Americana

MANNERS & MORALS

> Students at Ava, Ill.'s Trico Consolidated High School were driving teachers wild by doing "red outs." They knelt, took a deep breath, put one thumb in their mouths, and then blew (without actually exhaling) until they fainted.

> Jake Bird, a 46-year-old convicted Negro ax murderer, learned that his lawyer, J. W. Selden of Tacoma, Wash., had died. Selden was the fifth man connected with Bird's trial to die in the eleven months since the killer had predicted: "All the guys who had anything to do with this case are going before I do." Like all the others involved--the judge, an undersheriff, a police lieutenant and the clerk of court--Selden died of a heart attack.

>Harvard's first woman faculty member, Dr. Helen Maud Cam, became the first female to attend chapel services since public prayer was instituted at the university 312 years ago. This left Harvard only one male sanctuary--the press box at Soldiers Field.

>Raymond Harrison, a Negro ex-G.L, learned of the lifting of California's ban on mixed marriage. He wrote to Germany, asked his wartime sweetheart,Ilse Maier, to bring their 2 1/2-year-old daughter to San Francisco and marry him.

> The Washington police riot squad got a new name (The Civil Disturbance Unit) and new equipment -- 30-in. batons, tear-gas grenades, carbines, steel helmets and martian-like gas masks (see cut).

> Two 13-year-old Seattle boys confessed that they had stolen $1,847 from a grocery store and used the money to rent a friend's motorcycle at $85 an hour.

> During Portland, Ore.'s annual Christmas fairy tale parade the Jack & Jill float crashed into an automobile. Jack fell down and Jill came tumbling after.

> Merchants in Compton, Calif, set aside one night exclusively for male Christmas shoppers; in their zeal, some hired foot-tall players to keep women out.

> The pogo stick, on which children of ;the 1920s hopped like human valve stems, was back. It was now precision built of hollow aluminum tubing and boasted an adjustable, double-action spring.

> One F. J. Bettelli of Los Angeles put the late Mark Hellinger's armored car up for sale. The automobile, a 1931 Lincoln eight-cylinder, custom-built town sedan, has one-inch bulletproof glass, armored sides and roof, and has a secret machine-gun compartment. The price: $900.

> On Thanksgiving night, four years ago, two Seattle undertakers, John F. Hennessy and Earl J. Cassedy, had a snack of cold turkey sandwiches with a friend on Queen Anne Hill, drove off toward home --and vanished completely. Last month, harbor patrolmen found them in Hennessy's automobile at the bottom of the Lake. Washington Ship Canal. One day last week, Gladys Hennessy, the undertaker's widow, was driving along an icy road with a woman friend and her five-year-old son Patrick (who was wearing a Saint Christopher medal taken from his father's body). The automobile skidded and plunged into the Wenatchee River. All inside were drowned.

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