Refreshing View

“A BRIGHT LIGHT was reported observed over Rattlesnake Mountain.  Police checked the AEC airport and were advised it was a cloud.”

“A woman reported seeing a man beating his wife on Sanford.  Officers checked and found everything settled.”

“Frank Gravael complained about the hullabaloo dogs were making in the neighborhood.  The dogs chase the paper boy who brings his own dog for protection.”

“A resident reported kids were hiding in the vineyard across from Fruitland School and throwing grapes at passing cars, resulting in stains to both cars and clothing.  Officers checked but found nothing.”

“Oscar Herbel said someone chased his two pet red chickens over the fence and he hasn’t seen them since.”

“A woman called police and said she wanted her husband thrown out as he was drunk and slapping her around.”

Now — that’s more like it.

::

HOUSEWIFE’S
L.A. MENT
I’m glad they got that
series won —
Now I can get my
housework done.
– EUNICE CARMICHAEL

::

FASCINATING letter from a stranger: “I thought you might like to know the picturesque names of regular players at the Gardena poker clubs.  They are not figments of an overactive imagination, even if they sound like something out of Damon Runyon, but actual identifications.

They are Pete The Thief, Dirty Mouth Paula, Ronnie The Mooch, Opie [illegible] Dot, Freddie The Greatest, The Silver Fox, Tommy The Hustler, Shoeshine Nick, Loud Mouth George, Benny The Bandit, The Yul Brynner of Vermont Ave., and Cliff The Lover.  My name is included but I shall not sign this as some of them might not appreciate the publicity and I have to live with them.

“ The Cowardly Type.”

::

A COUPLE OF minutes before the start of yesterday’s game the bartender in a downtown saloon turned the button on the beat-up old TV set but nothing happened — real nothing.  He jiggled it, he whacked it, he shook it.  Nothing.  Several patrons took turns turning the dial on and off and slapping the infernal machine.  It remained dead.  Consternation gripped the group.  And then from far down the bar a grizzled wino came out of his daze sufficiently to comprehend what was going on.  “Plug it in,” he called out.  That, it seems, was what was needed.

::

ONLY IN ARCADIA? — A curious thing happens every time Deane Douglas, pianist at the Westerner restaurant, plays “Quiet Village.”  Suddenly the room erupts in bird calls and jungle cries, as in Martin Denny’s recording of the piece.  And from the most unlikely people — bankers, dowagers, playboys.  Gives Deane the feeling he’s playing at the Griffith Park Zoo.

 ::

AT RANDOM — The Junior Women’s Club of Pacific Palisades is sponsoring a charity musical revue titled “Landslides of 1959,” and piles of loose earth have been placed at curbside to promote it.  Landslide-sensitive businessmen are not appreciating their efforts . . . John J. Anthony is down with a mild heart attack but the velvet-voiced problem solver had an answer for that, too.  His wife,Etile , and son David are doing his daily TV show . . . Anonymous postal card: “Hey, you guys down there must be slipping.  The paper came out the other day without a picture of Carole Tregoff.”