Shock

In Chicago, after four years of idleness, Edward Tejak was given a job. At the shock he dropped dead.

Prude

In Reno, Mrs. Mildred Tilton Holmsen sat on the curb in front of her hotel, wriggled her bare toes in the gutter, asked newshawks: "There isn't anything wrong with shorts, is there?'' Last month, clad in men's shorts and a shirt, Mrs. Holmsen rode from Manhattan to Reno on the observation platform of her train, got so dirty from soot that ''a dignified gentleman" threatened to have her put off the train as a blackamoor. In Reno, still in shorts but without shoes or stockings, she entered a restaurant bar, was chased out by a head waiter.

Said the waiter: "Her conduct was provoking. She insisted on carrying on a flirtation with men who ordinarily wouldn't give her a tumble except for her efforts to attract them with near nudity."

Retorted Mrs. Holmsen: "It just so happens that I come from one of New York's very best families and my friends and relatives number among the most popular here and abroad. . . . If [the waiter] doesn't like bare feet and shorts, ladies who pick up gentlemen and who order milk hot but not boiled and freshly squeezed orange juice, he has but to say so in ordinary polite language."

On the curbstone she explained: "I don't wear shoes because they are outrageous and barbaric. I wear shorts because I'm free and on my own now. . . . That waiter was just a prude."

Traveler

Beneath the Hudson River, one midnight, Patrolman Raymond L. Pine caught a sleek young pig trotting westward through the Holland Tunnel from Manhattan toward Jersey City.

Reunion

In Harrisonville, Mo., Judge Leslie A. Bruce divorced the Olivers and the Harts. Three days later in Kansas City Mr. Oliver married Mrs. Hart and Mr. Hart married Mrs. Oliver. Infuriated, Judge Bruce set aside both divorces, reunited the original Olivers and the original Harts.

Plowman

In Los Banos, Calif., at the wheel of a plowing tractor, Henry Avilla nodded off to sleep. The tractor crawled on across the ranch yard, plowed a wide furrow through a mile of fields, ditches, roads and splintered fences, came to rest against a tree. There Henry Avilla awoke.

Call

In Chicago, Mrs. Ella Brown, arrested for calling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, explained that she always summoned her children with that cry.

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