Economics and Justice

    Eunice Carlisle happened to be in the courthouse on another matter a few days ago when Dr. R. Bernard Finch told all and she was unavoidably caught in the crush and excitement.  She also was appalled by the violent eagerness of people waiting in line to see the show.

    Later she read of the tremendous cost of the long trial and a nagging idea gripped her.  Why not hold such spectacles in the Sports Arena and charge administration and use the proceeds to ease the burden on beleaguered taxpayers?

    After all, she reasoned  people pay high prices to see events not half as exciting or suspenseful.  Furthermore, this is the real thing, not the rehearsed, contrived courtroom drama one sees on television. In fact, TV could be another source of revenue.  A sponsor would pay a fortune for such a spectacle as the Finch trial.

    It may seem unorthodox for the city and the county to go into the entertainment business but, things being what they are, she sees it as a move toward economic sanity.

     You think Eunice is kidding?  She is, but on the square.

    THAT FAVORITE subject of old-time residents, missed real estate opportunities, came up again the other day and George Watkins, who used to sell papers at Pico Blvd. and Georgia St.  in 1920 and is now a retired Motor Vehicle Department employee, recalled his father's near miss.

    When they came here in 1918 his father bought the southwest corner of Slauson and Western for $2,200 as an investment.  Three months later his father's brother advised him to get rid of it.   It was too far out, he said, and besides L.A. would always be a tourist town.  So George's father unloaded it, taking a $100 loss.

    George, by the way, is buying a desert lot.

    PAYING HOBBIES
One is making mosaic,
Another molds a base for
    lamps.
Most of us find these
    prosaic-
We're collecting grocery
    stamps.
    JOSEPH P. KRENGEL

    THE BIG up-the-sleeve laugh in the television business continues to be the ridiculous insistence by the moguls on purity and honesty, to the point that even those who have committed no sin are getting guilt complexes.

    "Any day now," a TV performer remarked, "we expect to be told that announcers who are not wearing their own hair and models who have artificial support must say so."

    A LADY WHO doesn't approve of undue tampering with the language was distressed to find an ad for a  Hyperion Ave. market offering "4-legged fryers 49c lb."  She knew, of course, that no such freakishness was intended, that each fryer had its own two legs and two extra legs were included for customers who liked dark meat.  Nevertheless, she felt the word "legged" implied that all four were attached and this bothered her.  She phoned the public library and her opinion was supported.  So she called the butcher at the store and informed him that the ad was maligning his fryers.

    He said he had nothing to do with it but she noticed that the following week the ad still offered 4-legged fryers but in small print were the words "cut up."

    ASKED TO NAME the continents on a geography test, Pamela Spain, 9, of Sepulveda, wrote North America, South America, Asia and the rest — but also "Los Angeles."  And you know what?  The teacher marked it wrong.

    AT RANDOM — Fascinating fragment of conversation, one man to another, overheard by a  lady named Rosemary in the state museum in Exposition Park:  "That skirt fits like  a sweater!" . . . The way J.V. Ryan hears it, the monsoon in Rangoon is much worse in the afternoon.  My information is that this is true only when observed from the noon balloon to Rangoon . . . Inquiry by Fred Fox:  What do Hawaiians say now that this country is no longer "stateside?"  Let's call ourselves mainlanders.