The Case of Judge Pfaff

This was the week of Superior Court Judge Roger Alton Pfaff’s great disillusionment.

On
receiving what he considered an unjustified speeding citation (45 in a
25) he said angrily, "In 12 years on the bench I’ve been accepting the
word of police officers. Now I’m shocked that any of them would so
falsify a citation."

He insisted he was going between 30 and
35 when he passed the police car. He announced he will plead not guilty
when he appears in traffic court Monday.

The officers, Gerald Jackson and Terry Lewis, insist it was just another ticket and they called it as they saw it.

Meanwhile, back among the common people, the affair was viewed as high comedy.

WHEN HE SAT in traffic court, Judge Pfaff
earned a reputation for severity. It was said of him that he would
sentence his mother to jail if the evidence showed she was guilty.

Now
some motorists whose wings he clipped are bubbling with delight. They
came away from his court feeling they’d been unfairly two-timed — by
the gendarmes and by the judge.

The way things are going this could be the ticket that launched a thousand quips.

One reader insists the trial should be held in the Coliseum and motorists who feel they have been bum-rapped admitted free.

Another wonders if Judge Pfaff will sacrifice a day’s pay, as others must do, when he goes to trial.

Another
hopes that some kindly old motorist will take him for a long walk and
tell him the facts of life about traffic valentines.

Another
hopes that out of the case may come an awareness that the LAPD, under
the lash of the master, gives out too many tickets for minor offenses.

However, let us not stoop to one editorial writer’s paraphrased appraisal of the case — jug not that ye be not jugged.

MENTION HERE that the gyp artist who poses as a toaster repair man and makes off with expensive hotel bread browners is amok again reminded a fun-loving friend of the time a toaster almost broke up his happy home.

The
little lady complained that the darn thing wouldn’t pop out the toast
far enough, causing it to burn. Inspired, he prevailed upon a repair
man to put an extra strong spring in it. When she tried it the toast
hit the ceiling.

He thought this was very funny but she
didn’t. And when she took the toaster back to the repair man for
adjustment the blabbermouth said her husband ordered it that way. So,
the doghouse.

WELL WE LOST another
one. A note signed Texas Tom states, "This town is no good. Even the
bums here are no good. L.A. has more bums in high and low places than
anywhere else. I’m going back to Texas."

Betcha our brand of muscatel is better than your brand of muscatel.

DIFFERENT VERSION
It takes a lot of living
To make a house to suit,
Yup, it takes a lot of living
Plus an awful lot of loot.
— TERRI MCDANIEL

TRAFFIC DETAIL — Those five car-pool fellows, young exec types, who play cards in the back of a Volkswagen Microbus,
were at it again on Whittier Boulevard the other morning en route to
work . . . An ABC-TV exec is glad the legislature revised the vehicle
code number for drunken driving. He had extension 502 and took some
teasing.

FOOTNOTES — A Hollywoodian
got a call the other night asking if he’d watched a certain TV program.
He said he had, briefly, then turned it off. And then he wanted to know
how the caller had gotten his unlisted phone number. The battle still
rages . . . People in East L.A. find it appropriate that Lou Costello
will be buried in Calvary Cemetery in their area. His Junior Foundation
on E Olympic Boulevard is a landmark to his philanthropy . . . A
onetime high-bracket movie star was seen at the $2 show window at Santa
Anita and Walt Hackett couldn’t help observing, "That’s show business."   

Lost Chords

A PTA meeting at Center Avenue Elementary School in Inglewood opened
Tuesday with a salute to the flag, after which the audience remained
hushed as a Girl Scout choral group assembled for a song and the
accompanist approached the baby grand piano.

The accompanist raised the keyboard cover. She lifted the movable music rack. A puzzled expression came over her face.

She tried them again, then crouched and peered underneath, then into
the instrument. She was no longer merely puzzled, she was baffled, even
desperate.

At this point Principal Irene Hoban went to the rescue and, amid laughter from the many community youth groups present, joined in the search.

In a moment Miss Hoban announced that some men scheduled to give
the auditorium a much-needed renovation had apparently started the job
that afternoon without her knowledge, by removing the piano keys.

But all went well nevertheless. The choral group sang without
accompaniment and the proceedings were graced throughout with a nice
light tone.

ANYONE WHO has visited General Hospital knows about the
colored lines on the floors and sidewalks which help people find their
way from one section to another.

The other day staff members at the City Health Department’s new center at 2032 N Marengo
Street, a short distance from the hospital, were surprised to see
several persons dodging traffic in the middle of the street. They
turned out to be patients instructed to follow a line from the main
hospital to the children’s unit. Somehow they’d gotten off the line and
onto the center white line. They were retrieved in the nick of time or
doubtless they would be hiking out Highway 66.

CORRECTION
He who hesitates is lost,
They taught me that in school.
But that is wrong I learned today-
They hadn’t filled the pool.
G. C. McHose

WHEN HE WAS 16, Steve Allen writes in Look, he bummed around the country and learned what hunger and poverty meant.

"I remember walking along a road in California one day and finding a
half-empty can of beans by the side of the road. I picked it up but was
disappointed to see that it was crawling with ants. Within seconds I
had shaken and blown the ants out of the can and finished the beans."

A
remarkably forthright statement from a man in a realm where everyone is
supposed to have a fairy godmother arranging his life.

BANK NOTES — Two
women met in a Sunset Boulevard bank and Frank Barron heard one say,
"Isn’t it funny, the only time I ever see you lately is either here or
at the drugstore." "Yeah," the other said wryly, "every time I make a
withdrawal I get sick" . . .  A woman cashing a check in a Westwood
Village bank asked for new $1 bills. The teller told her she didn’t
have 25 new ones but could give her new fives. "Oh no," the woman said,
"then I’d have to take dirty bills in change somewhere else."

AROUND TOWN–
Larry Brown of the SC golf team misfired a ball over the fence at
Wilshire Country Club and was looking forlornly at it when an officer
in a patrol car came along Beverly Boulevard, took in the situation,
stopped and tossed it over the fence. Yep, the long arm of the law . .
. As anyone could have guessed, votes against the death penalty in this
paper’s poll on capital punishment have been received from rogues
signing Caryl Chessman, Harvey Glatman , Stephen Nash and Elizabeth
Duncan . . . Anyone else notice that the newspaper photos of the
collapsing Vanderbilt Apartments, 334 S Figueroa St., showed a scrawled
"Z for Zorro" on it? . . . The magazine Thy Kingdom Come, which
circulates among flying saucer groups, has the slogan "Be active today
or radioactive tomorrow" . . . A mortuary ad in El Pueblo offers a
"courtesy discount" to city employees.