Samaritans, 1960

    While driving Monday on Pico Blvd. near Crenshaw, Joe Gamba and Frank Tallman, telephone company splicers, saw a woman's purse in the gutter.  They stopped, picked it up and examined the contents.  The purse contained money, identification and, they noted with some concern, nitroglycerin pills, used by heart patients. 

    Realizing the pills were vital to the owner, they went to the woman's address in the Larchmont Blvd. section and knocked on the door, but no one was home.

    As they were about to leave, a car drove up and the woman in it, reaching for her purse as she started to get out, realized it wasn't there.  When the telephone men called her by name and started to explain about finding the pills, she panicked and started to faint.

    They caught her, carried her into the house and gave her one of the pills. They wanted to call a doctor but she said it wouldn't be necessary.  Soon she was fully recovered.

    Let this be recorded as the first good deed for 1960.

     JUDGING FROM THE MAIL, there's a pressing little matter that needs clarification.  Jan. 1, 1960, was not the beginning of a new decade, it was merely the beginning of the last year of the present decade, the 50s.  The new decade won't start until midnight, Dec. 31, 1960.

    As Rolland A. Spofford of Pico Rivera explains it, decades start at zero, otherwise a decade would be only nine years long.  Similarly, the 20th century didn't start until midnight Dec. 31, 1900.  Best way to remember this, Jack Perkins of Santa Monica states, is to keep in mind that the last year of a decade must end in 0.  Thus 1900 was the last year of the 19th century, 1960 will be the last year of the 1950 decade.

    Let this be a lesson to everyone — never fight the calendar.

    MORE OR LESS
I asked for Thousand
    Island dressing.
How much I got has kept
    me guessing.
    –JOSEPH P. KRENGEL

    GENERAL Bulletin No. 3, L.A. city school district, to administrators of schools, colleges and offices, deals firmly with several subjects, among them the mutilation of public library books.

    The stenciled bulletin deplores the tearing or cutting out of entire sections and pages and underlining of passages in encyclopedias and reference books and reminds, "The slogan for the school system this year is 'The Pursuit of Excellance.' "  Uh huh, with an a.

    WHEN Asst. Atty. Gen. Bill James returned to his office in the State Building from lunch there was a teletype memo from Sacramento that began, "Regarding extension of time for love."

    Had to do with a request for a 30-day extension for Albert Love, under sentence of death for murder.

    ONLY IN L.A. — A youth holding upright an eight-foot paddle board was standing at Olympic and Robertson Blvds., thumbing a ride.  Offhand, anyone would say he was a young man most unlikely to succeed.  But as Jack Tobin drove by, a car stopped and he got aboard with his board.  Jack figures the driver had to be a surfer, too . . . The driver of a Renault ahead of truck driver Joe Ceasar on Harbor Freeway slowed almost to a halt and waved to another Renault driver on the on-ramp, to get in ahead of him.  Joe sighed and marveled at the camaraderie of small car owners.

    A WOMAN convalescing from surgery in a hospital was placed in the maternity ward because of lack of space elsewhere and she became perplexed each time she passed the room full of infants.  Some had F on them, others N.  She figured the F stood for female but she couldn't decide about the N.  It became an obsession.  She asked and now she knows- F is for feeders, N is for nurses (bottles).

    MISCELLANY — Passing of Dudley Nichols removed another great name from what was probably the greatest newspaper staff ever assembled, that of the old N.Y. World.  His contemporaries included F.P. Adams, Heywood Broun, Alexander Woollcott, Frank Sullivan, Harry Hansen and Walter Lippmann.