Seat of Judgment

     A man I know was notified a few days ago that his auto insurance had been canceled.  Indignant, he demanded to know why.  He was told that the insurance company had checked his driving record and found that he had had 17 moving violations between 1951 and 1960 — 13 of them between 1951 and 1956 — and had decided he was not a good risk.

    He pointed out that he drives around 20,000 miles a year.  He has not received a  citation in the last 11 months.  He has never been arrested for drunk driving.  Of the 17 violations only one was for speeding.  He has never had an accident and never put in an accident claim.  His driver's license has never been suspended.

    If the motor vehicle department considered him a competent driver, why not the insurance company?  The insurance company had no explanation. 
   

    These are the conditions which prevail in this accident-conscious area.

    HAVE YOU HEARD, Bailey L. Hall inquires, about the green monster that haunts the marine base at Twenty-nine Palms?  The fellows on guard duty see it at night and empty their guns at it.  They are summarily relieved of duty and sent to the hospital for a rest.

    I don't believe it.  I mean I don't believe it's a green monster.  Seems more like Palm No. 30 experimentally poking up its fronds to see if it's safe to come out.  Which would upset the old date cart.

    INFLATION
Restaurants are getting
    farther away
From prices I can afford
    to pay,
And so I'm getting thinner
    and thinner —
You don't get much in
    a frozen dinner.
        ROBERT SCHENFIELD

    MICKEY THOMPSON, newspaper pressman, who last fall tooled a four-engine car nearly 370 m.p.h. on the Bonneville Salt Flats, is tapering off by driving in the Economy Run Saturday.  The other day he checked in at the Mobil Oil Bldg., 6th and Flower, and as he came out he noticed the woman newspaper vendor there studying the front page.  "Look at that gal," he said to a companion, "reading up all the profits."

    LAST WEEKEND as Hugh Scherb was arranging some big rocks in his hillside garden in Laurel Canyon his wife Mildred kept admonishing from the house, "Cluster them! Cluster them!"  He wound up in bed with an aching back, and as he sipped a  soothing broth which secret ingredient was whiskey, he diagnosed his ailment — clusterphobia.

    THIS IS TO alert census takers that the playful boys are working on Section C, which states, "List all persons who were staying overnight on Thursday, March 31, 1960."  One man has written, "Mrs. L. Ewing Scott."  Another, "Mimi Boomhower."

    AT RANDOM — A large ad agency had changed floors in a downtown building.  It previously shared the floor with a rival agency, but the bosses worried about confidential stuff being overheard in the mutually used ladies room . . . Add signs of spring:  A balding gentleman in Beverly Hills yesterday was wearing pink trousers . . . Chatting with a kindergarten chum, Becky Brewer, 5, of Whittier, was asked, "What were you named after?" And her mother heard her reply, "I don't know — I think after I was born" . . . As an experiment in irrelevance, Eleanor Vactor, who teaches a night English class at Valley, J.C., sent in an absence card for George Washington the day after his birthday.  It came back from the administration office with the note, "Sorry, but we cannot find any records for this student" . . . The word in Hollywood yesterday as the actors' strike neared settlement was, "They're getting down to the fine print."