Clearinghouse. In Milwaukee, John R. Helinski, 36, explained to cops that he had taken his father's $130 railroad retirement check and forged it so he could repay his father the money he had stolen from him.

Where Was Moses? On Norfolk Island, Commonwealth of Australia, the choir and congregation of St. Barnabas Chapel were left in darkness as the newly installed generating plant conked out during the singing of "Lead, Kindly Light."

Hat Trick. In Richmond, Joseph Linisus Hall, 35, settled for 20 years on an armed-robbery rap, complained bitterly that someone had stolen his $35 Homburg and tie, argued: "I might not get to use them for a while, but it's the principle of the thing."

The Clutch of the Law. In Milwaukee, James Godsey, 24, fed up with his balky car and ten parking tickets, left this note tucked under the windshield wiper: "Mr. Policeman, the keys are in the car; I can't get it started, and you can have it, if you can."

Invitation to Yearning. In Stourbridge, England, after Elizabeth Poulton, 53, spotted a supermarket sign reading "Please Take a Basket," took one home, returned for another a week later, and won the judge's swift verdict that she was not guilty of theft ("Why shouldn't someone take one?"), the store manager removed the sign.

Off the Track. In Baltimore, Charles M. Richardson, 27, piled 1,800 Ibs. of the B. & O. Railroad's prefabricated steel plates onto his horse-drawn wagon, left wheel marks in the blacktop paving as he rode away, got a year's sentence for theft when a judge ruled that the weight of evidence was against him.

Abdication. In Wimbledon, England, the juvenile court put a 15-year-old girl on probation after she pledged: "I will get a job and will not sit at home all day running the rest of the household; I will not be violent, swearing and shouting and breaking up the home; I will not strike my mother or order my father out of the house."

Cargo Manifest. In Louisville, after two youths snatched her black corduroy bag and police asked for a list of its contents, Millicent Stevens obliged: "A New Testament, one pen--ball pen, one blue-lead pencil, one double salt-and-pepper shaker, one small plastic box with green sample inside for upholstering, two Band-Aids, one Atom Bomb perfume, one string of safety pins, two bottles of partly evaporated milk, some books on health, a few religious tracts, three packs of APC tablets, and, above all, one tan dress coat, a $24 coat of my grandson's, who was in the Navy."

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