Election Gripe

Ted Austin is unhappy about next Tuesday's municipal election.

He
doesn't think truth and justice will be served by closing the bars that
day, thereby depriving thousands of deserving bartenders of a day's pay
merely to provide an opportunity for people to vote on a handful of
candidates and issues in which they don't seem particularly interested.

It
is a rather silly, anachronistic ordinance, but in the interest of
truth and justice, which prevail mightily here, it should be observed
that Ted Austin is a bartender.

IT HAS BEEN a fatal fortnight for well-known old-time L.A. detectives — Eddie Romero, Dwight Longuevan,
Bert Wallis and Frank L. (Lefty) James. Lefty was born Jan. 4, 1890, on
Yale St. about a mile from the Civic Center, where he carved out a
memorable career as a tough but human cop.

By arrangement, Lefty
phoned his wife, Bobbie, every day at 9 a.m. They lived apart but were
friendly. When he didn't call Tuesday she tried to reach him. She
couldn't and notified the manager of the apartment. Lefty was found
dead of a heart attack which apparently struck while he was preparing
coffee.

Only a few weeks ago Lefty turned over to agent Lou Irwin his completed autobiography, "Crime Shouldn't Pay," now his obituary.

WHEN DON Demeter came to bat last Sunday a Dodger fan shouted, "OK, Don, let's play screeno!"
A few seconds later Don blasted a homer over the left-field screen. The
fan stood up and, Malvin Wald reports, announced ecstatically, "He got
the message! He got the message!"

WE'VE HAD IT
The time has come to lower the gavel
And silence the phrase
"Have Something,
Will Travel,"
–HELEN MITCHELL

IN THE RATHER macabre filling station version, the way Maurice Ogden tells it, an attendant was probing for the oil stick of a Belchfire Eight when the raised hood suddenly dropped, decapitating him.

"Ah," sagely commented a passing philosopher, observing the head, "a filling man's thinker!"*

IT APPEARS that
John Grover turned over a hornet's nest about conflicting views on
education titled "Notes on Parental Functions." Most of the hornets
were friendly but the dilemma remains.

One mother writes:

"I
would like to ask these 'objecting' educators what is a parent to do
when a child asks, 'How do you spell book?' Should I say, 'I won't tell
you, you should not ask questions like that, it isn't normal, just go
out and play'? So she asks her father and he says the same thing. So
she goes underground and asks a neighbor and learns it in spite of me.
Is that better? Because it's for sure that when she wants to know
something she's going to find out one way or another."

BY COINCIDENCE the preceding is a prelude to notes that two sixth-graders named Cindy and Lea wrote each other and the red-faced mother of one of them happened to see.

First note: "I have know book."

Second note: "What do you wanted to no how to spell?"

AT RANDOM — There's a big squawk emanating from the area around Van Nuys
Airport. Residents say the north-south streets are such a maze of
excavations and detours that they can hardly find their way home …
LedLiringis heard it on KMPC : "About twice a year we hold our annual
spring clearance sale" … Pete the Waiter, the language purist, scoffs
at collectors of such cliches as "do hereby" and "shark-infested
waters." Much more offensive, he contends, is "gives lip service" …
Man on the telephone says he heard a record titled "Chavez Ravine" on XERB, Rosarito Beach, all about the recent episode here … Walt Hackett's solution: The Dodgers need a smaller park. These huge crowds scare 'em after dark.

* This is a play on the ad slogan: "A thinking man's filter."