Justice Strained

A man who lives in an outlying section a few nights ago drove a guest, a visitor from New York, to the Biltmore Hotel. It was after midnight when he reached the downtown section.

He was driving west on 5th
Street — one-way westbound — and turned left on Olive Street so he
could let his passenger off at the hotel entrance. A gendarme nailed
him.

The motorist asked what he had done wrong. He was told he
had turned left from the middle lane as if it were a two-way street
instead of from the extreme left curb lane. The motorist pointed out
there was no traffic and he had created no hazard. He got the ticket
anyway.

After he said goodbye to his passenger and drove off, he turned right — that is, west — on 6th Street, posted one-way eastbound. The same officer nailed him again.

HE WAS GUILTY,
no question about that, and he has paid his fines. But he remains
outraged. In five minutes, through ignorance, he received two moving
violations. he does not like them on his record. He is a careful
driver. In 20 years of driving he had received only one citation — a
questionable 551A, failure to yield on a left turn.

And he
brings up a point that has been reiterated here. Is our traffic
enforcement, as decreed by a public servant named Parker, supposed to
educate, control and give guidance or merely to punish by issuing as
many citations as possible? He felt that the officer, at least on the
second offense, could have smiled.

Meanwhile, he has resolved
his resentment into a simple statement: "Unless it's absolutely
necessary I shall never go downtown again."

AFTER THE news photogs seemed to have flash-gunned their fill of Harry Truman Tuesday a cameraman from another paper inevitably asked for "one more."

Harry said good-naturedly, "I guess you're not a member of the Just One Club — you didn't give the password."

"What's that?" the photog asked.

"Please," laughed the ex-president.

ONLY IN L.A. — While waiting for a train to pass on Alameda Street, Bob Schwartz of the APCD saw four husky, grinning workmen at the California Milling Corp. — one at each wheel — lift a parked blue Isetta and hold it aloft a moment to see how heavy it was.

ALONG VINE STREET they're telling of the Martian who went up to an earthman,
unaware he was a Method acting coach, and said, "Take me to your
leader." The acting coach studied him a moment and replied, "You're a
little too tense!" — Then there was a certain writer's comment on the
last half hour of the Academy Awards clambake: "I thought Al Jarvis had
gone coast-to-coast!"

AND DON'T FORGET NEXT WEDNESDAY

FOR REASONS he doesn't care to discuss, H.S. has worked out this parody:

"What are you doing?"

"I'm cleaning my doghouse."

"Oh, are you a dog?"

"No, I'm a man."

"Do you think everyone should be a man?"

"That's something everyone should decide for himself, but I do think everyone should keep his doghouse clean."

MISCELLANY — Let's not panic, but the title of Hale Spark's University Explorer program on KNX
Sunday will be "The Stubborn Staphylococcus." It's the germ which
causes boils and stubbornly resists wonder drugs … "Imagine!" says
Frank Barron, "some day we may have war surplus atom bombs" … Modern
Medicine has this quote from a coroner's report: "An act of God under
very suspicious circumstances."