Miscellany, May 27, 1940

Gas Masks

In Paris, gas masks of school children require constant retesting, are often found seriously damaged. Reason: the containers are used as nine pins in bowling matches.

Dream

In Madison, Wis., Alvin Raasch, 46, World War I aviator, dreamed that his plane was being forced down by the enemy, that he had bailed out. He awoke in the yard, 20 feet below his window, with a broken back.

Dreamer

In Hapeville, Ga., Jolly white-haired Mrs. C. F. Morgan, who once dreamed that her husband’s finger would be cut off (it was), announced her fourth vision of Aviatrix Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred J. Noonan, lost in the Pacific since July 2, 1937. Mrs. Morgan’s dreams: Earhart and Noonan are alive on a densely thicketed four-acre island; her hair “has grown long and waves in the breeze”; she cooks over a clay pot supported by part of her plane’s framework, invariably asks Mrs. Morgan “to come closer and I’ll explain everything.” At that point, the dreams stop. Said Seer Morgan: “I was never particularly interested in Amelia Earhart.”

Undertaker

In Calexico, Calif., an undertaker fell into a passion when clients argued with him about his fee, was deprived of his license for 90 days. Grounds: he used profanity in “the presence of and beside a dead body.”

Evidence

In Rutherfordton, N. C., a man charged with assaulting his wife pleaded guilty, said he would prove it. Thereupon he strode across the courtroom, smacked her face. Sentence: two years for assault, six months for contempt.

Order

In St. Louis, the acquittal of a Negro from extortion charges aroused such enthusiasm among 125 spectators that the judge sentenced them to remain quietly seated for one hour.

Voice

In Nashua, N. H., a milkman making his early morning round passed a cemetery, heard a voice cry from an open grave, “What time is it?” The milkman did not stay to answer. Returning with a police escort, he discovered a drunk, nightfloundered in the grave.

Shave

In Brooklyn, a barber was fined $5 under a New York law for performing “servile work on the Sabbath day,” viz., shaving a customer. His client: a woman.