbe." :: AS CIVIC CENTER habitues know, the Stephen M. White statue was moved recently from the Hall of Records to the new Courthouse, a brassie shot away. Now bearded, frock-coated Steve (1853-1901) admonishes traffic with upraised arm at 1st and Hill instead of Temple and Broadway. The other day Tom Cameron saw a passerby studying the large pedestal base at the Hall of Records on which Steve used to stand and which authorities haven't gotten around to removing. From his furtive look Tom got the impression the man clearly suspected the pigeons had carried off old Steve. :: ONLY IN Beverly Hills -- A woman ordering a caviar sandwich in a Beverly Hills delicatessen was overheard telling the waitress, "Be sure it's imported because I don't know the difference!" :: OLEFINITIS Scientists ask, "Can man     survive on planets     filled with gas?" The answer lies before them     -- in Los Angeles he     has.     -- MAURICE RICHLIN :: FOR THOSE WHO stayed home it was a week for contemplation. And that's what we get from Frank Friedrichsen. In the front door of his Santa Monica home, about [illegible]2 in. above the floor level, there is a mail slot. Last week the postman slipped through the slot POD Form 1507 with the penciled notation, "Box too low." Now, if the box has become too low in the years between 1942, when the house was built, and 1959, Frank can only assume that the house is shrinking or mailmen are getting taller or Postmaster General Arthur E. Summerfield is bent on cracking down indiscriminately on whatever displeases him. Suppose, Frank muses, someone should send him an unidentifiable copy of D.H. Lawrence's novel, "Lady Chatterley's Lover," which Summerfield has banned from the mails as obscene. Would the postman stoop low enough to deliver it? Tune in some other weekend for another thrilling chapter in this saga of nonsense. :: A MISSING persons report filed at the Norwalk sheriff's station described a vanished and sought person as a "periodical drinker." Of course, some of those luscious ads in the magazines aren't bad, once you put them through the blender. :: SC'S NEW assistant dean, Dr. William H. McGrath, who competed in the two-man bobsled championships recently at St. Moritz, said, "One can more easily zero in on the problems of everyday living if he sharpens up now and then by riding a cobbled ice-wall at 80 m.p.h. through a forest." Sounds like more fun than the freeways. :: AROUND TOWN -- The sign "Se Habla Espanol" is a familiar one in store windows. Now Leon Levitan reports a similar notice in a house on E. 4th St. -- "Se cuidan ninos." Yep, baby sitting . . . June bugs are appearing for the first time in years, apparently brought out by the hot, dry weather. OK, July bugs, then . . . Harry Tatleman, TV producer, heard a man in the next booth in an all-night coffee shop tell his lady companion, "Look, I hate people who talk when I'm interrupting" . . . Tom Dixon got the letters twisted in a KFAC newscast and APCD came out ACPD. And, you know, it sounds better that way -- Air Control Police Department.

Paul V. Coates -- Confidential File, July 6, 1959

July 6, 1959: "Our Boarding House With Major Hoople." Kaff Kaff! Confidential File Fourth Shenanigans Shock Monarchist I trust this raucous celebration can be considered at an end until next July the Fourth. Now then, if the parades have run their routes, the Elks' bands have laid up their wind instruments, the bunting has been swept away, the lemonade jugs have been drunk dry and the din of the last cherry bomb has faded, I can tell you. I can tell you that I have little patience with all this unrestrained enthusiasm. To me, it represents a shocking display. Why? Well, if you must know, old man, I'm a monarchist. Not a militant one. Just a rather wistful, sentimental one. And it pains me deeply, every year at this time, to note the extraordinary behavior of the colonists. Really, it is quite bad form to make such a public spectacle of one's feelings over an unfortunate misunderstanding that happened so long ago. It just isn't the sort of thing one does. At least, this one doesn't. I spend my Fourth of July feeling rather sad that we were unable or unwilling to find some gentlemanly course for agreement with our ruler, George III. Grant you, he was a stuffy old duck. But he was not unapproachable. And the whole ugly mess might have been resolved to everyone's satisfaction if we had been guided by calmer heads. Instead we engaged in that atrociously ill-mannered Boston Tea Party and allowed ourselves to be swayed by the histrionics of such malcontents as Patrick Henry. However, that's all water under the bridge, as the saying goes. I suppose there really isn't much we can do about it now. Unless, of course, there are enough of us and we all band together. My dedication to the crown is not totally free of emotional entanglement. The fact is, I am secretly in love with the queen. And I hope she's happy with Philip. Although, frankly, I fail to see how anyone could be happy married to a man whose idea of a ruddy good joke is to turn the lawn sprinklers on unsuspecting newspaper photogs. While it may be presumptuous of me to say so, Her Royal Highness is my kind of a girl. She's got -- how shall I put it? Real class! I love the way she looks, the way she walks and the way she talks. And the way she talks, incidentally, is another reason that I am an Anglophile. Lost Our Language It is my sincere belief that when we won our independence, we lost our language. A people who once paid solemn homage to the King's English have been miserably reduced to speaking in a slack-jawed drawl. It didn't happen immediately, you understand. It has been a gradual, insidious process. But over the years our speech  has become infected by an epidemic of double negatives and worse which crept stealthily up from the bayous, down from the Ozarks, in from the Panhandle and out from the Bronx. The carrier has been the popular song. And the sickness first came over us, at least in my time, with a grammatical abortion called "I Ain't Got Nobody." This was followed in quick succession with "Yes, We Have No Bananas," "Ain't She sweet?" "Them There Eyes," "Is You Is, or Is You Ain't My Baby?" "It Ain't Gonna Rain No More" and, recently, a sloppily insensible ballad called "Throw Mamma From the Train a Kiss." You see my point, I'm sure. If we were still part of the empire such things could never happen. And that peculiar Tennessee Teddy Boy, Elvis Presley, would be obliged to sing it, "You Aren't Anything but a Hound Dog." "It may not have much of a beat that way, but it's proper, by gad.