Dialing Chessman

“THAT’S UP TO MR. CHESSMAN,” the assistant warden said, “would you like me to call him?”  “Why yes,” the astounded journalist gasped.

After a two-minute wait the assistant warden came back on the line and said, “Mr. Chessman will see you at 9 a.m. tomorrow.”  And that’s where Francois was yesterday.

Lest anyone get the wrong idea, it’s Paul Price’s understanding that the assistant warden talked with the cell block guard, who relayed the message- Chessman does not have a telephone in his cell.

YESTERDAY’S rain came in the nick of time for Ruth Helvis of San Fernando and doubtless other mothers.  Things had reached a point, after the long drought, that when she told her small children about water falling from the sky they just stared in wide-eyed disbelief.

COUNTER REVOLUTION
I’ve lost my faith in
evolution:
I’ve seen a crazy
revolution:
Though we’re descendants
of the ape-race,
A monkey is the outer
space-ace.
MARTHA MANHEIM

LET IT BE chronicled that somewhere in Newport Beach there is a woman who will swear a recording talked back to her.

It happened recently when the numbers were changed in eight branch telephone offices in Orange County.

The first day of the changeover, before the phone company could correct the recordings telling customers to dial the new numbers, office employees handled the calls, using the regular recital, “You have dialed a disconnected number, etc.”

After saying it scores of times, Mimi Hopkins, temporary clerk in Newport, was asked by a  woman caller, “Is this a recording?”  “Yes, it is,” Mimi said.  After a pause, the caller hung up.

 PUBLIC AT LARGE — A bulletin came over the Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith news wire stating, “U.S. Shoots Money Into Outer Space.”  And Vic Alexander caught himself answering back, “Well, they’ve tried everything else!” . . . A dump truck on Castelar St. had written on the rear, “Mr. Sandman” . . . A letter Esta Bentley of Laguna Beach received from a friend in New York bore two post marks — New York Dec. 15, 1958 and Washington D.C. Nov. 12, 1959.  At least part of the mystery is contained in a post office rubber stamp, “Found in Supposedly Empty Equipment.”

    MILESTONE — A large,  irregular blank area on page 4 of the San Pedro High School paper, Fore ‘n’ Aft, has the explanatory printed line, “No copy for this space.”  Now, as any make-up editor will concur, there’s fearless journalism.  When the harbor kids run out of copy they don’t fight it.

AT RANDOM — Payola doesn’t bother Tumbleweed Thompson, Gower Gulch composer.  On the contrary.  He can’t help wondering if someone has been pressuring disc jockeys not to play his tune “Skidrow Lament.”  As for his song “Silky Sullivan,” he says Dick Whittinghill was the only one to play it “but only on a very strong dare” . . . Shoppers beware — pickpockets are at large.  Their MO is to jostle a victim “accidentally” and while she — it’s usually a woman — is recovering, to open her purse, extricate her wallet and hurry away.  One lady lost $54 on a streetcar.