The Missing $113,200

The
case of the missing $113,200 is obviously a classic of its kind and
don't think for a moment that the whodunit boys aren't fully cognizant
of its implications. Why, it could revolutionize the TV private eye
racket.

All we know for certain is that the money, in bill, was put aboard an armored car at a bank at 11th and Figueroa Streets but it wasn't there 17 stops later, when the truck arrived at Slauson Ave. and Avalon Blvd. And, of course, we know the butler didn't do it.

"It just vanished," a spokesman said.

CLEARLY this is not a case for ordinary, heavy-footed sleuthing. It's doubtful if even Peter Gunn would know what to do.

 A
whodunit man with a slight science-fiction background said the heist —
or whatever it was — seemed explainable to him only in terms of
space-age science. Things that would have been staggering to the
imagination five years ago are not to believe that some engineer has
perfected a technique for the undetected removal of money from an
armored car.

Another said the mystery appeared to him not only eerie but occult and he talked about the transmigration of $100 bills.

Personally I'm sticking to science, even if I did flunk physics in school it looks to me like a clear case of osmosis.

::

 AS A CLASS assignment a schoolteacher asked her fifth-graders to write about the art of conversation.

One
response: "I'm always talking because I can't stop. I try to talk it
off. We don't have much to say so we just talk about each other."

Another: "If I couldn't talk I couldn't say nothing. I will get it off my chest. I am always talking because I want to."

That sighing sound is parents everywhere saying amen.

::

MARKET SCENE

Pushing their carts
Heaped high with sacks
Are the big big gals
In the small small slacks

–DON KEARNS

::

A MAN active in behalf of a candidate at the recent election had several phones installed in his office to drum up votes.

The other day as he entered the office he noticed a stranger wandering in the hall and asked, "Can I help you?"

"Do you know where I can place a bet on a horse?" the stranger asked.

The
man invited him in and said he'd find out. He called someone on the
phone, jotted down an address, and handed it to the stranger. The
stranger asked, "Do they take bets out there?" "Thousands of them," was
the reply. "It's a place called Hollywood Park."

The stranger
laughed. Revealing himself as a policeman, which the other man knew all
along, he said. "We got a tip there were a lot of phones in here and
were just checking to see if it was a bookie joint."

::

ONLY IN L.A.
— A lady supervisor in a downtown office thought she'd heard every
possible excuse for tardiness but she got a new one the other day. A
gal employee told her. "I was having breakfast in a coffee shop on
Broadway and someone had 'The Battle of New Orleans' (first on the rock
and roll parade) on the jukebox and I wasn't leaving until it was over!"

::

MISCELLANY
— John E. Edward phoned Ed Elias at the UCLA Extension division and it
occurred to him later that he had to ask the operator for the Extension
extension … Sudden thought: Wonder why clothing manufacturers' still
bother to put watch pockets in men's trousers? … They said it
couldn't be done but many people who don't care particularly for
vegetables are eating them and liking them — via a new cracker called
Vegetable Thins. Very tasty … Overheard at the Press Cub: "Sometimes
I find it amazing how many things I don't care about!"