To Mars in a Tub

 

    The reason the Russians are beating us into space is no mystery to Sam Lobell of S Westmoreland Ave.  In a word — bathtubs.  Others may cite graphs and statistics showing Russian emphasis on science and aid to bright students are responsible for their space lead.  Sam says no.

    His logic:  Reading, the link to knowledge, has been snapped by television.  The sounds of the electronic eye penetrate most rooms in most houses.  But as yet there are few TV sets in bathrooms.  Thus there remains, as a final refuge for readers, a warm bath and a good book.  Of course, readers must add a little hot water from time to time and get used to the inevitable drip of the faucet.

 

    But consider this:  Most housing in Russia is old.  Bathtubs are common.  Showers are rare.  In the United States the reverse is true.  And the trend is toward more showers, fewer tubs.

 

    Then Sam throws his sneak punch:  "Have you ever tried to read a book in a shower?"

 

    Ergo, bring back bathtubs or we must resign ourselves to second place in space.

 

 

   SOMETIMES it is difficult for judges to maintain their dignity.

 

    Judge Bernard Jefferson likes to recall the time a man charged with stealing a transistor radio from a store came before him.  "I didn't steal it," the defendant said.  "The sign said, 'No Down Payment, Take Your Radio Now and Pay Later.'  Honest, judge, I really meant to pay."

 

    Then there was the man charged with begging.  "Your honor," he explained, "it was a cloudy day and I put out my hand to see if it was raining and first thing I knew somebody had put a quarter in it."

 

 

 

 

    IT HAPPENED, the lady on the phone said, only last week in San Fernando Valley.

 

    A man who drives one of those huge, revolving cement mixers purposely neglected to take his lunch when he left for work.  He got his load of concrete and on the way to his destination drove by home for lunch.  As he suspected, there was a Cadillac parked in front.  He rolled down  a window and grimly dumped the load of concrete inside it and drove off.  When the wife's boyfriend came out and saw the mess he disappeared.  He hasn't preferred charges.

 

    That's the story.  But now Mrs. Helen Willett of Fontana writes that it was told to her by  a neighbor as having happened there.  When she repeated it to her grandson, who works in Ontario, he said he'd heard it, and it was supposed to have happened there.

 

    As an old spotter of classic recurrent stories, I don't believe it ever happened anywhere.

 

 

    THE STATE Department's intervention in the Caryl Chessman case was not unprecedented, a man with a long memory recalls.

 

    In November, 1918, Gov. William D. Stephens, at the request of President Woodrow Wilson, commuted the death sentence of Tom Mooney from hanging to life imprisonment.  Mooney and Warren K. Billings had been convicted of the Preparedness Day bombing in San Francisco in July, 1916, in which 10 persons were killed.  Mooney was pardoned by Gov. Culbert Olson in 1939 and died soon after.

 

 

    AT RANDOM — Nat Cole regrets he will not appear at a scheduled concert tomorrow in San Francisco.  He canceled when the event was switched from the Masonic Hall to Civic Auditorium because it wouldn't attract "the class of people we want."  Irony is that Cole is a Mason.