His Is a Good Job

Last November, Frank Frohnhoefer’s
daughter Francine wanted something different to "share" at school, so
Frank, who did 27 months as an infantryman in the South Pacific during
WWII, went through his mementos and found some coins and bills from
Noumea, Fiji, New Guinea and the Philippines.

To his surprise
he found nothing from Tonga, where he went one time as a gunner on a
ship. So he wrote the Tonga treasury department, enclosed a $1 bill.

He has just received two four shilling notes of Tongan currency with a polite, friendly letter on official stationery from D.G. Urutian, assistant treasurer, Nuku’alofa, Tonga. And he has noticed a curious thing. The same signature is on the currency.

Clearly, things are very informal in Tonga.

WHILE DRIVING on La Cienega Blvd., Bob Bowden saw a car cut across the center line and crash into a car traveling in the opposite direction. He shuddered and went on.

Three days later he happened to go into a fabrics store on La Cienega
and, to his amazement, heard a salesman describing the accident to an
insurance adjuster. The salesman, whose car was hit, said despairingly
he had moved his car from the point of impact to permit traffic to pass
and now the other driver was claiming he had caused the accident. In
the absence of witnesses, things looked bad.

Bob introduced himself, said he’d seen the accident and offered to be a witness. Astounded, the salesman said:

"It’s a miracle."

JOY THROUGH FASTING
There is a destiny that shapes our ends
A dietary goddess in control
Should we be broke she doughnuts us and mends
Cholesterolic tendencies of soul
Our vitamins of Hershey bars she spends
Our careless nickels alimentary whole.
— R.W.A.

A
Hollywood writer decided recently he’d had all he could take of banging
out cliche-ridden TV scripts. Full of resolve, he put his television
money into a little bookstore which, he figured, would support him
while he worked on a long-neglected novel. But things haven’t been
going well, and he’s back writing TV scripts to keep the bookstore
going.

THE WEEK’S
most unsettling piece of reading is easily Time magazine’s report on
the telephone (245 million phone conversations daily in the nation) and
particularly an engineer’s dream of the phone of the future:

"Whenever a baby is born anywhere in the world, he is given a telephone number for life. As soon as he can talk, he is given a watchlike
device with 10 little buttons on one side and a screen on the other.
When he wishes to talk with anyone in the world, he will pull out the
device and punch on the keys the number. Then turning the device over,
he will hear the voice of his friend and see his face on the screen, in
color and in three dimensions. If he does not see him and hear him, he
will know that his friend is dead."

Gulp!

FOOTNOTES– Fannie
Hurst, in town for the opening of the movie "Imitation of Life" based
on her book, brought along her two Yorkshire terriers. Their names:
LilyPutian and Calla Lily . . . Since a geologist declared it unsafe,
you’d be surprised how many people driving north on Pacific Coast
Highway along the Santa Monica slide area hug the center lane . . . If
you see Roger Beck, duck. He remarks that he appeared on "Traffic
Court," then says, "And you know what happened to me on the way home
from the studio?" You say, "A ticket?" "No, I got a pizza," he says
anticlimactically. "I was hungry" . . . There’s a big hassle in Boston
over naughty girls. Someone dug up a 260-year-old law which prohibits
police from arresting prostitutes in public places unless they’ve been
under surveillance for three months. No problem like that here.

She Stood in Bed

They said it
couldn’t be done, but it was to a lady who lives in a large apartment
house in midtown L.A. She turned over in bed around 1 a.m. and the bed,
installed a few days before, folded with a whoosh into the wall,
jamming her tightly, upside down, with her face full of pillow. Fearing
suffocation, naturally she panicked.

She managed to work an
arm loose and banged on the floor. The people in the apartment below
her heard and indignantly banged back. When the pounding continued they
called the manager, who rescued her. She was trapped for an agonizing
half-hour and suffered a wrenched neck.

"Chicks like easygoing, smooth cats, somebody who’s been around."

Opal Wise of the
Central Insurance Agency, who handled the claim, said it was the first
one on record. Investigation disclosed faulty installation, not the bed
itself, was the cause.

The loss of dignity was bad enough, but
what tortured the victim more was the reaction of the ambulance and
emergency hospital attendants when they learned what had happened. They
laughed.

CARAMBA! Cathie Walls, 6, of Wilmington, announced on returning home from school that she could count to 5 in Spanish and she did: "uno, dos, tres, pot roast, cinco" . . . Steve Levy, 12, excitedly informed his mother a new boy named Ramon Porfavor, who couldn’t speak English, had entered his class at Crozier
Junior High. She said that was an odd name and he said, "Well, when the
teacher told him where to sit she said, ‘Over here, Ramon,por favor.’" The boy is really Ramon Diaz. 

UNTRUE TO FORM
A rich contract for acting half nude
Proved to be the lady’s nemesis.
What prominence to her had accrued
Had been built on false premises.
— MATTIE RAE

ONLY IN L.A.– A
woman in the Goodwill Industries store on S Broadway pawed through a
basket of eyeglasses and finally selected dark harlequins set with
rhinestones. She held them up, tried them on, then asked, "You sure
these aren’t medicated?" After a puzzled moment the clerk caught on and
assured her they were plain glass, not prescription ground.

THERE’S QUITE a story about Dorothy M. Johnson, who wrote "The Hanging Tree," on which the movie is based.

Miss
Johnson, 53, is a journalism prof at Montana State University,
secretary of the Montana State Press Assn. and editor of several
newsletters. When not busy at these jobs she hunts down old-timers from
whose campfire stories she has evolved many of her raw, fiercely
written frontier tales. Several are unforgettable, particularly "Lost
Sister," included in her paperback collection.

Ironically, Miss Johnson broke into print with a book titled "Beulah Bunny Tells All."

FORTUNATELY there’s a limit to town-naming gags, and we’ve about reached it.

N.O. Greer cooked up these: Wehav, No. Car.; Woeis, Me.; Young, Miss., and Hangoutha, Wash.

Judi Stone is responsible for Aga, Conn.; Koko, Mo.; Wait, N.C.; Wassamatta, Pa., and Youlgetitintha, Ind.

Jack Foyle’s best are You, S.C. and Casanoh, Va.

Raul Rodriguez must take the blame for Shapely, Calif.; Fatted, Calif.; Ifonly, Ida.; Brilliant, Colo.; Income, Tex., and Happy, N.D.

LOOSE ENDS — Anybody knows S. Cooper, retired Navy officer, Annapolis class of ’14? Al Hagerman
chief engineer at Shrine Auditorium, found his class ring in a pipe
conduit tunnel under the place . . . Daniel Boone (of Bank of America)
talked to David Crockett (of Lincoln Savings) the other day about the
1959 Heart Fund campaign . . . Sudden thought by Bill Weaver onKNX . If
Ed Murrow lined up Drew Pearson and Bishop Sheen, he could bill his
program as Pearson to Parson on Person to Person . . . Nick B.
Williams, Times editor, getsMoideled today at a slings and arrows lunch. Probably even be disclosed that the B stands for Boddie.