Case of the Glass Dogs

As always, last week’s phenomenon becomes an ordinary event this week.

Remember the piece here about the Irish settler seen gnawing away at the glass window of a parked car in Coronado?

Let Lucile McNeil of Independence, Cal., tell about her claustrophobic mongrel, Cappy.

One time in Salt Lake City she left Cappy, a girl dog, in the car while she and her husband went to a theater. Half an hour later Cappy was in the theater looking for them. There was a jagged hole in the window Lucile had left lowered for ventilation.

Six months later in Lone Pine Cappy, who hated containment, did it again.

Two
years later while having lunch with a friend in a Pomona restaurant the
dog came into their booth. Refused admittance at the front door, Cappy had gone around to the the rear and come in through the kitchen. 

In all cases Cappy had cut her mouth but didn’t swallow the glass.

WHILE IN
New York last week attending the National Book Awards, Rex Barley was
introduced to a distinguished literary critic who asked superciliously,
"Do people really read books in Los Angeles?"

Rex thought he
was kidding but he went on, "I know they read about yoga and things
like that but do they actually ever read a serious book?"

Rex
walked away, shaken by the thought that the man has helped mold
literary opinion for 20 years. Los Angeles is second to New York in
book sales.

STRANGE SEASON
Confliction mars this season’s time:
While Spring implies we’ll be re-born
Stern income tax, with grimmer rhyme,
Retorts we’ll merely be re-shorn.
–WILLIAM BAFFA

AFTER A recent concert, violinist Mischa Elman was having a midnight supper with Irwin Parnes,
under whose auspices he will appear in Philharmonic Auditorium next
Saturday, when a young man came over to the table and said, "Mr. Elman, I’ve wanted to meet you for many years to thank you." 

He
related that when he was 10 his parents took him to a concert in his
home town, Fargo, N.D., and he became so inspired he took up the
violin. Lacking the talent for the concert stage, he said, he joined a
jazz group and had had a satisfying life in music. "I wanted you to
know," he concluded, "I owe it all to a concert I’m sure you have long
since forgotten."

"Oh, no," said Elman, now in his 80s, "I remember that Fargo concert very well. They paid me with a bad check."

THIS IS TO
advise city and county overseers that the natives are restless again
over proposed tax increases. To quote on of them: "How can they justify
a $5 auto tax in the face of their giveaways? This turnip is out of
blood. Where does the line form for the protest march?"

"THE SPACE AGE is beyond me," Sallie Fiske
says, "and when I read that scientists expect to recover and bring home
one of our satellites to the launching pad I wondered, will it have
‘Yankee, go home!’ on it?" No, probably just a busted nose cone.

FOOTNOTES — In his interview with Frank Evans on KRHM-FM George Shearing expressed admiration for Buddy DeFranco and mused, "If he made an album with Mort Sahl do you suppose it would be called ‘Buddy and Sahl’?"
. . . Coincidence note: There’s a David Crockett working at Disneyland
— on the caissons for the upcoming Matterhorn, Monorail and Submarine
rides . . . Doris Hellman gets piqued when she encounters the word
"razed" as in "Fire Razes Building." "Fire really lowers it," she says
slyly . . . Terri McDaniel observes: "People who live in glass houses
must spend a fortune on draw drapes" . . . It’s only a matter of time,
Frank Barron reasons, until a bearded musician tells a barber, "OK, now
let’s take it from the top" . . . Thought for the week: Imagine, vaporlock in mid-March!   

Mayor’s a Creek

That wasn’t smog around the City Hall the other day, it was a smoke signal denoting Mayor Poulson’s
induction into the Creek tribe. Their ceremony was intended to make
people aware of the 15,000 Indians in the L.A. area who are being
assimilated into normal society.

Take Creek Chief Wah-Nee-Ota,
for instance, who helped officiate. His other name is William McGuire.
He is 42, a musician and actor, married and has three daughters, wears
his hair in braids and has a wonderful sense of humor.

When he
came here from Muskogee, Okla., in 1937, he went out to Republic studio
hoping to get work in westerns. He noticed that sixNavahos with long
hair were always grabbed first by the casting director. The others were
on a next-best basis. He let his short hair grow, got some jobs and
hasn’t cut it since.

When Bill applied for membership in the musicians union — he plays the vibrola,
something like a guitar — he was given a questionnaire. To the
question "Do you speak any foreign languages?" he wrote, "Yes,
English." To the question, "Are you a citizen?" he wrote, "No." When
called before the board he explained that he is a member of the Indian
nation and technically his tribe still is at war with the United
States. No peace treaty has ever been signed.

WHENEVER POSSIBLE Bill tries to straighten people out on the matter of scalping. "We learned it from the white man," he explains.

When
the early settlers came from England they were paid a bounty for every
Indian body. Things became a little cluttered, and the king’s treasurer
announced he’d pay on the head, then the scalp.

When the live
Indians learned what was happening to the dead Indians they adopted
this supposedly sacred ritual of their very own. "It’s all in the
history books under ‘The Art of Scalping.’" Bill said.

How did he get along with Mayor Poulson? "We are blood brothers now," Chief Wah-Nee-Ota said stoically.

ONLY IN L.A. — The
girls in Classified are giggling again. A woman placed a for-sale ad
stating, "Boxer puppies, golden red fawn" — describing their color.
Three persons called wanting to buy the fawn.

THESE GHOULISH THINGS REMIND ME
Even funeral ads to my budget do cater,
The billboards encourage die now and pay later.
— M.L.G.

MONDAY at
9 a.m. a county crew arrived at the handsome, modern new courthouse in
Torrance to set the scene for the dedication ceremony scheduled for
10:30.

The men moved a portable platform on the front lawn,
put the bunting around it, attached the loudspeakers and set up about
200 folding chairs.

As the time approached the dignitaries took their places on the platform and the commoners found seats.

At 10:30 sharp the ceremony was called to order.

At 10:45, as the oratory shifted into overdrive, the automatic sprinklers went on, soaking the celebrities.

DURING a lesson in phonics, Dorothy Feist, 2nd grade teacher at Galt elementary school in Van Nuys,
gave the word "night" and asked the class to furnish similar sounding
words. One youngster said "sight." Randall Marco said "fight" —
emphasizing the first letter.

"And how do you start ‘fight’ "? she asked.

"With a gun," he replied.

MISCELLANY — As
might be expected, Mother’s Day gags about Elizabeth Duncan and Frankie
are circulating . . . A business associate phoned Bob Hope in Palm
Springs regarding his TV show tonight and the long distance operator
said, "Give him my love." When the Banning operator plugged in she
said, "Tell Mr. Hope to take care of himself." Such is the esteem in
which the man is held . . . June Street north of 1st should be a safe
place. Emmett C.McGaughey, police commission president, lives in the 100 block and Duncan Shaw, a member, in the 500 block.