Book sales are at a record high, Sylvia Porter says. People are turning off their TVs and reading ("Exodus" and "Lolita," presumably).

East Coast Culture

Actor
Harold Peary, among others, was propelled to his typewriter by mention
of the We Love California But Club, a group of transplanted Easterners
who like it here but have not quite become accustomed to the quaint
ways of the natives.

Hal, who lives in Manhattan Beach, doesn't think we have a monopoly on charlatans, oddballs, illiterates and vulgarians.

In
New York recently, all in one day, he had his pocket picked in a subway
train, was called a naughty name by a cabdriver while crossing 55th
St., and, as he held open the large glass door on a Fifth Avenue
building for several girls behind him, one snickered, "Look, Sir
Galahad, yet!"

THEN THERE was the occasion when he was
invited to a party and the socially prominent and wealthy hostess
seemed to take a fancy to him. "I just love Hollywood people!" she
oozed. She brought up the subject of ancestry, particularly hers, and
eventually got around to his.

Hal said proudly he was a third
generation Californian and that his ancestors were from the Azores, a
group of islands owned by Portugal. He will never forget her reply.
"Oh, I didn't know any of them had migrated that far west," she
exclaimed, "I thought all those dreadful 'Porta Ricians' were in New York!"

::

SHE IS middle-aged
and well dressed. She gets on the buses running between Santa Monica
and Los Angeles and says, "I have no money but my friend is meeting me
at the end of the line and will pay my fare." Some drivers let her
ride, some don't. The word is that she's a mental case. There is never
anyone at the end of the line to meet her.

::

MISERY, ANYONE?

There is a problem that gives me no rest,
A puzzle that taunts me and teases.
It's the leftover pills in my medicine chest
For which I have no such diseases.

–PEARL ROWE

::

ANTICIPATING
the summer heat, a Pasadena matron phoned the gas company to have her
furnace pilot flame turned off. A service man came and efficiently
accomplished his mission, after which they chatted idly about the
weather and taxes and high prices. She sensed he was groping for a way
to end the conversation and finally he made it. "Well," he said
brightly, hand on doorknob, "I certainly enjoyed turning off your
pilot!"

::

WHILE DRIVING
along the Sunset Strip, Al Meyers looked to the north where real estate
developers have gouged raw cuts into the hillside for home sites and
remarked to his wife, "I know what they could call it — Spoiled
Heights!" … And you know that agonizing repetitious TV commercial
about the thinking man's filter, the one in which the fellow says
amateur rocketry is only his hobby, he sells real estate for a living?
Well, GiselaBryson felt herself going under in the tide of brainwashing
and with her last ounce of resistance she retorted, "No wonder real
estate prices are so high!"

::

AT RANDOM –– A customer in the Grand Prix
restaurant asked what happened to the chandeliers and the bartender
casually replied that they were racing at Santa Barbara. Which was
true, Ginny Sims confides. The chandeliers are the wire wheels on owner
Bob Drake's sports car and that's where he was … RudyLeyva saw a
woman driving on Spring Street during the evening rush hour, engrossed
in a book titled "Mental Magic," inserted in the wind wing … A bar on
Huntington Drive atTampico Ave. in El Sereno has the name, "The Devil's
Playpen." Out there they say what they mean … The eggs in the nest
built by mama and papa birds in the TV City parking lot hatched the
other day and the fledglings are running all over the place.