Pool Comeback

Those
who don’t get around to the right places are probably unaware of a
significant social phenomenon. Pool halls, where many leading citizens
of today learned about life, are back. Well, halfway.

Actually
they never really disappeared. They sort of went underground, beset by
a dastardly libel that they were a bad moral influence.

Now dinky-sized pool tables are reappearing in saloons and polite cocktail lounges, a dime per player per game.

This
renaissance is bringing out of the woodwork many old pool hustlers who
are delightedly demonstrating to the younger generation, brought up on
comic books and TV, the true meaning of dexterity and low cunning.

The
reason many oldsters gave up the game was that they couldn’t see across
the vast green expanse of the big tables. On the little ones they can
put the old eight ball in the corner pocket like champions.

The
other day two youths in the Rainbow bar on Hill Street were pretending
they were experts. One, calling his shots had a run of nine. When he
finished, Old Robin, who works in a nearby liquor store, took over and
nonchalantly knocked off 61 straight.

Gives a fellow that old Ezio Pinza feeling.

ONLY IN L.A.– A long black sedan stopped on Hill Street between 4th and 5th,
the chauffeur got out, ran around and opened the right rear door and a
haughty-looking lady in mink and jewels got out and ran across the
street in the pedestrian zone. Caught her bus, too.

AND SOON, TOO
If you face troubles with a smile,
Have no regrets for good things missed,
Are calm no matter how debts pile-
You’d better see a psychiatrist.
–WILLIAM BAFFA

NOT LONG AGO
Helen Shrank took a friend visiting here from Honolulu to the Fox &
Hounds restaurant for dinner. In the Hawaiian tradition, the cocktail
hour went on and on. Each time the hovering waiter proffered a menu the
visitor ordered another drink.

Hours later the waiter asked, this time a little desperately, "Sir, it’s getting late, wouldn’t you like to order dinner now?"

"Stop hounding me!" the visitor growled, "and bring me a fox — rare!"

AVERAGE horsepower of 1959 American cars, the Auto Club reports, is 260.

And on an average day, S.S. Taylor of the City Traffic Department states, 327,260 vehicles enter downtown L.A.

That’s an awful lot of horses running loose and explains the 5 p.m. stampede.

AS YOU probably
didn’t know, this is National Kraut and Frankfurter Week and a press
release states, Liberace, a Milwaukee boy, has been named king of same.
Which certainly qualifies him for membership in the Just Spell the Name
Right Assn.

AT RANDOM ––
National Airlines gives passengers on its New York-to-Miami jet run a
time and position computer so that by turning a dial card they can
learn where they are each 15 minutes after takeoff. In tiny print at
the bottom there’s this note: "Approximate, depending on weather
conditions,CAA traffic control and Cape Canaveral activities." Excuses,
excuses . . . The insidious practice of adding "wise" to other words as
in "weather-wise" and "tax-wise" gets a needling in the movie "Rally
‘Round the Flag, Boys!" The script has Paul Newman saying, "garbage
disposal-wise" . . . Lost and found ad in a small neighborhood paper:
"Small shaggy blond female named Tammy, 91st and Normandie ." Yeah, a
dog . . . M.L.’s thought while driving on Hollywood Freeway: With some
people the process of growing up consists of dropping one comic strip a
year.