Election Gripe

Ted Austin is unhappy about next Tuesday's municipal election.

He
doesn't think truth and justice will be served by closing the bars that
day, thereby depriving thousands of deserving bartenders of a day's pay
merely to provide an opportunity for people to vote on a handful of
candidates and issues in which they don't seem particularly interested.

It
is a rather silly, anachronistic ordinance, but in the interest of
truth and justice, which prevail mightily here, it should be observed
that Ted Austin is a bartender.

IT HAS BEEN a fatal fortnight for well-known old-time L.A. detectives — Eddie Romero, Dwight Longuevan,
Bert Wallis and Frank L. (Lefty) James. Lefty was born Jan. 4, 1890, on
Yale St. about a mile from the Civic Center, where he carved out a
memorable career as a tough but human cop.

By arrangement, Lefty
phoned his wife, Bobbie, every day at 9 a.m. They lived apart but were
friendly. When he didn't call Tuesday she tried to reach him. She
couldn't and notified the manager of the apartment. Lefty was found
dead of a heart attack which apparently struck while he was preparing
coffee.

Only a few weeks ago Lefty turned over to agent Lou Irwin his completed autobiography, "Crime Shouldn't Pay," now his obituary.

WHEN DON Demeter came to bat last Sunday a Dodger fan shouted, "OK, Don, let's play screeno!"
A few seconds later Don blasted a homer over the left-field screen. The
fan stood up and, Malvin Wald reports, announced ecstatically, "He got
the message! He got the message!"

WE'VE HAD IT
The time has come to lower the gavel
And silence the phrase
"Have Something,
Will Travel,"
–HELEN MITCHELL

IN THE RATHER macabre filling station version, the way Maurice Ogden tells it, an attendant was probing for the oil stick of a Belchfire Eight when the raised hood suddenly dropped, decapitating him.

"Ah," sagely commented a passing philosopher, observing the head, "a filling man's thinker!"*

IT APPEARS that
John Grover turned over a hornet's nest about conflicting views on
education titled "Notes on Parental Functions." Most of the hornets
were friendly but the dilemma remains.

One mother writes:

"I
would like to ask these 'objecting' educators what is a parent to do
when a child asks, 'How do you spell book?' Should I say, 'I won't tell
you, you should not ask questions like that, it isn't normal, just go
out and play'? So she asks her father and he says the same thing. So
she goes underground and asks a neighbor and learns it in spite of me.
Is that better? Because it's for sure that when she wants to know
something she's going to find out one way or another."

BY COINCIDENCE the preceding is a prelude to notes that two sixth-graders named Cindy and Lea wrote each other and the red-faced mother of one of them happened to see.

First note: "I have know book."

Second note: "What do you wanted to no how to spell?"

AT RANDOM — There's a big squawk emanating from the area around Van Nuys
Airport. Residents say the north-south streets are such a maze of
excavations and detours that they can hardly find their way home …
LedLiringis heard it on KMPC : "About twice a year we hold our annual
spring clearance sale" … Pete the Waiter, the language purist, scoffs
at collectors of such cliches as "do hereby" and "shark-infested
waters." Much more offensive, he contends, is "gives lip service" …
Man on the telephone says he heard a record titled "Chavez Ravine" on XERB, Rosarito Beach, all about the recent episode here … Walt Hackett's solution: The Dodgers need a smaller park. These huge crowds scare 'em after dark.

* This is a play on the ad slogan: "A thinking man's filter."

Guardian of the Law

On a
recent Saturday about 2 p.m. Mrs. Joan Wheeler, 21, six months
pregnant, began having pains. Her husband Ernest, 27, phoned the
doctor, who said to take her to the hospital immediately and he would
meet them there.

The husband put a robe around his wife, carried
her to the car and headed for the West Valley Community Hospital, about
three miles from their home in VanNuys.

He drove fast, he
admits, but stopped for all the signals against him. Incidentally, he
drives between 35,000 and 40,000 miles a year on his job.

About
halfway there a motorcycle officer pulled him over. Wheeler said it was
an emergency. He indicated his wife, lying on the front, seat, bleeding
badly.

THE OFFICER said profanely that it was no excuse
for speeding. Wheeler asked him to escort them to the hospital and he
could write them up there.

When they reached the hospital the
officer wanted to write the citation before Mrs. Wheeler was admitted.
Then, Wheeler says, the officer followed him inside and prevented him
briefly from seeing his wife. Finally a hospital attache made him wait
outside.

Perhaps the officer was not to blame. It seems to be
rigid LAPD procedure that writing a traffic ticket must come ahead of
everything.

Wheeler, outraged, pleaded not guilty and asked for a jury trial.

When the case came up in Van Nuys court last Thursday the officer said Wheeler had been traveling 65 m.p.h on Balboa Blvd. between Victory and Burbank Blvds. He admitted traffic normally went 45 although it was posted 35.

Wheeler,
armed with the hospital records, backed by his employer, had no
opportunity to tell his side of the story to the jury, which included
eight women. After the officer's testimony the prosecutor chatted
briefly with the judge, who dismissed the case.

The outcome was irrelevant anyway. Mrs. Wheeler lost her baby and is still recovering from the ordeal.

::

ONLY IN L.A. — Everyone who caters to the whims of blue jays
thinks he has the craziest one in town. Comes now a lady named Hilda
who reports the clown in her back yard buries bits of bread in a mound
of Red Star fertilizer, and when they're too hard to eat when he digs
them up he dunks them in a water dish.

::

WISH YOU WEREN'T HERE

If egos weren't so strong,
Meetings wouldn't be for as long.

-GLADYS FOREMAN

::

 A MAN WHO
last week turned in his large, heavy, expensive Detroit made car on a
sleek little foreign job has already noticed a big psychological
difference. Twice in the last few days other drivers have asked for
help. One called out. "Hey, buddy, how far is Western Ave.?" Never
happened when he sat, a man apart, in the big car.

::

A TROUBLED
young man threatened to leap off the 12-story Broadway Arcade Building
last week, you may remember, and when he didn't some of the nearly
3,000 persons assembled below taunted him by yelling "Jump!" and when
he didn't called him "Chicken!"

It was morbid, all right, but
Mario Corona defends the crowd. This is an impatient age. People,
conditioned by the shoot-em-up guys on TV, want action. And here was
this youth up there on the building, stalling. What was he trying to
do, waste their time?

::

MISCELLANY
— Recommended reading: Peter Ustinov's short story, "The Aftertaste,"
in the May Atlantic. Which prompts the question: How can one man have
so much talent? … Reporter Jimmy Wilson didn't know whether he should
be prepared for a boy or girl so hecross-filed — got some of each. The
big event happened over the week end. "Anybody want to buy a box of
'It's a girl!' cigars?" he asks … Suggested slogan for an
extermination firm: Is this thrip necessary?