That Silly Season's With Us Rather Early

   
You've heard of the "silly season."

    It's a special time of year when everything, and everybody, goes haywire.  People stop behaving like people.  Animals don't act like animals.

    What generally happens is college boys climb walls of buildings which house college girls.  Bulls unlock tailgates of cattle trucks and mingle with cars on freeways.  Dogs, instead of cats, are found — generally by some enterprising newspaper photographer who just happened to be in the neighborhood — stuck up in trees.

    Then there's the parrot who wins first prize at the community art festival with its surrealistic beak paintings, and the horse who divulges — after 15 years of muteness — that he's a whiz at mathematics.

    Traditionally, this season crowds into the calendar with early spring.

    And inevitably, the strange goings-on involve animals. except in the case of the college boys and girls, who just act that way.

     But here we are in the dead of winter, barely into 1960, and it's obvious that the season is on us.

    From the assorted daily newspapers on my desk yesterday, I learned that a French poodle named Mozart tossed himself a birthday party in Birmingham, Ala., inviting other pure poodles who arrived in chauffeur-driven limousines, wearing mink coats, wing collars and jewels.

    In Sacramento, two young men were fined $150 and barred from city parks for three years after breaking into the municipality's zoo and lynching an alligator.

    In London, a psychiatrist reported the case of a 65-year-old client who, for the past year and a half, has been barking like a dog every 10 minutes on the hour.

    The psychiatrist stated that his client's bark was so loud that it could be heard at a range of several hundred yards, and attributed the man's ailment to the fact that he was left-handed, but in his youth had been forced to write right-handed by a teacher, who, like Dr. Alvarez, didn't dig that psychology nonsense.

    There's more.  A 50-pound bear named Booboo became the object of a citywide search in Milwaukee after a prominent business executive's wife wouldn't believe his story that he'd seen a shaggy black bear honking an automobile horn impatiently outside of a cocktail lounge on New Year's morning.

    These stories may appeal to some January newspaper readers, but my feeling is that they don't belong.  There's a time and place for everything, and "silly season" stories don't fit into my winter scheme of things.

     So while there's still space, I'm going to bring you  a people story.  A serious one.  The kind that just could rock City Hall.

    It's about L.A. bureaucracy.   And it is about people.  Except that my point is somewhat weakened since the people are dog catchers, or, in the prim terminology of the civil service manuals, "animal inspectors."

    It concerns the complaint of one of them about a recent directive from the Board of Animal Regulation.  The directive states that no animal inspectors should wear their service revolvers (which all are issued) in the course of routine dog-catching.

    The directive adds that they should leave their weapons in the "locked glove compartments" of their trucks.

    The problem, according to the animal inspector who contacted me, is that most of the trucks' glove compartments have no locks, and some of the newer ones don't even have doors on them.

    "We dog catchers are responsible for our weapons," he told me.  "Yet we have to leave our trucks unattended a good part of the time while we're in pursuit on foot.

    "Consider how children are attracted to our vehicles," he added, "and the potential hazards become obvious."

    I checked with Duane Tuttle, executive officer of the Department of Animal Regulation, who confirmed that the board edict did use the term "locked glove compartments," which, he conceded, many trucks lacked.

    "But many of the inspectors get around the hazard by locking their revolvers in one of the empty animal compartments," he explained.

    However, directives being directives and their literal application being essential to success in government, Mr. Tuttle promised that he'd look in to the possibility of having the word "glove" deleted.

    And if that happens, I ought to get some recognition or award, even if it's only a can of Dr. Ross dog food.

Mash Notes and Comment

         
“Dear Mr. Coates:

          “It is again our privilege to have a dance date for the purpose of raising funds for the ‘March of Dimes’ Saturday evening, Jan. 23.

          “We were unfortunate in having you at our last year’s date and we trust you will be free to attend as our guest this year.”

(signed) Gertrude Moss and Perry Minetti, Circle J Ranch, Newhall.

          –I’m free, but if that’s the way you feel about it, I’m not coming.

::

          “Coatsy-

          “What happened, old man?

          “I been watching you on TV for a long, long time now but lately, mister, you’re going downhill.

    “Not your programs.  I got no complaint against them.

          “I’m talking about YOU!

          “Your face.  Those bags under your eyes.  What happened?  No sleep?

          “And that five o’clock shadow on your chin and lack of it above your forehead.

          “It even looks to me like your ears are bigger these days, but maybe you’re just getting your hair (what’s left of it) trimmed a little closer.

          “And come on, Coatsy, those droopy shoulders.  What’s so hard about sitting up straight?

          “And that perpetual sneer, can’t your make-up man do something about that!

          “I’m sorry that I have to be the one to tell you, buddy, but somebody should.  You’re a REAL MESS.)

          (signed) Sammy J., El Monte.

          –You think I look bad.  You should see Hal Humphrey without his glasses.

::

          “to Paul

          “I took six people to Bayshore Hiway tonite in my taxi.  I had half a turkey in my back seat and some roast beef that a resterant friend of mine gave me.

          “My custermers were going to get a gal. of wine and on the trip they ate up the turkey and the roast beef.  They stopped and got a gal. of wine to wash it down Paul.  I helped them with the wine.

This Cabby Has a Real Beef

          “One of them says Parkey friend, hold my wrist watch and I will pay you next week.  I said keep it I might get loaded myself and sell it.

          “The taxi trip cost me one half turkey and the roast beef and Im stuck for the ride.

          “People talk about Tortilla Flats, Paul.  They should know my friends!!!”

          (signed) Parkey Sharkey, 2077 Bay Road, Palo Alto.

          –They’re not really your friends, Parkey.  The
y’re just using you.

::

          (PRESS RELEASE) “CONFIDENTIAL KUDOS  . . . THE NEW YORK TIMES last week backed up the item appearing in a previous ‘CONFIDENTIAL MEMO’ that the Birth Control issue in the current Presidential hassle is being used, especially in the South, against Se. John Kennedy.

          “And, do you recall that we wrote weeks ago that Adlai Stevenson would shortly become a strong candidate for the nomination?

          “Don’t want to brag, but . . . “

          (signed) Confidential Magazine, New York City.

          –Oh go ahead.  It took real guts to go out on the limb like that.

Story of Little Indian Boy's Broken Heart

    (From the files of The Mirror News, Oct. 19, 1959.)  The raging Angeles Forest fire claimed a second life today.  Philip Chavez, 27, an Indian firefighter from Zuni, N.M., died in Glendale Sanitarium, where he was taken after being overcome by smoke on the fire line last night.

    "My hobby," Danny Davey told me, "is saving the lives of Indians.  Some people collect stamps.  Some people make model airplanes.  I try to save Indians.

    "There's no gimmick to me," he added.  "That's just what I do.  I got the idea in World War II, when I was in South Pacific.  I was in a real tough spot and I told God that if he'd save my life, I'd save other people's lives . . . "

    Davey was calling from his home in Santa Ana.

    "But that's just sort of to let you know what I do," he explained, "and how I happened to run into the wife of Philip Chavez.
   
     "My friend, Pat Patterson, and I stopped in a little cafe in Gallup, New Mexico.  We'd been delivering Christmas packages to the Hopis and the Navajos.  This year we had 40 tons of gifts — blankets, milk, wardrobe trunks, toys — to deliver.

    "It was two days after Christmas and I saw this sad Indian lady sitting across the counter from us so I started to talk to her  . . .

    "Well, when I started questioning her, she told me that her husband was one of the two Indians who were killed last October fighting the fire above La Canada.  She works in Gallup now.

    "Her trouble," Davey went on, "is with her son, who's three years old.  The boy is dying.  That's what the doctor tells her.  And nobody can cure him.  He just gets weaker and weaker."

    Davey sighed.  "The boy is dying from lonesomeness."

    "From lonesomeness?"  I said.

    "That's what she said," he continued, "and I believe her.  The boy has lost eight pounds since his father was killed.

    "Then he gets excited.  He saw his father leave to fight the fire in an airplane and he keeps expecting him to come back in one.  Mrs. Chavez — her first name is Ella — keeps taking the boy to the doctor but nothing seems to help.

    "On Christmas Day, she did what the doctor told her to.  She took all her husband's pictures down and put them away where the boy couldn't see them.  She hid everything that might remind him of his father.

    "But even that," Davey added, "doesn't seem to help.

     "I believe her story," he repeated.  "She said the boy and his father were as close as any human beings could be.  Other people in the cafe said it was true, too.  That the little Indian boy was dying from a broken heart."

    I reminded Davey that the call was long distance, that he was spending a lot of money to tell me about it.

    "That's all right," he answered.  "I've got a regular job — with United Parcel.  I'll run up a bill a foot long if you'll write something that'll help."

    "How," I said, "could I write something that'll help?"

    "Well," he replied, "maybe some of the towns that the Indian firefighters saved from burning would do something for the little boy if they knew about it.

    "Or," he added after a pause, "just by letting people know the suffering that's caused by these fires, maybe they'd be more careful."