Jan. 21, 1958

Apropos of no one knows what, a whiskered habitue of Hill Street cafe society known as Buttercup mused the other night, "Well, in a couple of months now I’ll be getting my pension — then I can start taking things easy."

The joint, El Rainbow, rocked with laughter, which still echoes when the remark is recalled. It is common knowledge that Buttercup has made something of a career of not working.

It is also unanimously agreed that if Buttercup manages to take things easier than he has in the last few years, he will achieve the all-time high in relaxation.

THERE’S JUST the trace of Madison Avenue in this notice in the Postal Bulletin for Jan. 16: "As a result of various experiments and favorable comments, the use of cuspidors in all postal installations is discontinued effective Feb. 1. This is in the interest of employee welfare and morale, improved conditions and other attendant benefits."

Morale?

HIS MOTHER took Mike Richards, 6, to the barbershop and as usual Mike was uncooperative. Finally she said, "If you don’t stop squirming, I’m going to take those boots away from you."

She was referring to the cowboy boots he received for Christmas, his most prized possession.

"And if that doesn’t work," said Mike in the cool, challenging voice of Wyatt Earp, "what are you going to do?"

A RECENT SERMON here on semasiology (a fancy word for "semantics") drew quite a spate (a fancy word for "flood") of rebuttal.

It had to do with adman Jack Smalley’s embarrassing discovery that he had incorrectly used the world "fulsome" in a radio commercial and his consolation in finding that W. Somerset Maugham  also appeared to have used it improperly.

Half a dozen readers upheld Maugham’s usage and disparaged Smalley. Another half a dozen said maybe.

Others encouraged further discussion of words that mean the opposite of what some people think ("enervate," "sophisticated," the noun "glamour").

It also elicited a confession from W.G. Kibbey of Tujunga. Many times in writing letters of condolence to bereaved friends, he expressed the hope that the deceased would get safely across the River Styx. One day he looked it up and was aghast to find it referred to the lower world, not the upper.

But as Dr. Siegfried Kreisler puts it, "I love the labyrinths of the English language."

FOR NEARLY 40 years a lady named Julia has been fulsomely addicted to a comic strip featuring a precocious, hard-minded little girl of about 7 who is always seeing things more clearly than anyone else and getting them out of jams.

Well, the lady has finally given up on the kid. A strip a few days ago had someone saying of her, "This child is too young to hear such things."

It occurred to Julia that maybe the kid who never grows up is too young to hear the harsher things, but SHE isn’t.

AT RANDOM — When someone else calls attention to Estelle Taylor’s being on the Animal Regulation Commission, Stanley Denton says, "Naturally — she was once married to a boxer" (Jack Dempsey) … Marshall Kandell of the LACC Collegian reports that at a recent gathering of University of Minnesota undergrads, the student body president committed this classic non sequitur, "This is the height of epitome" … Sobering piece of information from Will Harriss: The country around Waterproof, La., has been declared a hardship area by the federal government on account of a three-year drought … Ed DeVere, Culver City editor, answers his phone, "DeVere here."