Closing the Books

In the last week two big downtown bookmakers have folded their form charts and quietly stolen away.

The gendarmes didn’t knock them over. The longshots at Santa Anita did.

To stay in business a bookie has to figure on 20% — $20 of every $100 wagered.

Normally
around 33% of the favorites, or chalk horses, win, paying short prizes.
This has been especially true at the big Arcadia slot machine.

But
not this semester. The longshots have been tromping in like crazy. One
bookie was hit for $3,000 last week by an uncooperative nag which came
from nowhere.

IN THE OLD DAYS when a bookie got loaded
up on a longshot, he could lay off some of the money so he wouldn’t get
hurt. Now he can’t. The lay-off spots aren’t around any more. And he
can’t refuse the action or the players will become irritable. So, down
the drain.

Naturally this distressing situation is working a
hardship on beleaguered bettors. When a bookie is hard to find, a
player, especially one with a hot tip, faces the terrible prospect of
going out to the track and getting clobbered for the full ride, maybe
even being refused admittance because his tie isn’t on straight.

Man, it’s murder.

DRIVING THROUGH a beach town, Jo Meade commented on the
unimaginative street names and wondered if they’d ever be changed to
something more colorful.

"I’ll start them out," Tom, her husband, said, "with Squid Roe."

EVERYONE doubtless has noticed how everything’s going
Italiano these days — clothes, shoes, film start, small cars, cuisine.
Well, Dana Burkhalter puts it this way:

With all this Italian cooking, I guess
They’ll soon call our city Lasagna-les,
The name doesn’t matter, I’d like, never fear,
To own a few pizzas of property here.

A MAN I KNOW went to the freezer to get some hamburger for
dinner and found some freshly washed clothes. Holding up his wife’s bra
he demanded, "What’s this doing in the freezer?"

Surprised at
such ignorance, she said she kept them there until she was ready to
iron them. The cold, she explained, prevented mildew.

Logical, but a little depressing.

THE WAY Lou Huston tells it, Hamlet, tortured by inner
conflicts, attempted to resolve his hostilities by the wanton slaying
of inoffensive donkeys and a particular species of bird.

One
day, as the unhappy prince stalked through the garden at Elsinore,
terminating the lives of the beasts and birds, he was observed by his
mentor, Polonius, who admonished him, "Neither a burro oriole-ender
be."

ONLY IN BURBANK — Mrs. M. Belden’s son, a first-grader,
came home from school bursting with the news that there was a new boy
in class named Felicio, which, he said, means "drop dead."

Knowing
the name means happiness, she asked where he got such an idea. Came the
reply, "Well, I asked him what his name meant and he said, ‘Drop dead!’
"

AROUND TOWN — A Duarte lady, who has just received a
Christmas card from a great aunt in Havana postmarked Dec. 10, 1958,
asks, "How manana can you get?" . . . A family on Golden Gate Ave. near
Sunset Blvd. is beginning to think autos don’t like the two trees in
front of the house. On Lincoln’s Birthday a Chevy crashed into one and
on the Washington Birthday holiday the other was fiercely attacked by a
Plymouth. The trees fought back resolutely but hardly made a dent . . .
Overheard by Frank Barron in Beverly Hills: "If I put as much money
into payments as I put in parking meters my car would have been paid
for by now."