Matt Weinstock, July 16, 1959

Tomato in a Hamburger? Again, the other day, I became embroiled in an old argument. I stood firmly on my contention that the slice of tomato does not belong in a hamburger sandwich. Most of the other people at the barbecue held that it does. Mustard, relish, lettuce and, if one is feeling brave, onions -- yes. Tomato, no. Furthermore, I'm not so sure about the dill pickle. Let's just let it lay on the plate, to be eaten or not to be eaten. A pickle is a matter of mood. Tomato, I argued, is a nothing flavor, which diffuses and distorts an already perfect hunk of eating. Not only that, it adds to the sandwich's thickness, making it difficult to eat. The opposition scoffed, repeating the ridiculous canard that a hamburger is not a hamburger without a slice of tomato. All right, so I am exposed as a tomato hater. All I can state is that it's about time those of us who feel deeply on this subject start a revolt against this vicious tyranny. :: WORD STUFF -- An announcer on a Lancaster radio station, Jimmie Warrell reports, told of two bicycle riders traveling from "Holiet, Illinois, to La Hoya, California." Those Spanish Js will getcha . . . There's an Ingomar St. in Canoga Park and Stan Wood, an admirer of Ingemar Johansson, says whoever named it may have been psychic but wasn't a very good speller . . . And Herb Schnebble wonders if Al Capone ever passed through El Cajon. :: DOWN THE MIDDLE Vacation pleasures I'd willingly share; "Wish you were here!" And I were there.        -- RALPH FREEMAN :: IN 1950 Paul Werth paid Harry Belafonte $50 for appearing in concert in Town Hall, New York. A few days ago Werth, now with KRHM-FM, taped a four-hour show with the noted singer for next Monday night and jokingly suggested that he would be glad to arrange another such concert and maybe up the ante to $75. Offer laughingly declined. :: A SOCIOLOGY student at SC made a telephone survey after 9 p.m. to learn how many parents knew of their children's whereabouts. Of 25 calls, he was surprised to discover, the phone was answered nine times by children who didn't know where their parents were. :: A MUNICIPAL employees cafeteria, which actually serves excellent food, is known among them as the Ulcer Room. Perverse, those fellows . . . And a Hill St. gentleman drinker named Chuck, explaining a brief absence from the bat caves, said he'd been attending "a bourbon seance." :: AROUND TOWN -- Baseball fever note: On coming out of the anesthetic after giving birth to their first child, Martha Dubell, wife of pianist Cy Dubell, asked her doctor, "How did the Dodgers make out?" They lost but she's doing fine . . . Six Bonita High Schoolers are grateful to Bill Bendix, who put out in his speedboat in Lido Isle channel and towed their stalled sailboat to safety. And not a press agent in sight. :: FOOTNOTES -- Ray Duncan nominates for the trite movie dialogue file the line, "Forgive? There's nothing to forgive!" The heck there isn't . . . When the temperature soared over the weekend, adman Joe Vodneck , Pasadena apartment dweller, took his wife, Adrienne, and daughter, Lisa, to a nearby motel where they enjoyed the pool and air conditioning. Next morning back to Hotsville . . . Because of conflicting warnings which have gone out lately over the wireless Hank Osborne thinks the world is ready for an album titled "Best of the SigAlerts " . . . Aside to a lady named Julia: Those gals on Hollywood Freeway islands and shoulders were only part-time picnickers. Between bites of lunch they were taking the annual state highway traffic count.

Matt Weinstock, July 15, 1959

I'm sure "Uras" wasn't pronounced the way you think. Either that or the comics editors didn't have a clue.  Only in L.A. Sometimes it is very difficult to make clear to visitors that the natives are not really as quaint as they seem. Take, for instance, Bob Williams, TV editor of the Philadelphia Bulletin, vacationing here. To get around our spread-out paradise, Bob rented a car. He parked it the other night at the curb outside the hotel in Beverly Hills where he was staying. Next day at 7 a.m. his doorbell rang. A stranger, polite but with a sense of urgency, asked if Bob would consent to having his car moved two spaces away. Just give him the keys. He would do it. Bob asked why. "We need the space for another car," was the reply. "IT IS IMPERATIVE," he went on, "that my employer's car be parked where your car is -- in front of the walk leading from his bungalow. I know it's an inconvenience and I wish you'd take this." He offered a $20 bill, which Bob declined. Bob, irked at being awakened by such a trivial matter, wanted to know how the stranger had located him. His rented car didn't have his name on it. The stranger said he'd found him through the rental agency, which was the same one from which his employer had rented his car. The more Bob thought of it the more it bugged him. He called the hotel manager. The manager refused to discuss it. He called the rental car agency and asked who the other person was, describing the car. "I can't give you the name," was the discreet reply. However, he confided the name of the big aircraft firm to which the car had been assigned. Baffled Bob will always have a dark suspicion that people here are driven by mad, uncontrollable whimsies. One thing sure -- it couldn't have happened in sedate Philadelphia. :: BREAKDOWN of negotiations and the resultant steel strike reminded newsmen of a classic line in another similar dispute. A union spokesman said to the management representative, "But you're talking money and we're talking people!" Whereupon everyone cried. :: THE stenographic pool at a large organization has been enhanced by some shapely young girls just out of school and an executive, who likes to keep abreast of developments, dropped in the other day and said to the supervisor, "I see you have some new talent." "Yes," she replied sweetly, "but all passes have to go through channels." :: AND THE WAY Don Perkins heard it, two fellows were chatting over coffee and one said, "I had a funny dream last night. I dreamed I was 8 years old and went to Disneyland." "That's strange," the other said, "I had a crazy dream, too. I dreamed that Marilyn Monroe came over to my house and 15 minutes later Jayne Mansfield dropped in." "You mean they were both there?" the first exclaimed. "Why didn't you call me?" "I did," was the reply, "and your mother told me you had gone to Disneyland." :: SOMEONE, Bob McMullen reports, has posted a derisive sign at Laurel Canyon Blvd. and Lookout Mountain Ave., "Guide Maps to Burned Out Homes" . . . And colleagues are talking of awarding a plaque for devotion to duty to a TV announcer who during the chaotic first moments of last Friday's fire kept pleading for people to keep out of the area. "Please stay home," he said, "and enjoy the fire on TV." :: AT RANDOM -- On Sunday Julia Nye counted six family groups enjoying picnic lunches on Hollywood Freeway islands and sidings -- the grassy parts. Apparently tourists think it's a park . . . A man whose little flower shop is near a saloon, into which he makes frequent pilgrimages, is known among his customers as the Petrified Florist. . . Obviously, says Harry Kabakoff, newsboy at 7th and Broadway, the Russian people feel that Mr. K. has an O in front of his name. . . Bruce Baptiste asks a typographical posy to the officer who on July 9 in the noon heat -- above 90 -- stopped and changed a tire for a lady in distress on Harbor Freeway near Vermont Ave.

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."

Matt Weinstock, July 13, 1959

Highway Manners While driving on Highway 1 recently, Jean Meredith of CBS ran over a rock and in a few minutes was marooned on this picturesque, narrow, winding, lonelyMonterey Peninsula road with a flat left front tire. But luck was with her. In a little while a car stopped and a man in his 30s came over and, while his wife and two children waited, efficiently removed the flat and put on the spare. Then came that awkward moment. How does one discreetly express his gratitude for such a service? To offer money is sometimes insulting. On the other hand, merely to say thanks is sometimes not enough. It depends on the person and one can't be certain what the proper course is with strangers. Jean drew his wife aside and tried to press a bill on her. The wife adamantly refused. Jean had an idea. "Buy the children a malt at the next stop," she said; "let it be my treat to them." The wife reluctantly took the bill. As she was putting it in her purse a look of dismay came over the face of her 10-year-old boy and he said sadly, "Now what am I going to tell in Scout meeting!" :: ONLY IN L.A. -- A downtown character known as Buster was back in City Jail only 22 hours after being released from a 90-day term -- a possible record. A small bottle oftokay undid him. As he was hauled off a pal observed, "I'll bet the boys over at Lincoln Heights wish he had a point of no return." :: SYNTHETIC SEERESS That prediction, ma'm, was     a bit too drastic -- Perhaps your crystal ball is     made of plastic.     -- JOSEPH P. KRENGEL :: A STERN TEST of strength is taking place in an apartment house on S Kenmore Ave. About a week ago the tenants learned the place was being put up for sale. A real-estate man appeared and presented a letter from the absentee owner asking the tenants to show their apartments to prospective buyers. The tenants held a caucus and decided to resist. Some of them have lived there a dozen years at a modest rental. They are certain a new owner would raise the ante, especially after seeing how nicely they have kept up their apartments. So they've been playing a cat and mouse game. They sneak down the back stairs and duck out the alley to avoid the real-estate man. One woman didn't answer a knock on her door and waited silently inside for three hours until she saw him and a client drive away. Thus far no one has got to see any apartment but the tenants realistically fear it's only a matter of time until the enemy makes a breakthrough. :: ANOTHER BATCH of trite dialogue -- the kind that tips off the kind of movie it is -- has dribbled in. Roy Ringer squirms when a man in a doublet and cape says, "Give me three ships, your majesty, and I'll sweep the Spanish from the seas!" Also when the country doctor says, "There's only one surgeon in the world who can save your brother, Miss Polyp, and he's in Vienna." A variation of this one goes, "Medical science can do nothing more for your brother, Miss Polyp; he has no will to live." Jeff Davis cringes when he hears, "Are you keeping the line open to the governor's mansion?" Also at "I couldn't marry a man who killed my brother." Melissa Caron shudders when the dance-hall girl, revealed as belonging to a proud Philadelphia family, says, "So now you know." And Hal Humphrey says not to forget the tight-lipped remark, "A man does what he has to do." :: MISCELLANY -- A messenger boy heading out into last Friday's blast-furnace heat called to his boss, "We who are about to fry salute you!" . . . Picture postcard signed Mary Lou, postmarked Laguna Beach, has the message, "Between the sharks in the surf and the wolves on the beach a girl isn't safe -- thank heavens!" . . . Don Perkins of Toastmaster International reports that Alaskans are now calling us "the South 48."

Matt Weinstock, July 11, 1959

Dear Friend It's too hot for indignation but maybe, with a cool drink, we can muster a little pique. I refer to a certain type of unsolicited direct mail pitch. A large envelope shows up in the mailbox. How the outfit got your name and address you don't know. Inside is a mimeographed letter addressed to "Dear Friend," stating you have been recommended for membership in a "new, exciting and convenient way of shopping." Superimposed in large type is the admonition, "Send no money." TO GET IN ON THIS excitement you will want the catalog and to get the catalog all you have to do is fill out the enclosed application and return it in the reply envelope. This is where the pique comes in. The application wants to know your name, address, age, whether single, married, separated or divorced, the name of your employer and how long you've worked there. So far, routine. But then it wants to know, "What are your present earnings?" And the name of the bank where you have an account. Remember, you didn't send for anything, you don't want anything -- only to be left alone. I say it's an impertinence and an invasion of privacy. :: A MAN NAMED EDDIE asked his wife to go deep-sea fishing with him over the week end and got this evasive and somewhat double-edged reply: "No, I don't think I will. I'm afraid I'd get seasick. Besides, there've been a lot of boat accidents and I don't want to get dumped in the water with all those sharks around. You go, though, but leave your wrist watch home." :: SAFETY FIRST To drink and drive is     treacherous For accidents are grim So he who drinks just     like a fish Should park his car and     swim.     -- PEARL ROWE :: DEATH OF retired Adm. Harry E. Yarnell in Newport, R.I., this week brought a grateful eulogy from George Krain of the SC photo department. Krain, a White Russian, was a newsreel cameraman in the Far East when the Japanese bombed the gunboat Panay in the Yangtze River in 1937. Because he photographed the pillage of Nanking he became a fugitive from the Japanese. Five of his countrymen were executed. He appealed for help and Adm. Yarnell, commander of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, got visas for him and his wife to enter this country. "He saved our lives," Krain said. "We will never forget him." :: THE HEAT is getting to people. A man entering Spring St. building stopped, muttered something, then reached down and pulled a blue tie out of one pants leg. . . . And a painting publicist, returning from lunch, gasped to his companion, "I'll race you to the air conditioning!" :: EDWARD L. LASH, 3751 Bagley Ave., L.A., survivor of the Norway hotel fire in which 17 were killed, writes Nellie Byrne of the Byrne Travel Service from Edinburgh, "I think the 22nd of June was our lucky day. We arrived at the Stalheim Hotel and for the first time on our trip were given a room on the first floor. The fire broke out on the second floor and spread upwards. Three in our group were burned to death. Others were killed jumping from windows." :: FOOTNOTES -- A photog on another paper always puts his glasses and keys on a desk when he returns from an assignment and heads for his darkroom. If he wonders why his key ring has gotten so heavy lately, his colleagues have been adding a key a day. . . . Regarding supposedly unused watch pockets in men's trousers, R.R. Auerbach of La Jolla Sportswear says, "We don't try to figure out the whys -- all we know is people want them in, used or not". . . .A lady Mike Molony knows malapropped to her dog, "If you don't behave I'll pick you up by the scum of the neck and throw you out of the house!"

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."

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?"

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.

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!"

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.