Snowball Madness

Last week, when Walter H. Wright was driving his family up to
Crestline, someone in a car coming down threw a large snowball which
shattered his windshield, impairing his vision. At the ranger station
he learned this is a common occurrence. It is even more common for
people on foot to throw them at passing cars.

Near Crestline
he also came upon a chartered bus with a windshield in worse condition
than his from a thrown snowball. On the way down he saw a second bus,
filled with children, with its windshield splintered.

Wright
talked to a highway patrolman, who deplored the practice but said he
was powerless. The irony is that it’s done in a spirit of play, not
malice.

A WILD EXUBERANCE seems to grip Californians,
unaccustomed to snow, when they get in it. They don’t realize the
dangers of throwing a hard-packed snowball. Furthermore, there are no
signs warning them that there is a law against it and violators are
subject to a fine.

It seems incongruous to mention it in our
mostly sunbaked paradise, but apparently what this country needs are
also better snow manners.

CIVIC PRIDE can be expressed in many ways.

Several
pedestrians were waiting for a freight train to pass so they could
cross Ramona Blvd. As the 39th or 40th boxcar inched past, Charlotte
Searles heard a woman remark, "That freight train coming through the
middle of town every afternoon is the reason Baldwin Park never
amounted to anything!"

BITTER PILL
All my doctor’s instructions
Are quite easy to follow.
It’s just his prescriptions
I find hard to swallow.
— JUNE ROSS DRUMMOND

WHEN authorities
have an oversupply of unserved warrants, which is most of the time,
bail bondsmen sometimes hire private investigators to find culprits who
have jumped their bail- like bounty hunters in TV westerns.

On
such a mission Dan Whelan the other day located a rape suspect working
under another name in Pacoima. All the way downtown the fellow
complained bitterly about being taken into custody, but by the time
they drove into the Hall of Justice parking lot he had accepted his
fate. Looking up at the gray building he remarked philosophically,
"Home, sweet home!"

PROVOCATIVE fragment of
conversation overheard by Milo T. Klikos in a downtown restaurant, one
sharp-looking young lady to her coffee-break companion: "All right, all
right! But if she has everything why does she want my husband and any
boy friend I may have on the string?"

PUBLIC AT LARGE –– On the subject of irritating phrases, J.
Stuyvesant Fish cringes at the story about the athlete who after years
of trying finally "came into his own." His own what? . . . Rosetta Case
Bent treasures this typo in a news story of a wedding in her home town
paper in Flemington, N.J.: "After the ceremony a small deception was
held by the bride."

AT RANDOM — A ragged gent on
W 3rd St. was using a golf club as a cane. Looked like a 4-iron, maybe
good for about 175 yards on a good day . . . Speaking of golf, Stan
Wood, who coaches same at SC, says there’s no truth to the rumor about
a TV program titled Playhouse 45, for those who fall asleep in the
middle of you know what . . . "It isn’t the rain," D.K. says, "it’s
having to look at the eastern overcoats and raincoats that have been
stored away since last June" . . . Max Factor has done it again. Or
didn’t you see the ad for the new "Ivy League Hairpiece," described as
"the greatest innovation in hairpiece realism in more than 20 years."
There’s something enchanting about the phrase "hairpiece realism."