Matt Weinstock, Nov. 21, 1959

Car Troubles     Two years ago, Bob Joseph bought a two-cylinder French Panhard, which has positively no area in front for a license plate.  He has been driving it with only the rear plate.     On consecutive days recently he received two citations.  A new law went into effect in October requiring cars to have both plates, and it is being enforced.  He explained ineffectively to the officers that the dealer sold him the car with only one plate.     He went to the Traffic Fines Bureau at 810 Wall St., where a courteous marshal showed him the nice new law and advised him to go to the Motor Vehicle Department at 35th and Hope Sts. and get new plates.     He did, then asked where he could put the one in front.  The man there saw no possibility and directed him to the Highway Patrol at 4th and Vermont.     There he retold his sad tale.  An officer circled the car, looking for a spot to put the front plate.  When he came up with nothing Bob asked, "What do you suggest?"      "Sell it," the officer said. ::     UNDERGRADUATE ENTHUSIASM for today's game is about even.  First SC students swiped a UCLA air horn, which was returned.  Then UCLA students put a blue paint coating on Tommy Trojan, the SC statue.  Then four SC students put a red paint job on UCLA's Founder's Rock but were caught swiping two banners.  An SC student policing group has curtailed their privileges. ::     THIN MARGIN When getting on a bus that     is packed The avoirdupois I long     have lacked Is then a  joy, a thing     of merit, As past the fatter forms     I ferret.     --DELLA SKELLETT ::     IT IS traditional and inevitable that reporters, who write the news stories, and copy readers, who edit and put heads on them, should quibble.  Reporters contend copy readers destroy their lilting prose.  Copy readers accuse reporters of slaughtering the language.  They went at it again the other day.     A rewrite man turned in a  story about a W 8th St. liquor store holdup in which a case of Scotch was stolen.  The reporter, obviously a naive fellow, identified it as "Hague and Hague" instead of Haig and Haig.     A surly copy reader asked him, "Are you sure it wasn't a case of Holland gin?" ::     IN HIS latest Desert Rat Scrap Book, all about good Injuns, Harry Oliver tells of a party of tourists visiting some Indian ruins in a desolate section of Arizona.  To get to them they had to leave their cars and walk.     En route, a woman exclaimed, "Gracious, I forgot to lock the car!"     "Don't worry," the Indian guide said, "there isn't a white man within 50 miles." ::     IT MAY BE comforting to know that the Health Department is watching over you, even if you don't care.     Bob Martin received a notice the other day that his dog Concho had been quarantined for 14 days as a rabies suspect.  Puzzled, he phoned County health and asked why.  "Because he bit you," he was told.     Then Bob remembered.  Six weeks ago the dog playfully bit or scratched him on the leg.  About a week ago the sore looked infected and Bob stopped at Hollywood Receiving Hospital, where a doc put a bandage on it.  He also turned in a dog-bite report which went to Central, then to County health, then to Burbank, where Bob lives, and boom -- quarantine for Concho.     Meanwhile, the wound was healed. ::     FOOTNOTES -- It was a big week for bird watching.  In addition to the usual sparrows, towhees, blue-jays, juncoes and flickers, four stately quail, a long absent thrush, the first robin of fall and a yellow-breasted number tentatively identified as a MacGillivray's warbler visited the back yard.  That's what it states in Ernest Sheldon Booth's "Birds of the West" -- MacGillivray's warbler . . . Councilman Ransom Callicott, chatting with a friend about car mileage, remarked, "Five gallons of gas is just a light lunch for my car."

Matt Weinstock, Nov. 20, 1959

About Football     This is Big Game Week and I might as well get into the act, too.  I suppose it's true -- once a sports writer, you never get over it entirely.     SC and UCLA are being criticized for the way they play football.  Also the Rams, who can't win for losing.  Everyone's disgusted with them.     The Trojans have a great defense, the hecklers say, but their offense falters.  Oh sure they're No. 2 in the nation, but that's because of the wonderful McKeevers.  The heck its is.  It's because they're strong in all 11 positions.     UCLA, newly come alive, sends the self-appointed experts into despair.  The team looks good one game, bad the next.  Not only that, it plays the single wing, which the critics call horse and buggy football.  I happen to find the single wing a refreshing change from the ubiquitous T system, with all its variations.     AND SO THE HECKLERS say the colleges ought to open up the game.  Be more imaginative.  Well now, Stanford plays a flashy game.  Dick Norman leads the nation in passing, Chris Burford in receiving.  The Indians are gamblers.  They'll pass on fourth down and four to go in their own territory.  And where are they?  Nowhere.  Mostly because their defense is pitiful.     It could be that the Dodgers did L.A. a disservice in their magnificent drive for the pennant and their World Series victory.  Every team here is now expected to be not only victorious but also spectacular.  Fans go out to see them win.  They can't abide a loser.  Contrast this with the Middle West, where 75,000 people will sit in the cold or rain to watch teams which have been beaten repeatedly.  But it's their team.     My theory is that college football suffers mostly from the fickleness of the fans and too much undeserved criticism.  I like it as it is. ::     THIS IS to report an incredible, world-shaking event.  Tuesday an editor handling a piece of copy wasn't sure how to spell Khrushchev (most people forget the first h) and looked through the day's papers for verification.  Mr. K was not mentioned that day in any news story or column. ::     PUPPY DOGS They are cuddly- Also puddly. --JOSEPH P. KRENGEL ::    ONLY IN L.A. -- A semi-private City Hall elevator, used mostly by the brass to get to upstairs from the basement garage, is notoriously temperamental.   Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.  To warn users that it is unreliable it now bears a handsome brass, lighted, permanent sign, "Out of Service" . . .  Actress Dodie Drake awakened one night recently hearing strange noises.  Thinking someone was trying to break into the house, she called police.  The culprits?  Avocados falling off a tree and rolling down the roof. ::     JOHN CORNELL, who keeps tab on the changing L.A. scenery, reports another landmark on N. Broadway, not far from the vacant and mourned Ptomaine Tommy's, has gone out of business.  It was a store, notable for its sign, "Dental Equipment Refishishing."     Boss probably went refishishing where they were biting better. ::     FOR Red Rowe of CBS TV, Halloween was  a treat, not trick, night.  Pranksters removed a For Sale sign from a nearby lot and stuck it in the front lawn of the new Woodland Hills home into which he was preparing to move.  Next day a doctor's wife saw the sign and offered him so much more than he'd paid he couldn't refuse.  So Red's house-hunting again. ::     AT RANDOM -- Harrie Mabie heard a newscaster on KMPC say, "Smoke was noticed by the officer passing through the ventilator."

Matt Weinstock, Nov. 18, 1959

It's  Still 'Professor'     Everyone remembers certain of his teachers, particularly the ones who inspired or stirred him, even if he has lost touch with them and never sees them now.     Julius Sumner Miller, physics instructor at El Camino College and KNXT commentator, is more fortunate.  His old math prof, the revered Robert Ernest Bruce, of Boston University, lives in retirement in Redlands.  Miller occasionally visits him.      They recall the great men of the Boston U. faculty and how they literally radiated knowledge and instilled in their students a respect for learning.     On a recent visit, during such a discussion, Bruce, now in his late 80s said, "Julius, I think you are now entitled to call me Robert."     "I couldn't do that," Miller said, "after all, you've been Professor Bruce to me for more than 30 years."     "Robert," Mrs. Bruce said softly, "he really couldn't." ::     IN THE EVENT the same subcommittee which turned up the quiz show dishonesty  gets around to fake TV commercials, a fertile field awaits.     A man close to the picture in Hollywood says, "Cigarette advertising is, of course, the worst.  Any coughing, [illegible] smoker including myself could tell the FCC  that no cigarette is cool or refreshing."      As for a certain commercial showing comparative hair grooming between two women, it's well known, he says, that the models each get an $80 hairdo before the filming.     Then there's the luscious fake frosting in another commercial.  Instead of the advertised dressing, shaving cream is used.  The product doesn't photograph as well and it melts under studio lights. ::     SWEET BIRD FORSOOTH Has this mist as wet as     the rain in spring Caused your mind to flip? Any bird that sits in thick     fog to sing Surely must be a-drip.         --MATTIE RAE ::     GRANTED, Jerry Giesler has led a full life, teeming [illegible] torrid tidbits about fabulous people.  But it does appear gentle Jerry is being rather drastically [illegible] out biographically.     The editors of this paper thought the lawyer's sparkling career was wrung dry on an eight-part series by Florabel Muir in 1952, subtitled "Get Me Giesler."  Now the Saturday Evening Post is running "Giesler by Giesler" (second installment this week) and that other afternoon paper announces a 12-chapter series starting soon titled, oddly enough, "Get Me Giesler," by Florabel Muir.     First thing Jerry knows he won't have any private life at all. ::     PUBLIC AT LARGE -- There was a bright green armchair in the middle of the San Bernardino Freeway in West Covina the other day, reports Mikki Coburn, who lives on Siesta St. in La Puente . . . Rich Fowler wonders if it has occurred to anyone else that a steel mill is a strange place for "cooling off" . . . John Lund has a hilarious satire in the Screen Actor, SAG monthly magazine, in which a butler, learning his actress employer may get a big role, says joyfully, "Verily, my cup runneth over."  She says, "Then use your napkin." ::     MISCELLANY -- A fun-loving friend sidled up to Paul Grimes and whispered, "Pal, I can get you all the poison-free cranberries you want, cheap." . . . Meanwhile others are investigating the possibilities of farkleberries, if they could only find some . . . Cartoonist Herblock has drawn and had printed a wicked caricature of himself, propped up in bed reading his mail, which he sends to those who have sent him get well notes.  He's still recovering from a heart attack . . . Frank Barron reports this Hollywood fairy tale: "Once upon a time there was a papa bear, a mamma bear and a baby bear -- by a  previous marriage."

Matt Weinstock, Nov. 17, 1959

Farming Lesson     Young schoolchildren who are found after tests to be retarded are placed in a Point 1 group, as it is called, and given special tasks to perform.     A little boy in such a group in a suburban school was instructed as part of his therapy to plant radish seeds in the school garden.  Soon he harvested a large, healthy crop.  As he proudly took his radishes into class the teacher discreetly asked why he had planted them in a circle instead of rows.     "That's the way you get them in the market," the boy explained innocently.     A commercial vegetable grower heard of the incident and now grows his radishes in circles.  The idea, he realized immediately, is a boon to stoop labor required for the job. ::      WRITER Martin Ragaway was snared immediately by two motorcycle officers as he made a left turn at a busy Sunset Blvd. intersection.  He didn't think he'd done anything wrong and in the ensuing debate he protested, "I saw you and your partner there on the corner.  Would I deliberately make an illegal turn knowing you were watching?"     The smiling young officer said, "I suppose there's a touch of masochism in all of us."     Awed by his psychiatric touch, Martin foresees the time when drivers suspected of misbehavior will have to lie down on the curb and be analyzed on the spot.  By the way, he got no ticket. ::     OR POSSIBLY CROW The welfare secretary will     dine On traditional turkey, I've     heard. At least the cranberry mer-     chants Would like to give him the     bird. --JUNE R. DRUMMOND ::     SPEAKING OF which, Shigeru Tomita, who presides over the fruit and vegetables at the Vicente market in West L.A., has posted this sign:  "Be brave. Live dangerously.  Eat more cranberries." ::       QUOTE & UNQUOTE -- Overheard exchange at Lockheed:  First engineer:  "I don't know why I don't get married -- maybe I'm afraid to."  Second engineer:  "There's a scientific term for that --matriphobia!" . . . Profound and better economic truth uttered by a Hill Streeter named Ted:  "All a dime's good for these days is to put with two other dimes to buy a pack of cigarettes." ::     ONLY IN L.A. -- A woman walked into a drugstore at Wilshire and Alvarado and asked, "Where is the drugstore that used to be on this corner?"  The staff is still spinning . . . For his birthday, female office employees at Baker Oil Tools, Inc., on E. Slauson Ave. greeted the boss, Charles Sullivan, with their hair sprayed different colors than normal -- mostly gray so they could tell him I had gotten that way overnight, working for him . . . For sale ad in the North American Skywriter:  "Barbell set; pair of crutches; cemetery lots in Green Hills Park."  Let that be  a lesson to everyone. ::     AN OUTRAGED Reseda householder who received a property tax bill of $638 has put up his home for sale.  That amount, he points out, will pay the rent on a $100-a-month apartment, which he has selected, for six and one-third months.  You paying attention, supervisors? ::     AROUND TOWN -- Pancake houses are springing up all over.  Newest is Uncle John's $200,000 pancakery in Santa Monica --  20th in the chain started by John Dahl three years ago in Santa Barbara.  The question is, will pancakes replace pizza? . . . You'd never guess the name of the store detective at a Montebello market.  Yes, George Seemore . . . There are 45 coffee houses in the L.A. area, the Canyon Crier reports.

Matt Weinstock, Nov. 16, 1959

“I Think I’ll Read the Funnies.”    Conditioned Reflexes     After a business failure several years ago a young man decided to pursue the career he'd always wanted -- teaching.  He was aware that it meant a drastic change and involved great sacrifice but he and his wife decided it was worth it.     He went back to school, and, meanwhile, got a part-time job.  His wife also worked.  To keep the house running smoothly, the three young children were assigned regular duties and responsibilities.  After dinner, for instance, they quietly took their own dishes into the kitchen to be washed.     Recently after a long, hard struggle the husband got his credential and his teaching assignment and he and his wife decided to celebrate by dining in a good restaurant, something they'd denied themselves for several years.     [Illegible] an enjoyable occasion with a hilarious epilogue.  [Illegible] when the youngsters finished eating, they picked up their dishes and headed to the kitchen to wash them.  They were nabbed in the nick of time. ::      MORE AND MORE American Indians are being assimilated into the social stream and perhaps it's in order, as Chief Wah-Nee-Ota suggests, to let people in a little secret.     First thing most people ask when they meet an Indian is, "What tribe do you come from?"  It's an innocent and natural question but it tells the Indian the person knows nothing about his people.  The question correctly should be, "What nation do you come from?"  Every Indian tribe is a nation.  At present the largest Indian nation is the Navajo.     Chief Wah-Nee-Ota, by the way, is descended from the Creek nation, a branch of the Seminole.  The Creeks were never defeated, no peace treaty was ever signed and technically they are still at war with the United States, which, the chief concedes, with a smile, is also a powerful nation. ::     FOR FREE? Green stamps, orange     stamps, blue stamps,     gold- I'll be licking till I'm old.     --PAT SHROYER ::     THE WRONG NUMBER situation is out of hand again.      A man phoned the Mark Twain Hotel in Hollywood and shouted: "Tell so-and-so he's fired!"  Night clerk Henry Krieger tried to say something but the caller squelched him with, "I don't want to talk to him!" and hung up.  Half an hour later the same person called and said in a conciliatory voice, "Tell so-and-so to be on the set tomorrow."  [Illegible] figures the caller [illegible] he was talking to [illegible]  studio, one digit [illegible]  hotel's number.     Mrs. John McMurray, who lives in Laurel Canyon has received so many wrong numbers lately she [illegible] to participate.  The other day her phone rang [illegible] a man said, "Hello, Albert." She said, "No, this isn't Albert," which he should have detected from her voice.  But he persisted, "Are you sure this isn't Albert?"  When she said no again he said, "He must have moved again."  She She said this was possible if baffling. ::     NORTH YOUNG says he was dining in a Malibu restaurant with the noted Egyptologist, Pith Helmet, and, over an abalone frappe.  Pith was recounting one of his fantastic adventures.  "That was the year," he said, "that I took my wife and kids and 30 camels into the Egyptian Sudan.  Everything went well until-"  Just then an auto dealer at a nearby table jumped to his feet and interrupted, "I think it's high time people stopped exaggerating the roominess of those foreign cars." ::     AROUND TOWN -- Alberto Diaz of the Belvedere Citizen and Nicolas Avila of La Opinion were confronted with a momentary dilemma in reporting the cranberry crisis to their readers.  Cranberries aren't aren't used much down Mexico way, at least not in tacos.  Anyway, they had to look it up in the dictionary and now they know- cranberries arearandanos . . .You know what some people do these foggy nights?  They litterbug.  Through swirls of mist Walt Stone saw a motorist emptying his ashtray on Melrose Ave. . . . A young man in Palos Verdes drives around in an old hearse labeled "The Body Snatcher"  . . . And a Fiat in Santa Monica had painted on it, "Reductio ad absurdum."

Matt Weinstock, Nov. 14, 1959

Today Is Forever     Thirty years ago R. Julian Dashwood, a Britisher, found himself broke and hungry in Sydney, Australia.  Standing in a free food line, he determined never to be dependent again on how others mismanaged the world.     When the economic atmosphere cleared, he found his personal paradise, as many pressure-trapped city dwellers yearn to do, on Mauke, in the Cook Islands of the South Pacific.  He married a native girl and supports himself by selling seashells all over the world.     Readers may recall previous mention here of Dashwood's psychological bout with the natives.  When they refused to collect shells he got a movie projector and showed some old films, free at first, to the enchanted natives.  Then he told them it would cost a penny to see them.  They had no money, so he paid them to collect shells and they used the pennies as admission to the movies. ::     THROUGH A mutual interest in shells, Dashwood and Bennett Foster, L.A. adman, have maintained a wonderful correspondence.  Perhaps Dashwood's latest letter will inspire or disenchant those who still hope some day to take off for the South Seas.  The man's a poet as well as a philosopher.     He begins, "I smile to myself sardonically, thinking of you sitting in that ghastly office, imagining the delights of a tropical paradise.  At this moment the paradise is a slatey gray with sheets of rain driving in off the sea.  The fishing has gone sour for months, a situation for which I blame the Dulles-Macmillan bomb-testing firm.  My battery-driven radio has gone phut and it will be months before I can get it fixed.  You have no monopoly on grievances, only a variety of same.  But whereas mine will probably culminate in a magnificent semi-public row with my Polynesian wife, thus disposing of a lot of already cracked crockery and a marvelous discharge of libido, yours will probably find a final outlet in a stomach ulcer. ::      "BUT SERIOUSLY, I think most people work out a compromise of sorts with life only over the grave of several dreams.  Some, like myself, attempt to preserve parts of the dream in reality -- a difficult tight-rope performance.  But of this I am certain: One always gets what one wants provided one wants it badly enough to sacrifice everything to the achievement thereof.  And even then the laugh is with the Fates and Furies because although man unquestionably consciously creates the situation, the final result is seldom quite in keeping with his original intentions. ::     "IN MAUKE nothing ever happens.  This is why time passes with almost terrifying rapidity.  There are no permanent values;  nothing lasts;  one is here today, gone tomorrow and forgotten the day after.  Even the tombstones are made of soft coral and soon crumble away."     Expressing thanks for books Foster sent him, Dashwood continues: "I enjoyed them immensely, particularly 'The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit,' Vance Packard's ominously fascinating 'The Hidden Persuaders' and 'Lolita,' for me the clinching argument in my contention that the American way of life is shot to pieces on the moral front.  What a beautiful pool of iridescent slime." ::     DASHWOOD continues:  "I have only one complaint.  Time.  I have lived in the islands for 30 years and I cannot recall as many individual events.  In an environment where age carries no great penalties or burdens, one is lulled into a false sense of extended youth.  There is forever 'today,' tomorrow is somebody else's affair.  If the world came to a standstill we would slide off with complete absence of fuss.  Our preparations for the future are confined to making the best of the present.  We have a fine home, acres of unused land, three pleasant children, and no savings, no insurance, no superannuation schemes.  And nobody cares. ::     "TOTAL ESCAPE?  Maybe.  Probably as nearly as humanly possible.  Escape from people who could certainly bore me;  escape from the rat race and financial worries;  escape from practically everything except myself, and the best answer to that is to be so fond of oneself that the idea of separation is intolerable.  You probably couldn't take it anymore than I could Los Angeles."

Matt Weinstock, Nov. 13, 1959

“Artists Always Seem More Sensitive.” The End Is in Sight     Bravely ignoring the tear-inducing smog which was seeping in through the woodwork, the gentlemen of the copy desk yesterday, between, editions, went into their daily seminar titled "Whither Drifteth?"  Their despondent conclusion, delivered to my desk, is as follows:     "Meteorological trends indicate it will never rain again in Los Angeles.  If this becomes fact, it is safe to predict that by 1975 there will be no one left except perhaps a few standby guards.  Their job will be to keep an eye on public buildings to see if they dry up and blow away or disintegrate in the smog.  their reports will be of value, of course, when examined in some future era by scientists seeking to determine wha hoppen.  You are welcome to this information free."     Now, maybe that'll bring rain and chase away the nasty olefins. ::     SPEAKING OF EYE IRRITATION, a friendly gentleman phoned the APCD yesterday and inquired about the smog.  Explaining he had arrived recently from the Midwest, he said, "This isn't as bad as it was in Chicago and if it doesn't get any worse we'll stay in Hollywood."  Some days, he went on, his eyes burned but his wife's didn't.  Other days his wife's eyes burned but his didn't.     The APCD man congratulated him, saying, "Seems to me you have the perfect smog marriage." ::         THOUGHT       FOR PROBERS We've heard the toppers     of TV Insist on purest honesty- But, wouldn't you call it     controversial Whether there's truth in     each commercial?     --F. MENDELSOHN JR. ::     ONLY IN L.A. -- Dorothy Odin of Pacific Palisades reported to police the other day that someone had stolen her car.  "I can't understand why," she said.  "It's a 1948 Dodge with 102,000 miles on it."  A few hours later she had it back.  Two young men had been observed acting suspiciously at a westside market center.  When police gave chase the pair grabbed Old Ironsides, of all things, as a getaway car.  They didn't get away. ::     EYEBROWS RAISED knowingly here and there when George Hunter White, West Coast federal narcotics agent, testifying before the U.S. Senate subcommittee, criticized the LAPD.      "The police here are missing the boat," he said.  "They shouldn't close a case simply with the arrest of a peddler.  When a peddler is arrested, the game is just beginning.  We're after the original source."     White, former L.A. newspaperman who has achieved world-wide note for tough dealing in narcotics enforcement, isn't afraid of anybody. ::     TV TALK programs flourish in New York as well as here and recently Louis Untermeyer, noted anthologist, wit and author of "Lives of the Poets," appeared on Henry Morgan's show.     Morgan, renowned bad boy of broadcasting, asked, "How old are you?" Untermeyer looked at his watch and said he was 74.     "You don't look it," Morgan said, "My father is 74 and he looks 96."     "If I were your father," Untermeyer said, "I'd look 96, too." ::    AT RANDOM -- A group of Water and Power employees will leave today on a four-day, 1,100-mile tour of the department's widespread reservoirs, power plants and transmission lines.  They'll travel on a chartered bus at their own expense.  There's dedication to duty . . . A youngster in Joe Hecht's store said he was learning about the history of Texas at school and knew the names of two cities -- "Sam Houston and Sam Antonio" . . . There's a sequence in "The Last Angry Man" in which a man producing a TV show about Paul Muni, a physician of great integrity, exults, "I'll make television history!"  The sponsor says quietly, "A good show will suffice" . . . Leo Katcher's solution to the cranberry mess:  Put filters on them . . . Grace Garrett's answer to the dilemma, in a word, is applesauce.  She means it.  Of course, Grace is the noted baby sitter who confided to Groucho Marx recently that she put catsup on raspberry pie.

Matt Weinstock, Nov. 12, 1959

Serious Slapstick     As you may have read, that was quite a comedy of errors the other night in the little city of Cypress in Orange County.     On a tip that Louis Ross Lord, 35, road camp escapee, was there, two Norwalk deputies, D.W. Llewelyn and D.J. Hawkins, went to a house on Sumner Pl.     When Lord opened the door and saw them, he struck Llewelyn, knocking him down.  Llewelyn got out his gun and shot at Lord and he went down.  As Llewelyn bent over to see if Lord was wounded, Lord jumped up and knocked him down again.  He hadn't been shot, he'd fainted.     Lord ran out the door and Llewelyn fired another shot, which put a hole through the gas meter.  Meanwhile, Hawkins dashed around the house from the other direction to head off Lord.  He and Lord collided in the back of the house and Lord went down.  Hawkins subdued him with a flashlight and that ended that.      But there was a touching epilogue to the Keystone Kop sequence that was unreported in the papers.  At the height of the desperate calisthenics a woman next door stuck her head out the front door and yelled, "Why don't you drunks go home!" and disgustedly slammed the door. ::     THE INFORMATION that new standards of air purity which would cut down the carbon monoxide in auto exhaust had been proposed at a state Department of Public Health hearing caught the Spring St. coffee break philosophers in a perverse mood.     "The Society for the Encouragement of Suicide isn't going to like this," one said.  "After all, they have a right to expect the usual lethal quality when they inhale the stuff."     "That's what I like about you," a compadre said, "always for the underdog." ::         ELEGY How delightful he found     it to zip to and fro And square all the squares     off the road. Till the day on the freeway     he ran out of leeway And to'd when he ought to     have fro'd.         --JULIAN BROWN ::     IT HAS BECOME a kind of game for the young men who pilot the jungle boats at Disneyland to invent bright new lines for their spiels during the voyage.     As Paul Connor's boat passes the fierce, spear carrying Watusi warriors and the two skeleton heads on poles outside a hut, he says.  "The natives say they can tell a man's occupation by his appearance.  Take the skeleton-head over there that's still smiling -- they say he was probably in public relations." ::     IRVING ECKHOFF, who helps me watch over these things, was distressed at a headline in the Santa Monica Outlook.  "Wife Stabs Bob Crosby in Spat!" Ecky , once a newspaperman himself, felt this was heresy.  As he sees it, people can get shot or stabbed in the scuffle, the melee, the corridor or even on the back porch; but the spat, never.      "The old ways are best," he said: "let's not have any more of these modern switches." ::     YES INDEED, it's getting brisk these fall nights and no one knows it better than the gas company.  A record-breaking 10,719 calls.  3,560 of them requests to "light the pilot," came into the central office Oct. 30 . . . Incidentally, winter arrived in Idyllwild last Thursday -- lightning, thunder and two inches of snow -- catching the folks without chains, anti-freeze or firewood.  Reminded Ernie Maxwell of an old woodcutter who always sums up such unpreparedness with, "A dollar short, an hour late, and headed the wrong way." ::     MISCELLANY -- Paul Dunlap defeated Les Tarr in the Irvine Coast Country Club golf championship but Stan Wood argues it would have happened if Les Tarr's partner, More Taste, had been around . . . The contracting firm doing an excavation job on Century Blvd. near the airport has posted Burma Shave signs stating, "We are not the stinkers that you think.  This storm drain is the missing link."  Helps keep motorists' blood pressure down during traffic tie-ups . . . Next person to remark that the cranberry situation has bogged down has to put on the dunce cap and stand in the corner.

Matt Weinstock, Nov. 11, 1959

A Dog's Life     Several weeks ago Glen Shahan's miniature schnauzer, Henry, developed a cough.  When it persisted, the veterinarian recommended that Henry's tonsils come out.  This was done but poor Henry continued to wheeze, and the other day Glenn, ABC TV publicist, took him back to the vet for examination.      "There's nothing more I can do," the vet said.  "The only thing now is to send him to Palm Springs for a week.  That ought to clear it up."     "You're kidding," Glenn said.     "Oh no," was the reply, "you just put him on the bus and I'll arrange to have him met and picked up in a station wagon and he'll stay in a nice, sunny place."     Glenn said he'd never heard of such a thing.     "It's done all the time," the vet said.     And the other day, when someone came by and asked what he was doing, Glenn replied truthfully, "Oh, I'm packing my dog's clothes -- he's going to Palm Springs for a week!" ::    THERE'S confusion in the cat world, too.  Kathy Mellon, 8, has a cat named Agamemnon, which sits beside her when she watches TV cartoons featuring fearless mice.  The other day Aga flushed a mouse in the kitchen, panicked, and ran into the living room.  Obviously Aga figured it belonged on the TV screen, nowhere else.  It's also possible Aga has his tigerish instinct through watching TV.  Happens to people, too. ::     INFLATION NOTE When food prices make     grumble I could starve with     no misgiving. As I die you'll hear my     mumble I can't bear the cost     of living.         --PEARL ROWE ::     ALLEN A. ARTHUR'S mind has been whirling since reading in a medical column that some people become temporarily deaf or mentally dull or get -- easy now -- headaches from taking too much aspirin.  It was the last line in the article that got him:  "Do you know what most persons do when they have these symptoms?  They take more aspirin."     Make mine hashish. ::     YOU KNOW those long silences that sometimes occur among even the most loquacious and erudite drinking gentlemen.  Irrelevance champion of the moment is a newsman who turned to a friend after a moody stillness and said, "By the way, what do you think of the Civil War?" ::     A NOTICE to members of a local lodge announcing an upcoming gathering in Las Vegas states, "Think of it! Three days and two nights in a strip hotel, parties, fun in the sun, etc."     As if the uncapitalized s in "strip" weren't enough, there's the provocative abbreviation, "etc." ::     AROUND TOWN -- A middle-aged man crossing 6th and Hill Sts. toward Pershing Square had three bobby pins keeping his bushy brown beard from becoming unruly . . . That fuss in the Shrine foyer during the intermission of "Carmen" arose when the special officer told a woman who had strayed there with a cocktail that drinking was permitted only in the bar.  She insisted on finishing it, so, the anvil chorus. ::     AT RANDOM -- After watching a TV space program pointing up Russia's moon picture, Brad O'Connor's daughter, 3, looked outside at the half moon and exclaimed, "Look, they even cut a piece out of it!" . . . Penciled scrawl on a brown paper bag: "I see where Mr. Nixon got his picture taken playing golf, too.  I wish the President and Vice President would shoot a game of pool now and then.  Three Cushion Mae" . . . Tom Lehrer , who quit teaching math at Harvard for a career as a music wit, explains, "I can always return to teaching for the fantastic salary of $3,000 a year."  He appears tomorrow at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium . . . End of an era note:  Henry Fukuba, attending the Farm Bureau Federation convention at the Statler Hilton, wanted some plain old shirt-staining ink for his fountain pen but there wasn't a drop in the joint.  But plenty of ball-point pens.

Matt Weinstock, Nov. 10, 1959

The Satirizing Americans     The persons probably most amused by the movie and TV stereotype of the American Indian are the scores of Indians themselves now working in industry in the L.A. area.     Many of them take a quiet delight in satirizing the phony characterization.  Among these is Carl Gorman, technical illustrator at Douglas Aircraft's publications department in Lawndale.  [Note: Gorman was the father of Native American artist R.C. Gorman -- lrh].  Gorman is also well known for his paintings of Indian life and Arizona desert scenes under his Navaho name, Kin-Ya-Onny-Beyeh.     It is frequently necessary for supervisors and coordinators to hold policy conferences, which may cancel or change work already done.  Not long ago the brass had their heads together in spirited debate and the hired hands, watching from a distance, feared the worst in revised plans.  One workman, Frank Terry, brightly suggested that maybe they were discussing a promotion list.     Carl went into his Indian act.  "Much noise, much wind," he mocked solemnly, "but no rain." ::      A PHYSICAL education teacher at a junior high school in San Fernando Valley was instructing a class in basketball and while explaining the rules, placed her hands on one girl's shoulders to demonstrate overguarding and asked, "Now, what foul did I commit?"     "Togetherness," a smart girl named Stephanie replied, breaking up the proceedings. ::     MIDNIGHT HOST Life is a midnight host Who gives us a hasty snack And then when we're gone Suppresses a yawn And never invites us back.     --RICH FLOWER ::     AGAIN Joe Marshall, manager of what he contends is the zaniest construction company in town, doesn't know what to do about the help.     Not long ago one man refused to drive the orange pickup truck.  He said the color attracted bees, which found him tasty.      The other day Benny Branch was spraying the interior of a building while a helper held an extension light.  "Throw the light on the floor," Benny said.  "OK," the assistant said, and did, breaking the bulb.     If they'd just whistle while they work, Joe broods, instead of all that crazy stuff. ::     A SERVICE MAN finished filling the vending machine in the Police Building with cartons of milk, locked it and left.  When he returned half an hour later a trusty was waiting for him.  "You left your money box here," he said, "so I took it to the property room for safe keeping."  A trusty, in case you forgot, is a prisoner who does odd jobs around the station. ::     EVERYONE, it seems, is sadly contemplating our imperfect world, finding little that is comforting and conveniently blaming others.     Over coffee, J. Farrington Barrington Arrington, the sage of Bunker Hill, became thusly eloquent: "The canopy of innocuous desuetude continues to descend over the contemporary scene.  The dynamism has gone out of the individual and a rigid retrogression has gripped society."     "I think I know what you mean," his wife said, "it's drink and be merry for tomorrow is uncertain -- judging by the beer cans and empty bottles in the hallway trash boxes." ::     AROUND TOWN -- As Charlie Park was leaving the Coliseum Sunday with about a minute to go in the Ram game there was a tremendous roar from the crowd.  A man walking nearby observed, "They must be hanging Sid Gillman " . . . Speaking of football, no truth to the rumor the entire UCLA football team is named Smith and all other names were changed to protect the passer . . . A radio announcer giving a commercial for a dramatic school said the faculty is made up of "the topmost cream of the upper echelon of the TV industry."  Than which there is none plus ultra . . . Be wary of Hatton Hulett .  He sidles up and asks, "Will the ball park look like a nudist camp when the Dodgers play next summer? After all, they'll be playing without Dressen."