Miscellany, Feb. 10, 1936

Master

In Chicago Municipal Court, Baker Charles Abrams sued Baker Fred Kapche for $30 for lessons in how to ice cakes, said he would drop the suit if he could not frost a cake twice as beautifully as Kapche. Kapche went to work with frosting tubes on a big cake. He painstakingly squeezed out four robins’ nests, three blue eggs, seven pink sweet pea blossoms, two yellow marigolds and a “Happy Birthday.”

The courtroom crowd turned toward Abrams, who had been pinching his tubes on a tin pan turned upside down. He held up a cream-colored icing on which were 32 peach-colored sweetpea blossoms, four bright pink Premier roses and five Sweetheart roses, whose pink faded delicately to white in the centre. “It’s not really finished,” he said, “but it’s good enough to win.” Three pastry experts and Judge Jonas agreed that it had won.

Sportsmen

In Joliet, Ill.’s Stateville Prison, guards opened the gates to let a truck drive out of the snow-covered yard, slammed them shut again when they spied six convicts sitting blandly on a bobsled hitched to the truck’s rear axle.

Telephone

In Trenton, N. J., Charles Gerofsky’s furnace boy, Joseph Duggan, found the Gerofskys out and used the telephone to call Cinemactress Jean Harlow in Hollywood. She was out and he left a message for her to call him back. She did so. after Mr. Gerofsky had come home. Cost: $20.50.

Objector

In Hamilton, Ont., a stray cat struggled so desperately against Inspector E. G. McDonald’s efforts to push it into the lethal gas chamber that the static electricity in its fur exploded the gas. The explosion blew the chamber to bits and knocked out Inspector McDonald. The cat vanished.

Imagination

In San Diego, Calif., a proposal for a nudist colony as a publicity stunt for the California Pacific International Exposition drew a protest from the Braille Club for the blind of San Diego.

Humorist

In Viroqua, Wisc., Bartender Art Jacobson took down one of his humorous wall mottoes, designed to discourage noncash customers, which read: “Liberal credit extended to all 80 years of age or over when accompanied by a parent.” Two elderly men had just walked out without paying for their drinks, one saying, “I am Nels Bjerke, just turned 80 six months ago. This is my father Gundar. He’s 97.”