The Court Is a Stage

    One of the travesties of court procedure is that most divorces are obtained on grounds that have little or nothing to do with the breakup of the marriages.

    The ladies come into court and testify that their husbands stayed out late or complained about their cooking or used profanity and the mental cruelty became simply unbearable.  They avoid mentioning the real cause of most breakups, usually a third person, to avoid embarrassing their spouses, who have agreed on that basis not to contest.

    All that is hardly  a secret, but reporter Charles Ridgway had never heard it spelled out so clearly as the other day as he rode down a Courthouse escalator behind a handsome but graying actress and her attorney and overheard this exchange:

    "Well, were you nervous?"

    "Not too bad."

    "At one point I thought you were going to crack."

    "No, but I'm glad I memorized the script so well."

    IF BOB ANDREWS hadn't heard the lady say it, he wouldn't have believed it.  Bob, who lives in a nearby city, complained about  a $3.25 overcharge on his phone bill and demanded an accounting.  The bill was rectified but the phone company lady said he was at fault.

    "You dial the phone too slowly," she said."

    SWITCH TO AIR
My lungs can now function,
My throat isn't sore,
I am smoking much
    less now
And enjoying it more.
        MARVIN PRESS

    IT'S AN OLD refrain that down in Mexico they have got no snow.  Likewise in L.A.  But that hasn't kept youngsters from enjoying the same thrill, tobogganing down grass-covered slopes on homemade sleds.  It has been going on for generations.

     This year, a lady who lives on what she calls Whitening Heights reports, it's earlier and bigger than ever, due to the impetus of the Olympics.  Usually the kids wait until summer when the grass is dry and slippery, but the snow stuff in Squaw Valley has them eager.  She reports they're using old boards with runners, even heavy pieces of cardboard, and she has imparted her knowledge of the subject to them by suggesting they put wax or bacon rind on the runners.

    Let them enjoy the sport while they can.  The way things look, pretty soon there won't be any empty hillsides.

    "WORDS FAIL ME," Frank J. Heffler writes, "as I leave to clean up a direction sign near our church at 79th and La Tijera Blvd.  Some idiot has painted a swastika on it.  I can't understand the senselessness of this act.  I pity these people.  It seems that narrow-mindedness is on the upswing here as well as in some sections of the South.  Our church of Christ is a progressive, Protestant, Christian institution open to all peoples.

    ANYONE ELSE besides George Newman catch the irony in the story from New York that a $22,300,000 housing project to provide homes for 1,317 families has been approved for Ebbets Field, former home of Brooklyn Dodgers?  Meanwhile, on a clear day in Chavez Ravine, once designated as a housing project, you can see where second base is going to be.

    OOPS, the instructor in a class on investments at L.A. High night school said, "The forces of interest make a blond fluctuate."  Could be but it was a fluff.  He meant bond . . . J.G.Novotny, history teacher at Fulton Junior High in Van Nuys, rewards pupils who turn in perfect exam papers with one Blue Chip stamp.  Now there's a real incentive.

    MISCELLANY — A passenger in Sam Berk's cab confided he'd won $20 on Chessman's reprieve.  Didn't say whether he favored the decision or simply thought it was a good bet . .. Racketeers are taking advantage of the nation's religious revival by peddling fake recordings and blessings and soliciting funds, Dick Mathison warns in Coronet.  So beware . . . One thing about leap year, Frank Barron says, we beat the landlord out of one day this month.