An anti-gravity house? You may laugh, the author says, but remember "atomic control" seemed impossible a mere 20 years ago. And no more hassles with dusting!
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Above, wouldn't it be fun to know what exactly is in Dr. Hoffman's Nerve Syrup? Below, the sad tale of a woman believed to be Mrs. W.I. Roberts, who died after collapsing in line at the Pacific Electric Depot, 6th Street and Main. Unfortunately, I can't find any further stories on whether she was conclusively identified ... The Times reports the death of Lt. C.A.L. Totten, who upset his colleagues on the Yale faculty by issuing predictions of such events as the Russo-Japanese War, the San Francisco earthquake (he was apparently correct on those two) and the end of the world (we're still waiting on that one) ... And be sure to see Los Angeles Hay Storage, 1620 E. 7th, for the finest in equine comestibles.
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March 27, 1958
An Earthman came to my office yesterday. He brought an object with him
in a shopping bag. Gingerly, he removed it from the bag and placed it
upright on my desk.
It stood about 2 1/2 feet high and was a heavy steel and plastic
cylinder complete with safety valves, cranks and ominous looking
buttons. A steel disk covered on end. The other end, about 4 inches in
circumference, was filled with dirt.
"Look at it," he demanded.
I assured him that I was--that I wouldn't take my eyes off of it for a second. "What is it?" I asked.
He cleared his throat and looked me straight in the eye. "It's an object," he announced, "that attacked me from outer space."
He didn't flinch when he said it.
But I did.
"It was Monday night. About 10-10:30. I was walking down Loma Linda Avenue," he continued.
"Yes."
"I was nearing the corner of Serrano. On my way to the drugstore."
"And?"
"To buy some cigarettes."
"And?"
"Filter tips," he explained.
"And?" I said impatiently.
"I'm getting to it," he snapped. "It came flying out of the sky. Missed
my ear by inches. My right ear. I heard this terrible
whish-thump-splat."
"You saw it?" I said.
"I saw it after it hit the ground. It missed the sidewalk by 8 inches, maybe."
He pointed to the bottom of the object. "Look at the dirt and grass
inside the plastic cylinder. It cut a sharp hole a few inches deep in
the lawn of this apartment house and then bounced out again and lay
down on its side."
"What did you do then?"
"I was very cautious. I sneaked up on it and touched it."
He glanced quickly to his right and left. We were alone. He whispered.
"It was warm."
"Warm?" I cried.
"Yes. But I poked it and it didn't move. So I picked it up and took it
over under the street lamp and examined it. It looked harmless enough
so I took its handle and cranked it."
He demonstrated for me, cranking the handle vigorously.
"Nothing," he continued. "Nothing happened. I've been carrying it
around ever since, showing it to people. Nobody knows what it is.
There's not a marking on it.
"Mr. Coates, you've got to help me find someone who knows what it is."
"I do?" I asked.
"Absolutely. Because so far it's nothing more than an Unidentified
Flying Object. And to be perfectly honest with you, I don't believe in
such things."
[Note: The Mirror didn't run a picture of this object, unfortunately, so we have to rely on our imaginations--lrh]
Jan. 23, 1958
Confidential magazine may have purged itself of obscenity but the expose complex it created is not so easily dispelled.
So says an experienced writer of fact articles.
The way he analyzes the present situation, the public's appetite for
gossip and scandal, whetted by Confidential, is now being satisfied by
the so-called conservative magazines.
Their editors who a year ago wouldn't have dreamed of going for the
racy stuff are now rejecting assigned articles on celebrities when the
subject refuses to tell all. These editors insist their writers get
full confessions, regardless of whose privacy is invaded, or no sale.
With writers who have a spark of ethics left it's no sale, only despair.
ON THE WAY home
from a dentist's office where several teeth were extracted, a Redondo
Beach man named Jim went into a drugstore where he sustained a final
indignity.
As he waited for his order, mumbled through a mouth still numb and full
of cotton pads, the druggist's pet myna bird looked down at him and
said, "What's the matter, don't you want to talk to me today?"
AMONG THOSE who
will be relieved when Metro buses roll again is a man who lives on the
outskirts of Pasadena. The cab fare to the nearest shopping center is
killing him. So what? So he's an L.A. cabdriver.
HAD YOUR word
picture for today? Insurance man W. Hatton Hulett mentioned to a woman
that a mutual acquaintance had been in an auto accident.
"I'm not surprised," she said, "he's the world's worst driver! I wouldn't ride with him on a stack of Bibles!"
A LADY NAMED Mary
Louise received a letter from a friend in Carmel asking a favor. She
was trying to locate someone here. Would Mary Louise get the address
from the phone directory?
Unable to find the name in the Central Section, Mary Louise called
Information, who pawed dutifully through the Northeast, the Northwest,
the Western and the Southern sections but couldn't find it either.
"Well, I guess they've moved to outer space," said Mary Louise. "I don't suppose you have that listed?"
At which, Mary Louise reports triumphantly, the operator's studied solemnity evaporated and she giggled, "No, hardly."
[Attention young persons--in the days before touch tone phones and
directory assistance/411, we ancient ones used something called "a
phone book" or dialed Information to get telephone numbers. A large
city like Los Angeles had directories for various parts of the city.
Some of us walking antiques even remember phones without dials. When we
picked up the handset, an operator said, "Number please!"--lrh].
LOOSE ENDS -- Overheard in the Redwood House:
"Things are so tough I can't even afford to bet the horses" ... Tony
Tichenor, 5, confided to his father he and his friend Dennis, 6, don't
let things bother them because they had "faith, hope and celery" ...
Ray Southworth is happy to learn that bicycle riding is included among
forms of tension relief. He's a firm believer in cycletherapy ...
Progress note: You can now buy a complete human skeleton for $290, a
skull for $40--made of plastic, in Texas ... Observation by Mattie Rae:
Wearing chemises takes pretty kneeses.
Jan. 16, 1958
I'll admit it, I'm a sucker for stories like this:
Jan. 8, 1958
There are businessmen in this town whose professed interest in humanity I question.
Among them is the owner of a local tire agency who advertised in an East Los Angeles paper this week:
"If you are riding on smooth tires, you're only fooling yourself. It's
bad enough to risk your own life, but how about the lives of your loved
ones?"
And then followed his dramatic appeal to the readers' consciences with:
"Planning to buy a new car?
"If so, let's trade tires. Let us put tires on your old car not quite
as good as yours and pay you the difference. It's money found."
And if you survive the trip to your favorite new car agency, let the
sucker who gets stuck with your smooth-tired automobile risk the lives
of his loved ones instead, I presume.
ALSO ON MY DESK is a handbill showing the recent double-horror attraction for a South Side theater.
It advertises:
"FREE CANDY to all boys and girls attending the show."
And it ballyhoos the "monster" in one of the pictures as
"A teenage titan of terror on a LUSTFUL BINGE that paralyzed a town with fear."
There are psychiatrists who see no damage in permitting kids to attend occasional horror shows.
But I question, sincerely, whether boys and girls lured into a theater
by a promise of free candy are going to benefit from viewing a "lustful
binge."
It's a pretty sad choice of words. And it took a pretty sad example of an adult to combine them with free candy.
TWO DAYS AGO, I reported the frustration of a chemical engineer in
Glendora who tried to fulfill his civic obligation by reporting an
unidentified flying object.
He tried to contact both Civil Defense and Operation Skywatch offices.
He placed half a dozen phone calls to CD units, to military installations, to Skywatch stations.
His reward was either no answer or no interest. Plus some derision.
He told telephone operators and police of his plight, but they were at a loss as to who else he might try.
So maybe it's a good idea to write down this phone number: SY camore 5-7235.
It's the number of the Pasadena Air Defense Filter Center.
According to Capt. Gordon L. Brock, the center operates 24 hours a day,
covers Southern California plus parts of western Arizona and Central
California and is prepared to investigate all unusual aerial activity.
He admits that, unfortunately, not many people know it exists.
LAST MONTH, I wrote about a 9-year-old girl from Granite City, Ill.,
who visited Hollywood with her parents to have a final wish fulfilled
before she died.
The wish was to meet Roy Rogers. And a meeting was arranged.
At least, the little girl and her parents were told it was.
But some Hollywood press agentry at its worst fouled up the girl's
hopes and left her standing on a street corner for an hour, waiting
vainly for Roy to appear.
After the fiasco, it was pretty well determined that Roy never knew of the proposed meeting.
Yesterday, there came a postscript to the story in a note from the girl's mother:
"I would like very much for you to publish our thanks to Girl Scout
Troop 156 for the individual greetings they sent her for Christmas.
They gave her a tremendous thrill.
"Also, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans made several calls and sent her a
lovely gift box for Christmas. Of all her gifts, the one she was
happiest with was the costume which they sent her.
"Donna was released from the hospital recently after a third operation on her brain tumor.
"Four doctors had told us that the operation was impossible but somehow
God decided to change that. Now, they tell us she will be blind but,
thank God, she will live.
"We shall never forget the kindness shown us by everyone."
Nov. 25, 1957
Los Angeles
The designers display a painting of the proposed Theme Building at LAX:
Nov. 7, 1957
Los Angeles
Edwin G. Leadford, 19, 10181 Katella Ave., was driving east "over the Katella overpass at the Santa Ana Freeway, a mile east of Disneyland"* at 12:10 a.m. when he saw a mysterious object in the sky to the northwest, the Mirror said.
According to news accounts, he stopped and took this picture, then the object vanished. He said that members of the "Garden Grove Ground Observer Post" also saw the object but did not report it to "the Air Defense Filter center in Pasadena."
Leadford seems to have had a difficult time getting anyone to take his photograph seriously. The Times never even bothered to report this incident, but the Mirror used the photo on a picture page.
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*I didn't grow up in Los Angeles, so I don't know if there was a time when Katella went over the Santa Ana Freeway or if the original story is wrong.
Nov. 6, 1957
Nov. 5, 1957
Nov. 4, 1957
Oct. 8, 1957
City Hall gets a Dodgers cap. And UFOs.
As seen in Whittier....
Sept. 30, 1957
Ever since returning from my vacation I've been thinking about an eerie
piece of information I picked up while driving along Highway 395 near
Big Pine.
Riding along was Sid Parratt of the Department of Water and Power
office in Independence. Sid probably knows the area better than anyone
and he pointed out places of interest and their historical backgrounds.
This is mountain country with strange formations--immense areas of
black lava rock, huge buttes which seem out of place, an occasional
green spot in an immense wasteland.
Just north of the little town of Zurich, Parratt pointed to the right
and said, "See that clump of trees way over there?" I did, far in the
distance.
A highly unusual project was being built there, he said. Last year some
uncommunicative men from Caltech had scouted the Owens River country,
he said, looking for a suitable site for some kind of laboratory. It
had to be in the wide-open spaces where the air was always clear. They
finally settled on 275 acres and leased it for 25 years from the
department.
As Parratt understood it, they were building a laboratory to detect radio signals from outer space.
However, there was fantastic speculation about the project. Imaginative
folk were saying it had something to do with tracking guided missiles.
You have to keep in mind that the people in the section see brilliant
flashes of the Nevada atomic blasts and some of them are nervous about
radioactivity and other things they don't understand.
This is to report there's nothing mysterious about the project. It is
known as a radio astronomy installation. It is headed by John G. Bolton
of Caltech and is sponsored by the Office of Naval Research.
The buildings are almost completed and work is going ahead on the
railroad tracks on which two huge antennas can be moved to capture
signals from outer space. It will be a year before the first antenna is
complete, another year before the second is in operation.
The project was inspired by the realization that astronomers have gone
about as far as they can with visual inspection of what's out there.
They hope through radio astronomy to gather additional evidence of such
things as the shape and configuration of galaxies. They know already
that gas clouds emit certain signals and sensitive equipment elsewhere
has recorded radio waves bouncing off the moon and additional
information on Jupiter.
To put it another way, the radio astronomy people do not anticipate
that they'll intercept any hot flashes from little green men on Mars.
Let's hope that if there's anybody out there, they're not checking on our misbehaving planet, either.
DURING A LULL a
pharmacist on duty at a San Fernando Valley super drugstore phoned a
bookie and placed some bets. (I know there aren't supposed to be any
bookies, but there are).
He was dictating the name of the horse he wanted in the seventh race
when the assistant sales manager excitedly dashed up to him and
exclaimed:
"What in the devil do you think you're doing? It's all over the store!"
The pharmacist had inadvertently rested his elbow on the store's
intercom switch and his bets were going out over the loud speaker.
INEVITABLY, no matter how serious the situation, the jokesters take over. Perhaps it's a good thing thus to temper a crisis with humor.
For instance, some made fellow at Disney studio keeps calling and
asking, "Have they sent the freedom balloons down through the Cotton
Curtain yet?"
If not, he says he has a message to put on them: "Peace, it's wonderful!"
And as Hugh Brundage, KMPC newscaster, came into the Naples restaurant, Pat Buttram looked up from his lunch and said, "Hi, Hugh, what's new? Have they fired on Ft. Sumter yet?"
AROUND TOWN--A
City Hall worker who likes to disconcert people in elevators with
irrelevant remarks said to Tom Mannix the other day, "I wish payday
would get here--I'm tired of eating at the Midnight Mission."
Several passengers quivered noticeably...George Fedor, pixy Vine Street
bartender, says he just rented a new house. No furniture in it, but
wall-to-wall floors.
April 11, 1957
Temple City
By Larry Harnisch
Early that morning, about 4:40 a.m., a sonic boom that was perhaps from some secret aircraft shook the San Gabriel Valley awake, setting off burglar alarms and breaking a window at 275 N. Hill Ave. in Pasadena. It was, the Mirror noted, "the first sonic blast reported in the metropolitan area at night."
It was another day of anxiety for Los Angeles residents worried about a Soviet attack. Hadn't they been just been warned that 90% of the people in the metropolitan area would not survive a nuclear blast?
As he left for school that morning, 10-year-old Patrick Murphy noticed a crater 2 feet deep in the backyard of his home at 8831 Greenwood in Temple City, but he didn't say anything to his parents, Oscar, a venetian blind salesman, and Virginia, until that evening when he got home.
At 2 a.m., Capt. Robert Jackson of 551st Ordnance Detachment arrived with three enlisted men and two sheriff's deputies. Jackson's verdict: Possibly a small missile or a meteorite.
Jackson dismissed the notion that the crater was the work of neighborhood children. "If a child had dug it, we'd know it by now," Jackson said. "There would have been knee marks around the crater."
So the men began to dig--carefully, since what was down there could be an unexploded bomb.
More military officers arrived, including two men from Air Force intelligence who said very little, according to The Times, except: "There's definitely a hole in the ground."
The excavation turned up a chunk of concrete marked with yellow paint that was unrelated to anything military, experts at Fort MacArthur said. The men found a rusty baby buggy, a long piece of garden hose and a tin can. After digging in loose, sandy soil for several days, the soldiers excavated a hole 15 feet deep and 10 feet in diameter. Using sensors and a mine detector, they determined that there was nothing of interest to a depth of 10 feet beyond the bottom of the hole.
Although they abandoned the search, Lt. T.D. Smith and Jackson insisted: "Whatever it was, it came from the sky." Smith later said the crater "was probably made by a small meteor which disintegrated after it burrowed into the sandy soil."
Note: Some news accounts give the location as 8831 Greenwood while others report 8331 Greenwood, an address that does not exist.
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Larry Harnisch. The leading Black Dahlia expert and a collaborator in the 1947project, Harnisch has been a copy editor at The Times since 1988. He has appeared on many TV shows discussing the Dahlia case, notably "James Ellroy's Feast of Death."
Join him for a spin through old Los Angeles in the Mirror's radio car. Keep your eyes open for Mickey Cohen and Tempest Storm. It's quite a ride.
The reporter's badge belonged to Sid Hughes (1908-1958), legendary reporter who worked at nearly every newspaper in Los Angeles.