Adrift in the City

 

    A bellboy, 25, was in municipal court a few days ago charged with impersonating an officer.  His arrest grew out of an argument in a saloon when the bartender refused to sell him a drink.

   
When he went into an irrelevant outburst in which he threatened to "pull the switch on this whole town!"

    "I've been sent down here from the moon to straighten things out," he went on, "but after looking around I'm not sure I can get the job done."

    There was laughter, of course, and many persons reading this may also be amused.

    But judges and court attaches no longer smile at such outbursts.  They know they have before them a disturbed person, one of many cast adrift in the city. They also know the inadequacy of the facilities to provide desperately needed psychiatric care for such persons.

 

 

    A WOMAN CAME to a well-known artist and asked if he would paint her portrait.  She wanted to give it to her husband for Christmas, she said.  Then she added, with studied gaiety. "I'll pay you a handsome fee if you'll make me look 10 years younger."

    The artist, whose fees are high enough so that he can be independent, replied, "I'll tell you what we can do.  I'll paint you as you are today and you can give it to your husband 10 years from now."

 

 

 

 

    A WOMAN PHONED the Health Department the other day and said urgently, "I ate some cranberries yesterday — what do I do now?"

   
The health officer patiently assured her she was in no danger.  When he hung up the receiver he shook his head sadly and remarked to a man visiting him, "I wish we could get through to people how ridiculous this cranberry scare is.  On the basis of the amount of poison required to induce cancer in rats, a person would have to eat 15,000 pounds of cranberries.  That's 100 pounds a year for 150 years.  I don't think anybody is going to make it."

 

 

    CONTINUING discussions, sometimes reaching the feud stage, are being held by northern and southern groups to settle on an agreement on water rights.  Unless surplus Northern California water can be delivered here, this area, with its exploding population, some distant day could virtually revert to desert.

    After a frustrating session Assemblyman Tom Rees, who represents the Brentwood Section, remarked wryly, "Well, at least I've got the riparian rights to the water in 13,000 swimming pools!"

 

 

    ON HIS RETURN from his first Boy Scout camp out Mike Allison, 11, reported, "The food was terrible.  The steak was raw, the bacon was black and I never want to thing about scrambled eggs again."  Who, his father asked, did the cooking?

    "I did, to earn points on my badge," the boy said, then added brightly, "but I sure had some good hamburgers on the way back!"

 

 

   ONLY IN L.A. — So that there will be  a fair distribution of funerals of unidentified and unclaimed dead, who are buried at county expense, undertakers designate  a Coroner of the Month, who gets the business for that period.

 

 

    AT RANDOM — The TV scene that bugs the boys in the City Council pressroom is the one in which the gal collapses when told a loved one is dead and the hero mushes up and says, "Can I get a glass of water,ma'm?"  Why water?  the pressroom boys ask.  At a time like that any doctor would prescribe wheesky . . . Did you hear about the householder, doing some weekend carpenter work in the garage, who called to his boy, "Son, get me a screwdriver, will you?"  The boy returned in a moment with a glass of orange juice and said, "Pop, I can't find the vodka!" . . . Several employees in a downtown office received credit cards they hadn't applied for.  They're angry, feeling someone was presuming.