Sept. 6, 1957

Last week while driving between Cortez and Durango, Colo., Paul Weeks turned on the radio to relieve the monotony.

After a while it came through his consciousness that the station, KWIK
in Farmington, N.M., was playing the same song over and over.

The announcer would say that the next number would be Nat Cole or Paul
Weston or the Hi-Lows or Joel Gray, and there would be an occasional
news flash, but the guy kept playing the same tune. Paul has since
identified it as "White Silver Sands" by the Lennon sisters.

This went on for more than an hour, and Paul became increasingly
intrigued, particularly when sounds of someone pounding on a door and a
phone ringing came through the interminable refrain, "When the deep
blue pearly waters wash upon white silver sands."

As he arrived in Durango, the tune was still being beaten to death.
Fascinated, Paul sat in his car for half an hour awaiting the
denouement.

Finally, it came. A different voice broke through and said sharply:

"We wish to apologize for the program you have been hearing for the
last two hours and to announce that Johnny Andrews is no longer
connected with this station."

That’s all Paul knows about it.

Well, maybe so. Me, I’m suspicious, especially of mysteries. I can’t
help thinking Johnny was deliberately creating consternation among his
listeners.

MONTHS AGO, presumably, someone strolling along the north side of 2nd
Street, just west of Main street, eating his lunch decided he didn’t
want the tomato he’d brought along and flung it into the rubble of the
building which had just been removed from the site.

The desolate, gaping excavation is still there. The level part of it is used by the State Highway boys to park their cars.

But lately, a luxuriant tomato plant, unwatered and untended but loaded
with fine green tomatoes, has sprung up out of the brick and debris.

Once they get ripe they won’t be there long. Things get a little hungry around 2nd and Main.

WHILE selecting a prepared, wrapped sandwich at a Spring Street lunch
counter, Hank Frank came upon one labeled "Mah" and, being a curious
fellow, asked what a Mah sandwich was.

"Meat and pickle," the girl replied. Then she explained, "The meat is
pork shoulder and they can’t call it ham so they call it mah–ham
spelled backward."

Makes sense to me. However, I’ve been feeling a little irrelevant all week.

THE PROLONGED hot spell isn’t doing people any good. A large lady in
the Valley Ranch Market sighed, "I wish we would have an earthquake."
Manager Paul Anter asked why. "Because," she replied, "it would take my
mind off this terrible heat."

AROUND TOWN–As Spud Corliss signaled a left turn on Cahuenga Boulevard
and Selma, the strap broke on his wristwatch and it fell into the
street. Several cars passed over it by the time he stopped and
retrieved it but it was undamaged and still running. Spud says he knew
it would be safe–he won it in a national safety contest.

Notice on the Crescent Heights Methodist Church: "People who live right never get left."

Remembered from somewhere:  Nowadays a baseball player not only has to
know how to hit, run, field and throw but he better know how to shave.

Definition for today: An old-timer is a person who remembers when Chavez Ravine was intended as a municipal housing project.