Ethereal Hitchhiker

 

    Until recently Rhoda Cross, who lives near Vermont and Fountain Aves., had a two-party telephone line, or at least that's what she thought.  But several weeks ago she started hearing strange voices when she picked up the receiver.

    At first she thought the voices were merely the interference that everyone sometimes hears.  Then she'd hear the line open while she was talking.  Other times when someone called her they'd ask if she'd been using the phone.  When she said she hadn't, they'd say they'd cut in on a conversation a few minutes before.  Finally, when she picked up the receiver she'd hear a man and woman chatting about her previous conversation.  It gave her an eerie feeling.

 

    By now anyone who has been around awhile will recognize the name.  Rhoda Cross was for 31 years the LAPD statistician.  She pioneered the system of filing arrest reports now in use.  She retired in 1954.

   Rhoda never made an arrest while with the department, but she knows about wire tapping. Weary of the intruders, she notified the phone company she wanted a private line.

 

     The serviceman who came to make the switch shut off the second party line, prodded around, then asked, "Have you another phone in the house?"  She said no, meanwhile wondering if he thought she was a bookie.  He said, "Well, there's somebody on your line who doesn't belong there."

 

    It turned out that someone had spliced in on her line and not only was getting free telephone service but a great deal of friendly gossip.  From what Rhoda hears, the procedure is not recommended.

 

    THE LEAVES are popping out on the sycamores and the liquidambars; the wisteria is in bloom.  Frank Frohnhoefer reports the fields of lupines east of Crenshaw and north of Rosecrans were never lovelier, and Maxine Crotsenburg, as is her annual custom, has invited me to the fourth annual wild flower show tomorrow and Sunday in Morongo Valley.  In short, spring is busting out all over.

 

    But there's also evidence that spring may be too much for the folks to handle.  From Bill O'Connor of Reseda comes this cryptic, head-shaking postal card message: "God bless our spinach."

 

 

    A HOLLYWOODIAN I know has a fierce sense of justice and propriety.  As a result he is constantly in hassles with the utility companies over what he considers exorbitant bills, with neighbors over trespassing dogs, with public servants over bureaucratic whimsy.

 

    Recently he moved into a new hillside home.  The other day a friend asked, "Well, are you all set in the new place?"

 

    "Yeah!" he said happily, "and we're suing!"

 

 

    YOU NEVER KNOW where a story, once told, will land.  Several years ago publicist John Wagner saw a woman motorist turn west from Main St. onto one way eastbound 6th St. — to be confronted with a phalanx of headlights.  As the policeman came over to extricate and perhaps cite her, she stormed, "And where were you?"

 

    John sent the incident to Reader's Digest, which paid him $100 and printed it in October, 1957.  About a month ago Jack Paar related it, saying he'd picked it up in his travels.  And there it is again, in the March Coronet.

 

 

    APRIL FOOL

 

 

    FOOTNOTES — Who said gasoline and liquor don't mix? A two-faced billboard atop a building in the 2300 block on Beverly Blvd. has a gasoline ad on one side, a whisky ad on the other . . . Two youngsters came into an optometrist's office, Modern Medicine relates, and asked if he could spare some "eye cards."  Naturally, he asked what they wanted them for.  "We play ball in the Little League," one explained, "and we want them for the umpires."