Americana

MANNERS & MORALS

P: A director of the radio show Stop the Music asked the Boeing Airplane Co. to donate a four-engined Stratocruiser as a prize in the "mystery melody jackpot," saying the publicity would be worth $75,000 to Boeing. The company refused, gently pointing out that the double-deck, 80-passenger aircraft needed a crew of five, sold for approximately $1,500,000.

P: The mayor of Bridgeton, N.J. (pop. 23,000) ordered that drunks be charged rent (to be paid by working in a municipal park) while sobering up in the city jail.

P: S. Y. Loo, a Chinese merchant of Augusta, Ga., named his 18th child (a girl) Dixie Thurmond Loo.

P: A group of sports-conscious Detroiters asked the city to build a $14,500,000 stadium with 104,000 seats and a removable roof. Reason: it would provide a handy site for the 1952 Olympic Games if Finland (the host apparent) is unable to hold them.

P: A crowd of 300 Manhattan autograph seekers surrounded a crooner named Jack Carroll (ne Gaetano Riccio), knocked him down, yanked off his tie and belt, went through his pockets, and then jumped on him until the cops came.

P: Chester Novak, an arthritis-ridden Milwaukee invalid, traded a 3--c- bottle of liniment for a bar of soap, the soap for a pound of butter and the butter for a case of pop. By judicious barter he finally parlayed the pop into $65 worth of miscellaneous goods, hoped finally to end up with a television set.

P: After months of entreaty, a 76-year-old Fosston, Minn, farmer named Walter Morgan got a pilot to take him aloft for a parachute jump. He leaped out of the plane at 1,800 feet, gave 2,000 spectators near heart failure by letting himself fall free until he was halfway to the ground. Then he yanked his rip cord, landed calmly in a field, said: "That's what an old man can do when he lets liquor alone."

P: Thirteen magicians seated themselves in a dimly lighted hotel room in Springfield, Mass., held hands, made one last attempt to communicate with the spirit of the late Harry Houdini. When the lights were turned on they knew they had failed again. Two sets of locked handcuffs (which Houdini had promised to unlock if he could get back from the "world beyond") were undisturbed.

P: To the dismay and disbelief of civic-proud Los Angelenos, the Los Angeles Times reported that hordes of rats swarmed nightly over palm-fringed Pershing Square in the midst of downtown Los Angeles. The rats, said the Times, climbed down out of the trees to feed on popcorn and nuts forgotten by the pigeons in the daytime, drank from the fountain, scampered over discarded newspapers.

P: A mysterious and sickening stench--which seemed to combine the odors of onions, ammonia, burning rubber, creosote, dried fish and wet dogs--was borne in upon San Francisco from the Pacific Ocean. It set housewives to sealing their windows with adhesive tape, drove office workers out of the upper floors of high buildings, gave some panicky citizens the idea that the city was being subjected to a gas attack. It turned out to be a gas called S-Ethyl-Thiouracil, which had been blown to sea from oil refineries, then blown back in again.

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