Mileage Test

    I've had misgivings about freeways for a long time. But not the way you might think.  I've merely been suspicious of the comparative mileage.

    This is to report that I have confirmed my suspicion.  I checked my speedometer in driving on Barrington Ave. in West L.A. from Sunset Blvd. and got 2.6 miles.

    Another time I drove from Sunset to Olympic on the freeway and got 2.9 miles.

    Barrington has signals which detain you, and the freeway is clear but meanders.

    In short, the freeway is .3 miles of a mile longer but it's shorter in time.  In fact it takes less than half the time.

    WHILE READING the financial page the other night, Arthur H. Nadel said to his wife, "Can you imagine!  American Tel. & Tel. made over a billion dollars last year!"

     She looked up from her knitting and said thoughtfully, "Yes, but do you think they're really happy."

    THE ERA OF the hobo, presumed ended, apparently has merely entered a new phase.  The Wall St. Journal had this news brief: "Southern Pacific detectives followed a long extension cord into an idle boxcar, found a hobo sleeping under an electric blanket."  Sissy.

    FILIBUSTER FLATS
We might attain new
    height
For freedom's cherished
    banner,
If we discussed civil rights
In a less uncivil manner.
        WILLIAM BAFFA

    AHEM DEPT. —  The Long Beach YWCA Newsletter has a slightly hysterical typo:  "In addition to the protection a girl has in living in a YWCA, there are many other values to be gained.  There is the opportunity for group loving . . . "

    IT COMES AS a pleasant surprise to most theater goers that a young man with the unlikely name of Rip Torn is revealed as a fine actor in Tennessee Williams' play, "Sweet Bird of Youth," at the Baltimore theater.  Torn, along with Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter, was caught in the wave of odd first-name giving, attributed to their agents, about 10 years ago.  In spite of them, they've all done well.  Incidentally, Torn is his real last name.

    EVERY MILE it travels the Pioneer V sun satellite is making outer space history but here and there a little inner space history is being made too.

    Charles See, representative of the Long beach International Beauty Congress, now in Borneo, sends along a clipping from the March 5 Sarawak Tribune with a fascinating story datelined Kuching.  It states that rats in the remote Kelabit area threaten to destroy the rice crop, so 30 Kuching residents have been asked to offer their animals for the first mass parachute cat drop in history.  This is our big thought for today.

    DRIVING PAST a cemetery, Lucie Scheuer, 9, asked, "What's that place?"  Her mother explained, "That's where they bury people when they die."  Lucie said disapprovingly, "Well if they ever get me in there it'll be over my dead body!"

    AT RANDOM — Addie Parks was discussing the virtues of her recently acquired imported car with Ken Williams.  As they inspected the small rear engine she remarked, "Another thing, if I wreck the car I can always use the engine for the lawnmower." . . . A horse-player in a Hollywood restaurant said, "The police are right, you can't get hold of a bookie in this town — the line's always busy!" . . . How to finance the collection of rubbish and where to dump it seems to be a deepening problem.  Obviously what is needed is a crash program for trash . . . .Ray Southworth hears from usually unreliable sources that wise-guy burglars refer to themselves as yeggheads.