Miscellany, Mar. 10, 1947

School of Experience. In Los Angeles, truant officers checking Santa Anita race track found no truant schoolchildren, but flushed bigger game: a hookey-playing Pasadena principal.

Hasty Hearts. In Springfield, Mo., after a 30-year courtship, Roy Saltsgraver at last got a yes, married Anna Wickersham across the state line in Arkansas to avoid Missouri’s three-day-wait law.

Just Us Hens. In Manhattan, two men charged with burglarizing a store protested that they were workingmen, had been hired to do the job at 75¢ an hour.

Investment. In Rio de Janeiro, Paulo Quadros responded to a hospital’s appeal for blood donors, fell off a streetcar next day and lost a leg, pulled through with a transfusion of his own blood.

Counter-Irritant. In Grand Rapids, Lyle Collins, after stabbing five strange women with a pair of scissors, explained to police: ”Women irritate me.”

Double Cross. In Mason City, Iowa, Mr. & Mrs. Michael Cross thought & thought about a name for their baby daughter, finally agreed on Chris.

Reversible. In Birmingham, England, Ernest Abrahams sold his raincoat to an acquaintance, stole it back, sold it to a secondhand-clothes dealer, stole it a second time, finally settled with a judge for a £2 ($8) fine.

Demonstration. In Winnipeg, Gordon Lillyman lost a finger in a candy-rolling machine, was showing the plant physician how it happened, when he lost another.

Cache. In Frankfurt, Germany, when U.S. occupation authorities ordered all civilian weapons turned in, law-abiding Bavarians came forward with 100 crossbows, darts, popguns.

Routine. In Nasonville, R.I., Howard Staples, who lives near a highway curve, took it philosophically when an 8½-ton truck plowed into his house, barely bypassed his wife, crashed to a stop four feet from his sleeping son: it was the 20th vehicle to hit his house in 18 years.

Overtime. In Wichita, Kans., a youthful trusty, during a talk with the sheriff, learned that his term was up and that he had been “discharged” four months before, but nobody had gotten around to telling him.

Diagnosis. In Detroit, a Receiving Hospital nurse, evading the rule against giving technical information over the telephone, described a patient’s injuries by saying: “He broke what he stands on, sits on and writes with.”