Tijuana Exile Hopes

This is a
further report on Roy Huerta, separated for the last 10 years from his
beloved wife, Manuela, and their six children. Roy, 39, is a cook at a
restaurant on Sunset Blvd. and lives with a brother on the North Side.
His family lives in Tijuana.

Their enforced separation dates to
1949. They were living in Los Angeles. One day they took a trip to
Tijuana. Returning, Manuela panicked and gave conflicting answers at
the border and was detained. Born in Mexico, she speaks little English.
She was later convicted of perjury and deported.

The frustrating case was first reported here Sept 13, 1957.

Three weeks ago a reader, Mrs. William Rosenblatt,
wrote that since it was related here the story had disturbed her and
she wondered if there had been any development. I got hold of Roy and
he said the situation was unchanged, which was told here.

However, Francis H. Ohswaldt, deputy district director of immigration, saw the column and phoned.

IT APPEARED
to him that the family could be reunited under Public Law 85-316, in
effect since Sept. 11, 1957. The law provides that an alien spouse or
child of a U.S. citizen shall be issued a visa under certain
conditions, which Manuela apparently can meet.

The sad thing, he
said, was that Roy and his wife didn't know that they probably have
been eligible for this relief for more than a year. he was put in touch
with Roy and he has alerted immigration officials at the border to
expedite the case.

"Perhaps," Ohswaldt said, "immigration people won't be considered the ogres they are sometimes painted."

LAST WEEKEND when
Roy went to Tijuana he took along his birth certificate and Army
discharge — necessary to prove his American citizenship. Monday
Manuela went to the American consul there and filled out an application
for a visa.

If investigation shows that the requirements have
been met under the law, the Huerta family should be together in six
weeks or two months.

"Gosh," Roy said yesterday. "I guess I better start looking for a house to rent for my six kids."

It's nice to be able to print a story with a happy ending.

::

YOU DON'T HEAR about it, but the six-year truce between the Communist North Koreans and the U.N. still presents uneasy moments.

Ed Fleming of KNXT
spent several days at Panmunjom on his recent swing around the Orient
and learned that incidents keep cropping up that require meetings
between the opposing forces.

One time last winter Communist
soldiers threw snowballs at Americans patrolling the border. And you
know what those nasty Americans did? They returned the fire, only they
allegedly put rocks in their snowballs.  The North Koreans charged this
was a violation of the armistice.

More recently they complained
U.N. soldiers were throwing orange peels across the line and went
through the ridiculous motion of charging another violation.

::

ONLY IN L.A. — A lady called Aunt Hallie came up to photog
Bob Martin at a family gathering and said she'd like to show him some
pictures. She brought out a leather-bound book with the gold letters
"S.O.G. with P.I.P." on the cover. Meant "Silly Old Grandmother with
Pictures in Purse." she explained to baffled Bob … One of the girls
in classified took an ad from a man wishing to sell a sorrel mare, some
black Angus calves and some "wiener" pigs. In the nick of time it was
corrected to "weaner."

::

AT RANDOM — Tom Cracraft
puts stickers on his letters with the slogan, "Get the lead out of your
gas. Stop smog!" … Cosmopolitan for May is one great big paean to
California, mostly this area. Meanwhile, back among the natives here,
the heckling continues … No truth in the rumor, Martin Ragaway says,
that Cadillac dealers are raffling off a hospital … Descriptive line
by barkeep Jose Sanchez: "She's the type that orders caffeine-free
coffee laced with cognac."

Money Troubles

The
bitter warfare between those who owe money and those who are trying to
collect it goes on and on, with extracurricular activity here and there.

A
mother received a call recently from a woman who said she was with an
advertising agency, which she named. Her son, she was told, had won a
two-week trip to Honolulu. If the mother would furnish his address the
tickets would be given to him.

The mother said he had
been unemployed but had gotten a new job out of town and didn't know if
he would be able to make the trip. The caller said the tickets or the
equivalent in cash were his anyway, but had to be presented personally. 

A
meeting was arranged at their home, and the young man drove down from
Fresno for his prize — only to have his car snatched. Seemed all this
was a ruse. There is no such advertising agency. The address is a loan
firm. The young man was several weeks behind on the monthly payment on
the car.

So, sadder and wiser but not happier, he took the bus back to Fresno.

::

ONLY IN L.A.
— Adam W. Truty took an elderly friend into a deluxe saloon. He
ordered beer, his friend ordered coffee. The beer was 45 cents, the
coffee 25. High. They didn't complain, but another elderly customer
did, delivering an eloquent lecture on ethics. The bartender snapped,
"You're 86! No more drinks for you!"

Whereupon Adam's friend jumped up and said to his new-found advocate. "Are you 86? You don't look it! I'm 86, too!"

::

NO DISCOVERER, I

So they can't find the cap from that nose cone?

Now I feel somewhat less of a boob

When I can't, though I look all over,

Find the cap from my toothpaste tube.

— RICHARD ARMOUR

::

LET'S FACE IT,
North Young, Malibu artist, has a talent for eliciting secrets from the
most reticent of his rather odd friends. One of them, a cemetery
caretaker named Moss O'Learn, last week confided this tale:

When
James Watt, the famous inventor, died, a large box was found among his
effects. There was no clue to its contents, only a warning in Watt's
handwriting that it was not to be opened until 1959.

 On
Jan. 1 of this year the box was opened and found to contain 300 dahlia
tubers, each wrapped in tissue and all in excellent condition. With
them was a note asking that the corms be planted all around his grave.
Relatives sent the box to Moss O'Leam, who planted them.

That
very night people passing the cemetery were astonished to see the
inventor's headstone bathed in light although there was no artificial
illumination in the vicinity.

"How do you account for the phenomenon?" the caretaker was asked.

"No phenomenon at all," he replied, "just those danged 300 Watt bulbs."

::

REMEMBER
the Finn twins, George and Charles, who have been at war with the
government for six years over possession of an Army surplus plane and
who have a penchant for making citizen's arrests?

Well,
George has asked Atty. James F. Bolger to incorporate a Citizens'
Committee to Make Arrests Police Refuse to Make. The idea is to
indoctrinate citizens regarding their legal rights.

Things are likely to liven up any week now.

::

AT RANDOM —
E.N. Brandt, fiction editor of the S. E. Post, was in town briefly,
trying to lure local writers into the short-story fold. Said there's a
shortage. Of course, he meant the Post type of story. He also revealed
that the Post pays 50% more for a short story than for an article
…speaking of which, the new Erle Stanley Gardner serial in the week's
Post has an L.A. locale.

Stop the Music

In the event
you hadn't heard, music is broadcast over the City Hall loudspeaker
system. Maybe not the best music, but music. Now an anonymous city
employee asks bitterly, "Why must we be submitted to this torture?"

In
a letter to councilmen and other city officials this disenchanted
person writes, "We are not workers doing monotonously routine and
repetitive tasks during which music would be welcome relief. We are not
patients in an asylum who must have music as therapy to rouse us from
our stupor or to calm us in our frenzy. We are not sitting in doctors'
offices to be soothed while we contemplate our ills and bills; nor are
we in some secluded rendezvous whiling away the time. We are in the
City Hall, eight hours a day, trying to do a day's work without
distraction."

THE DISSENTER goes on, "Should you enter
our beautiful rotunda you are apt to be greeted with the strains of
'Embraceable You' or 'I Don't Want to Walk Without You, Baby' or 'It's
Been a Long, Long Time.' This is dignity in the City Hall?"

No, and come to think of it, dignity is pretty hard to find anywhere else in the joint.

::

WHEN SHE arrived home after buying a few secondhand children's books at Westwood Elementary School's PTA luau, Mrs. Austin Kalish
noticed what appeared to be a bookmark in one of them. A closer look
revealed it was a piece of notebook paper on which was scrawled, "Be
sure and beat up Ronnie in the morning."

::

WARNING SIGNAL

No matter when I enter a yellow
Behind me comes some other fellow.

– KENNETH H. BONNELL

::

A MAN I KNOW
is on one of those starvation diets designed to remove excess weight in
a hurry. He took off eight pounds the first three days, 15 in two
weeks. He simply doesn't eat. Instead he takes with him wherever he
goes a thermos bottle containing a mixture of orange juice, milk, raw
eggs and salad oil, and several times a day gulps a slug.

On the
way home the other day he stopped at a friend's house and after a while
looked at his watch, waved his empty thermos and said despairingly,
"I've got to go. I'm hungry. It's time for my 3 o'clock feeding."

::

QUOTE & UNQUOTE
— An expensively dressed middle-aged man leaving an Arcadia restaurant
was overheard saying to his companion, "Oh well, another day, another
23 cents after taxes!"… Lady named Hilda, turning off a rock and roll
program, commented, "If only they didn't sing them as if they were
sacred hymns."

::

OFFHAND, anyone would say that Webster's unabridged is above and beyond slang. Which makes all the more interesting Frances Hov's discovery that on Page 955 the word fishify is defined as "to change to fish; to make like a fish."

::

AT RANDOM —
Oops, the student-printed program for the play "Detective Story"
presented by the L.A. City College theater arts department noted that
the cast was "directly supervised and assisted by the Faulty Staff."
The faculty is laughing … Understand a man inToluca Lake bought a Scoutarama ticket for $1 from a Boy Scout, then tried to turn it in on some mints when a Girl Scout came to the door … Photog
John Gaines saw a bunch of colleagues as he went into the Redwood House
and said, "Give all those fellows a drink and gave the religion editor
a glass of water and let him perform a miracle" … Received a
five-page press release from Philadelphia dedicated to the proposition
that diapers are more important than you think. Sometimes a person in
the business gets the feeling that it won't be long now.