Course au Tr

The surrealistic sight of a Parisian racing through his native streets with his head thrust through a cane chair-seat, a pair of garters streaming from his back and a license plate and a pot of vegetables in either hand, is not a sign of galloping national debility due to continental complications. Frenchmen know, and others soon learn, that the galloper is merely out to win the 200-franc ($5.30) prize, offered each afternoon by the private radio station Paste Parisien in its Course au Tresor, a radio scavenger hunt patterned after one which Paris loved in the droll U. S. cinema My Man Godfrey.

Master of these hunts, which last week wound up a riotous year of keeping Paris in daily stitches, has been self-styled Le Roi des Loufoques (King of the Nuts), Pierre Dae, a baldish, crinkly-eyed comic.

Dac's real name is Andre Isaac. He is a singer, an actor sometimes at the Deux Anes (Two Asses) theatre, author and editor of the funpaper L'Os `a Moelle (Marrowbone). Each weekday at 13 h. 5 ( 1:05 p. m.) for the last year he has sent Parisians by the hundreds rummaging high & low for varying collections of oddments, to be produced within two hours at a designated rendezvous. An open street is usually necessary for the arriving candidates and their equipages. This was evident from the start, when the first after noon hundreds of participants piled into the old Paste Parisien building with brooms, stray cats and dogs etc., put the wheezy, three-place elevator out of commission, utterly disrupted business.

Course au Tresor, an attempt to beguile the French with U. S. humor as the movies and radio report it, was a big success from the start, even eliciting a letter from a Ceylon fan asking for a handicap. The 200-franc prize goes to the first arrival with the required objects, usually ten.

One sample day the call went out for a scuttle of coke, a picture of soldiers, a bi cycle saddle attached to the back, twelve marbles on a flat plate, a package of dried fruits, five francs in 50-centime pieces, a piece of cloth tied around the leg, a mineral-water bottle label, one hand drawn on a piece of white paper and the ability to conjugate on arrival, while standing, the imperfect subjunctive of the verb s'asseoir (to sit down).* It is interesting and profitable work for housewives, youths and the unemployed, who have the after noon to themselves.

For this year Dae, the livest radio character in France, is starting a variation of the treasure-hunt idea, in which he drops token coins in hiding places around Paris, directs listeners to them somewhat as Uncle Don tells U. S. youngsters where the family has hidden their birthday presents.

*The conjugation: je m'assisse, tu t'assisses, il s'assit, nous nous assissions, vous vous assis-siez, ils s'assissent.

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