July 11, 1957

There was a traffic tie-up at the Harbor turnoff the other day as
Inspectors Ed Walker and Bob Houghton were traveling inbound on the
Hollywood Freeway.

They threaded their way through it and came upon a woman behind the
wheel of a T-bird, stopped on the Hollywood Freeway about 50 feet
beyond the Harbor turnoff.

"Anything wrong, lady?" one asked, thinking she might be ill.

"No," was the determined reply. "I’m waiting for traffic to clear so I can back up–I want to go on that other freeway!"

PEOPLE ARE always
asking Jamaica Elwood, who observed her 18th birthday on July 4 last
week, about her unusual name. The answer is this corner’s hot weather
story of the month.

Jamaica was born in Chicago. The family had been pressuring her mother
to name her Camille Theodora after relatives. Her mother had resisted.

Came the day when mother and child were to go home. The weather was
sweltering. The hospital asked the baby’s name. The mother said she
hadn’t decided. The hospital people said she had to name it, for their
records, before she could take it home.

Perspiring profusely, Ma picked up a copy of Esquire magazine and
became an enchanted by a beautiful ad showing a tall, cool drink made
with Jamaica rum. And that’s how Miss Elwood, girl Friday at the
publication Motor Racing on North Western Avenue, got her name.

THINGS ARE a little tense around the stables at Hollywood Park, a spy whispers, since the scandal over doping horses.

Owners and trainers wear identification badges now, you know, and those
who frequent the place are aware they are under scrutiny by a corps of
operatives assigned by the Horse Racing Board.

These gentlemen are derisively referred to as the Keystone Gestapo.

Stable habitues contend a horse can be hopped if someone so desires no
matter how closely he is watched. And you know what they call a race in
which a hopped horse runs? The Drugstore Handicap.

AT RANDOM–Baffling
fragment of conversation overheard in a Broadway lunchroom, one young
woman to another: "I don’t know him, but I know his brother and his
brother is better looking."