Oct. 10, 1957

A woman named Mary was waiting for a bus at Melrose and Vermont when an elderly gentleman sitting alongside bent down and picked up a small diamond ring.

He quickly thrust it into his pocket, then, as if his curiosity
were too great, took it out, admired its sparkle and displayed it to
Mary.

It looked like a valuable ring, and Mary was about to
suggest that he advertise it in the Lost and Found, but he rambled on
about never having found anything in his life and being alone in the
world, his wife having died, he said, a year ago.

Suddenly, he insisted she try it on, and when it was on her finger he broke the spell by saying:

"You can have it for two bucks, lady."

Mary handed it back, glared at him, got up and walked away.

Just
then another woman sat down and the next time Mary looked, the old guy
was admiring the worthless piece of glass on her finger.

But, admits Mary, it certainly had a beautiful setting.

FALL-OUT–No, Virginia, we’re not changing the words to "How High Their Moon" or "It’s Only a Man-Made Moon."

Quick-on-the-draw
note: A letter mysteriously delivered to my desk had inscribed on the
envelope, "By Satellite"–with a professional-type sketch of the
Russian moon hurtling through space emitting its beep-beep-beep…

A
man watching the World Series over TV in a Vine Street bar marveled at
the unusual shot from behind the pitcher’s mound showing the batter,
catcher and umpire–taken with a Zoomar lens from center.

"Gosh," he said, "I wonder where they take that from?"

"Didn’t you know?" said bartender George Fedor. "From the new satellite!"

G.B. inquires plaintively, "May we also soon expect spherical drive-in stands with pseudo-antenna selling satellite burgers?"

MOZART’S "Haffner Serenade" will be performed at USC’s Bovard Auditorium tomorrow night, opening the Music Guild season, and William Steinberg, who will conduct the chamber orchestra, believes he has the explanation for some of its puzzling un-Mozartlike passages.

Critics have long wondered why there are no flutes in the first movement, no oboes in the second and hardly any tympani at all.

Steinberg’s
research disclosed that Mozart wrote the piece for the wedding of the
daughter of Sigmund Haffner, Salzburg burgomaster, in 1776. Well, the
musicians at the clambake also served as waiters and they had to take
off when the cook called out "Hot food!" As for the tympanist, he was
the headwaiter.

OK, SO the Dodgers are coming. Now let’s have a moment of agonizing reappraisal.

In
luring them here, some of our best people made a sickening spectacle of
themselves, indulging in reckless, hysterical, fishwife conduct and
thereby holding up Los Angeles to nationwide ridicule.

More than
the Brooklyn Dodgers, the third-largest city needs a little dignity or
at least less hypocrisy and demagoguery. Perhaps it is too much to
expect.

LOOSE ENDS–The
new $1 bills are in circulation. They’re the same as the old ones
except they have the name of Robert R. Anderson as secretary of the
Treasury instead of G.M. Humphrey and "In God We Trust" above the big
"One" on the other side…

Jan Herd can’t help wondering if the exhaust fumes from the additional
trucks needed to pick up combustible rubbish will contribute as much to
smog as was eliminated by the ban on incinerators…

A brochure for Friendly House, 538 S. Harvard Blvd., which rehabilitates women alcoholics, is titled, "One for the road–back"…

A Rand McNally ad in Time states, "any day now the earth will launch
its first man-made satellite…" Oops, trapped by an advance deadline.