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But things were not going well at the Sports Arena. According to The Attendance was dismal, with counts under 1,000 in three of the last Later in January, The Times’ Dan Hafner was more optimistic after a The record crowd was all of 4,003. By the 1970-71 season, the Stars had moved on to Salt Lake City. –Keith Thursby |
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Here’s a menu from the famous tearoom at Bullock’s Wilshire with a cover that shows a map of Los Angeles. Shrimp cocktail was 35 cents. Bidding starts at $9.99. |
Dogs, Diapers, Taxes Comes now that hiatus between cries, when the feverish race begins to clear away Christmas bets in time to pay for auto license renewals by Feb. 4 and then face up to income taxes in April."Any changes in the rules?" I asked a tax consultant.
"No important ones," he said, "but you might remind people that they may not claim deductions for dog licenses, traffic fines, baby-sitters, campaign contributions, diaper service, dues for social clubs or life insurance."
He went on, "Best rule of thumb to follow is that almost anything has to do with creating income is a legitimate business expense. If you go to San Francisco on business it’s deductible, but if you go there to see the bridges it isn’t. Not even Alcatraz."
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 FUN-LOVING Bob Crane of KNX has totaled his mileage for 1958 on what he calls the Greasy Spoon Circuit and comes up with a few pertinent observations about food. He did 270 personal appearances, traveling about 20,000 miles, mostly in this area.
Most popular meal, he supposes, was chicken with gravy, then roast beef with gravy. At a breakfast club in the San Fernando Valley, he swears he had corn flakes with gravy. At one place in San Diego he had Yankee pot roast, Southern style.
The reason he isn’t sure the most popular meal was chicken with gravy is that he frequently encountered an imponderable he calls only-the-cook-knows with gravy.
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LADY IN THE RAIN
The rain falls ever softly there
And glistens in her shining hair
How sad she seems: how cold, aloof
Perhaps I should repair the roof.
– GUY MULLEN
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 A HOLLYWOODIAN I know takes no sides in the dispute between the retail clerks and the owners of the 1,000 closed food markets, but he admits he feels pretty good about it. "I was a sneaky snacker," he said. "I would thoughtlessly load up on hot dogs, hamburgers, French fries and doughnuts."
He has lost 8 pounds since his favorite market closed.
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IN RESPONSE TO an inquiry, this is to report that the author of the basic prayer of Alcoholics Anonymous members is unknown. The classic prayer is, "God, grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference."
It was published in the 1950 Farmers Almanac and a similar version is credited to Reinhold Niebuhr, but the actual origin is unrecorded.
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 DATA, the Better Business Bureau weekly report, takes note of a formula devised by a San Francisco newspaperman to confuse and outwit phone-pitch pests.The intended victim deliberately misses the simple question put by the caller but is told he has won the consolation prize, "Just think — $35 worth of free dancing lessons!"
The sucker says he can’t accept it, he doesn’t deserve it. The pitchman insists and tells him how lucky he is.
"Tell you what," the chump says, "just send me the money instead."
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ONLY IN L.A.– Joe Cordero will agree that Tuesday was the day he should have stayed in bed. En route to his job downtown, his car stalled in a mud puddle on Vermont Avenue. He got a push. On the Harbor Freeway, it went dead — out of gas. He walked half a mile for some but the car still would not start. He went after more but still no go. A tow truck came along and he got another push. Tow bill for the day, $12.
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CONFIDENTIAL FILEWife Tells of Mate Who Died, and Lived BAKERSFIELD, Jan. 7 — Buried alive for hours and given up for dead, Leslie O. Stafford, a construction workman, was dramatically rescued today from the bottom of a 24-foot-deep collapsed cesspool.
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Yesterday I called the wife of the man who "came back" from his grave.
"Mrs. Stafford, how’s your husband now?" "They’ve still got him in the hospital and he’s still spitting up dirt — but that man, he’s going to be all right."
"That’s fine." "It’s like he’s always telling me. ‘I’m too young to die.’ I guess now, thank the Lord, I can believe him."
"Tell me, Mrs. Stafford, when did you first learn about the accident?"  "Let’s see. I’ve got so much on my mind now. It was 4:30 yesterday afternoon. I’d just come home from the potato shed. That’s where I’m working. Cutting potatoes."The phone rang and my daughter answered it and handed it to me. It was Leslie’s boss and he said, ‘Your husband’s been in a cave-in.’
"I answered, ‘Is he okay?’ and he answered, ‘I don’t think so. He’s been buried for two hours.’ That’s when I just went to pieces. I started screaming and went hysterical."
"Do you remember what happened next?" "They sent a car over from the scene to take us over there. I asked the lady who came, ‘Is he all right?’ She told me ‘no.’ But now my friend Holly Odle and her sister were at my house, trying to calm me down. My daughter went with the people to the scene, but I wouldn’t go.
"I didn’t want to see them take his body out."
"Then you were sure he was dead?"  "Well, I prayed. I kept walking up and down and shouting and praying."Holly kept saying that maybe he’d be breathing when they brought him up, but I guess — well, I just figured it was impossible."
"When did you learn that he was alive?" "We had all the news broadcasts on. Must have been 7:30 when they said on the radio he was alive. Oh, God. Right then the phone rang. It was another friend to say the same thing.
"They told me to go to Kern General Hospital to wait and see him. We hurried over there and waited and waited. Then they called and said, ‘No. Go to Bakersfield Memorial.’ So we went over there and waited some more.
"Finally they said they couldn’t get his foot free. To go to the scene. It would be three hours, at least, before they got him.
‘I Knew He’d Be Calling’ "They wouldn’t let me go near the hole. I wanted to see him because I knew he’d be calling for me, but they had me wait in a shack there till they brought him up."
"When was that, Mrs. Stafford?" "That was 4:05 this morning. I remember that. I got up to him and he was spitting out sand and dirt.
"The first thing he asked for was a cigarette.
"Then he asked for me.
"Then, later, you know what he told me? He said that all the time he was down there he was worrying about me. He was worried how I’d be worried about him.
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 The Chinchilla Thimble Club, 1949 |
The Scranton, Pa., Times-Tribune has begun a history blog called Pages From the Past, done by Brian Fulton. Please visit the site and welcome Brian to the growing number of newspaper history blogs! |
 Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz is honored for 32 years of public service. |
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I’ve been running quite a few women’s fashions, so here’s something for the guys: a vintage necktie from Bullock’s Wilshire. Bidding starts at $9.99. |
A group of grimly playful fellows at SC who call themselves Asthmatics Anonymous advise that at a raw-lunged meeting in the basement which serves as headquarters they have regrouped as Asthmatics Militant.
First move was to change the association’s motto from “As I live and breathe” to “You should live so long.” (“Here’s crud in your eye” was considered but deemed inappropriate.)
Second action was to wire their Detroit operative, a talented wheezer, inquiring what goes on back there. His reply has just come zinging through.
Frenzy Motor Co., he reports, already has its 1960 pride at the road-testing stage. It will be longer, lower, have deeper chest-cough acceleration and be known as the Flatulente Four Fifty- 450 h.p. that is. Continue reading
I don’t know what you do for kicks, but my friend Tiger Small snatches toupees.
Not just anybody’s toupees, understand. The Tiger’s selective. He’s been working the Catskill-Manhattan-Miami circuit for years, dealing only with the best
people. The cream of the show business crowd. Doctors. Professional
men.
When he came to Hollywood last month he brought quite a reputation with him.
“But in this town,” he was telling me yesterday, “they bloat everything way out of proportions.”
The Tiger — an animated conversationalist — explained that it was just a
sideline with him. That he lifted his first toupee strictly as a favor for a chorus girl friend and then sort of fell into the habit. Continue reading
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 Photograph by Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times The 1920s statue, shrouded in plastic, will be reinstalled at San Vicente Boulevard and McCarthy Vista. |
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The 6-foot bronze miner statue stolen For decades, the gold miner stood in plain view at the busy Then Detectives with the Los Angeles Police Department’s art theft detail Sebastian Espana, 22, and Jessie Hernandez, 23, were later arrested Each pleaded no contest to two counts of felony grand theft and were Sculpted by Henry Lion in 1924 and 1925, the miner, along with a It was one of three public statues stolen over nine months in 2007 Authorities across the country say the high price of metals — which have since come back to earth — prompted the thefts. Even then, police said, the art thieves ended up with pennies on the dollar for often irreplaceable works of art. –Andrew Blankstein |
A 15-point drop in the Dow is Page 1 news in 1969. I wonder what
Today in Baby Boomer nostalgia: Gordon Lightfoot makes |
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Owner Dan Reeves, who fired Allen over what he called a personality conflict, took it all back. Allen had been supported by many of his players, who held a news conference to claim they would retire if someone else was coaching the Rams. That’s an unusual step, but Reeves said he wasn’t swayed by unhappy players or fans. The Times ran daily updates on the coaching search. As it became clear that Allen was still in the picture, the stories got a little strange. There was a planned meeting between the players and Reeves, there was a four-hour meeting between Allen and Reeves and there was speculation over Allen’s replacement. USC Coach John McKay and former Green Bay Coach Vince Lombardi were two names mentioned. Even when Allen was rehired, Reeves said two other coaches had been considered along with the former/current Ram coach. On Jan. 5, Bob Oates wrote a thorough analysis of the problems between coach and owner: "Quite unintentionally, Allen has been destroying what Reeves built–and therefore what Reeves is." Leave it to Jim Murray to capture the weirdness of it all. Here’s part of his column on the day after Allen was rehired/unfired. "The announcement ceremony had all the warmth of the surrender signing on the battleship Missouri. The whole thing was as dignified as an axe murder. I have seen more smiles in a police lineup." –Keith Thursby |
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A 1945 Thomas Bros. Guide has turned up on EBay. These vintage maps are always useful for people interested in Los Angeles history and there’s a motley collection of them at the Daily Mirror HQ. Bidding starts at $9.99. |
Law Is Upheld
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CONFIDENTIAL FILE
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California gets its second Democratic governor since 1900, Pat Brown. Errol Flynn [Look what’s on the sports page: A Glen Binford byline! Binford predates me at The Times, but as a line editor in the 1970s, back in the days of Bob "The Basher" Harlow, he figured prominently in something known within the paper as the Metro Desk Diaries. –lrh].
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Eleanor Gehrig talked with The Times’ Jeane Hoffman while in Los "He wired back both his permission and a large financial donation. It had been only 20 years since Gehrig’s illness forced him to retire in 1939. He died in 1941. –Keith Thursby |
Men of Good Will
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CONFIDENTIAL FILECheer Up; Desmond Is Home, VaguelyDesmond Slattery has returned.
And I’ll bet you didn’t even know he was gone. Well, he was. Obviously. And the reason I happened to know he’s back is because he hustled straight for my office. Right off, he told me, "I’ve got another exclusive for you, Coates." It has been Desmond’s custom for the past half-dozen years to bring me one story a year. He’s trustworthy. He never leaks them out to Hedda Hopper or Louella. And he’s consistent, too. In the past, his stories have always pertained to the activities of the same Desmond Slattery. One year, it was his scheme to promote a safe and sane Fourth of July celebration by importing 10,000 fireflies from Texas to replace firecrackers.
Always, Desmond made pretty exciting copy. Except last year, when he tipped me off about his impending safari to Central America on what he described as "monkey business." He promised me that he was going to round up dozens of midget Central American Monkeys, bring them to my office on his return and — in front of my very eyes — stuff them all into a big barrel. "We’ll prove," he promised, "once and for all, just how much fun are a barrelful of monkeys." Desmond did make the trip, but he came back without even one monkey. Thus, my cautious greeting to the man when he showed up in my office again a few days ago. "Slattery," I said coldly, "if this year’s story concerns you, leave." Slattery shook his head slowly. "This story," he answers, "concerns anteaters. "And," he added, "ants." Opening his briefcase, he extracted a pair of warn copies of True and Life magazines and spread them out before me. He showed me articles in each that warned of the fire-ant menace in the South. "These little insects have already done 20 billion dollars in damage to agriculture," he said. "They’re natives of South America but somehow found their way to Alabama. Now they’ve spread through the South and are taking dead aim on the wheat fields of Kansas.
"What organization, Slattery?" "This organization," he explained, "will go to South America next April and stage ‘The First Annual Pan-American Anteater Round-Up.’ It will return with anteaters who specialize in eating fire ants, and then rent the animals out to distressed farmers." Slattery Reveals Identity "This organization, Slattery?" I questioned, "Are you a member?" "The man who heads this humanitarian group could well go down as one of modern America’s great heroes," he replied. "Desmond," I pressed, "is that man you?" Slattery leaned across my typewriter. "I’ll level with you, Coates," he whispered. "The whole dedicated, loyal outfit is me. "But please — it’s the least I can do for this," he added softly. "So keep my name out of it." And believe me, if I could figure out how to, I would. |
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