The Human Thing To Do

Nineteen-year-old Ruth Ehlers of North Bergen, N.J. was a little worried last week about one aspect of her wedding to Louis Villani, 23, a mechanic of the same city. She had her heart set on getting hitched in a diving bell at the bottom of the ocean, but in writing to Atlantic City to arrange for the equipment, she pleaded: "Please don't think we are trying to be sensational or maybe even crazy..."

Bernarr ("Body Love") Macfadden, determined pursuer of the vitamin-filled life, had no such qualms. He not only celebrated his 81st birthday by making a parachute jump at Dansville, N.Y., but got in a plug for rich, natural foods. He snapped: "You could never jump with a parachute at 81 if you consumed that damned white flour."

Also without qualms was Charley Lupica of Cleveland, who swore that he would sit on a flagpole until the Indians moved into first place in the American League. Last week the Indians were in third place and Charley was still aloft, on a platform fitted out with a television set, a down-filled mattress and a telephone.

Expensive Chair. Sing Sing Prison, which has electrocuted only seven women in its history, went to considerable trouble and expense in preparing to execute Martha Beck, the "Lonely Hearts" murderess. To accommodate Mrs. Beck--who beat another woman's brains out after plotting the deed with a greasy-haired Romeo named Raymond Fernandez--Sing Sing reopened the woman's wing of the death house and hired four female helpers.

Mrs. Mary Sangenino, 52, of The Bronx, had troubles too. She got on the subway with a box of cookies and a brown paper bag containing her life savings--$12,500 in bills. Then she got so interested in a comic book that she left the bag behind when she got off at New Lots Avenue, Brooklyn. That was the last she saw of it.

In Los Angeles, Crime Entrepreneur Mickey Cohen (TIME, Aug. 1) went a long way toward proving himself the first U.S. hoodlum with an uncontrollable gift of gab. Instead of preserving a sullen silence when it developed that the cops had been eavesdropping on him through microphones hidden in his house, Mickey submitted to interviews. To impress Newshen Florabel Muir he even let one of his retainers, a Johnny Stompanata, win a couple of hands of gin rummy. Astounded, Stompanata asked: "Why do you do that?" Said Mickey, airily: "Noblesse oblige!" Stompanata asked for a translation, but was cut off. "How," asked Mickey, "would a peasant like you know them words?"

A bear--one of many which have taken to invading Minnesota towns--chased three Duluth youngsters out of a launch, and drifted complacently in it until the police shot him.

Unconnected Saucers. A slight intramural argument broke out within the Air Force after two weird and ancient flying machines were found in a tobacco barn eleven miles from Baltimore. An unofficial spokesman who announced happily that they were probably prototypes of the flying saucer was hastily reversed by another spokesman who snapped: "Absolutely no connection..."

It was, in short, one of those August weeks in which the steam from the soup of day-to-day events gave off a rich, pungent aroma.

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