Saved by the Knell

In everybody’s life there is a dark, unforgettable moment when it
doesn’t appear he’s going to make it. A downtown group somehow got
around to discussing the this topic over coffee, and KenBromfield Jones, Title Insurance employee and spare-time TV actor, recalled his big near miss.

In 1942 he was in command of a gun post on HMS Londonderry,
convoying ships north of Ireland. During a German air attack he was
shot through a lung. Hours later, he was removed to a hospital ashore.

In the night he came out of a sedative. He felt no pain, only extreme
lassitude. As in a dream he heard a nurse say, "He’ll be on the slab by
morning."

He felt a fierce resentment against death and called to another nurse to get him a glass of brandy, which he gulped down.

"I don’t know what happened, but I guess the brandy started my
machinery going again," he said, "I have always been grateful to that
nurse."

A PERSON doesn’t ask for much in this pressure era, just a small
satisfaction now and then, such as came the other day to a man named
Charley.

He dialed a phone number and through some quirk known only to telephone
men was plugged into an open line. Two men, apparently attorneys, were
haggling savagely over a point of law. Charley listened for a few
moments, then said in a sepulchral tone, "You’re both wrong!" — and
hung up.

SKYWATCHERS ALL
Once upon a song
We wished upon a star,
Now we wonder if it’s ours
And if it’s going far.
– RAY SOUTHWORTH

THE WAY Dick Ashby of KNXT tells it, two pilots stationed in a
lonely outpost in Africa got down to their last two cans of beer, a
distressing situation. But being sporting gentlemen they made a bet.
The first one to bag a lion would get them.

One grabbed his high-powered rifle and disappeared into the veld.

After he’d gone, the other got into his plane and flew low over the
bush. After a while he saw a lion, got it into his sights and
machine-gunned it. He landed, tossed the carcass in the plane and flew
back to the base.

When his companion returned lionless from the safari he chided, "You should have realized a strafed lion is the shortest distance between two pints."

QUOTE & UNQUOTE —
Overheard by Bill Morgan at a French restaurant in Hollywood: "These
French could make a dish out of an appendix" . . . Lost and found
notice posted by a reporter on the city room bulletin board: "A Spanish
grammar is missing from my desk. Valueless except for a nude photo ofLili St. Cyr
I was using as a bookmark." . . . Dr. I.Q. on Channel 7 asked a lady
(not in the balcony) which would win in a race, an ostrich, a greyhound
or a horse. "The bus," she replied.

THE NEWS
from Cuba is loaded with paradoxes, but some sort of high point was
reached yesterday when Fidel Castro was quoted as saying that "200 —
400 gringos will die" if the U.S. sends in Marines. He made the
statement, the AP story went on, "in a hotel lobby as he was headed for
a Rotary Club luncheon."

AROUND TOWN —
Apparently it’s not only an ill wind that blows nobody good, it’s also
an ill fire. Since the big fire and subsequent flood struck Beverly
Glen,Zella Marggraf’s tomcat has killed six huge rats routed from their
lairs . . . Shame on some large independent markets for raising their
grocery prices since the strike . . . In which connection, the elderly
man who runs a small neighborhood store near Echo Park told a customer,
"I don’t know why they call us Pop and Mom markets. Mom hasn’t been
here in years." . . . The cute messenger girls who rush memos from
office to office atDuMont Electronics in West L.A. are known among the engineers as the ponytail express.