Miscellany, Jul. 9, 1956

Coup de Grâce. In Poitiers, France, stuck with a 32-room chateau he could not sell because of high repair costs and real-estate taxes, Louis Vuilleumier despairingly bought 130 sticks of dynamite, blew it up.

The Back Way. In Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, after householders reported that a car was tearing around the neighborhood in reverse, Assistant Police Chief Reine Schmidt investigated, found behind the wheel a teen-age girl who explained: “My folks let me have the car, and I ran up a little too much mileage. I was just unwinding some of it.”

End of the Line. In Long Beach, Calif., after being sentenced to five days in jail for damaging telephone equipment, Pipe-Fitter Eugene C. Bennett explained to the judge that he cut his phone wire with a paring knife because “I got sick and tired of hearing my wife talking with her mother for an hour and a half.”

Occupational Hazard. In Victoria, B.C., Times Publisher Stuart Keate was fined $15 for speeding on the Island Highway, explained to the court: “Your honor, I was on my way to a meeting of the Associated Chambers of Commerce of Vancouver Island, where I was to speak in support of a resolution to favor retaining highway speed limits at 50 m.p.h.”

Legal Advice. In Chicago, after Mrs. Hattie Payne testified that her husband gave her 1,600 beatings and almost 800 black eyes during their 16 years of marriage, Judge Alan Ashcraft commented: “You would have been better off marrying a prizefighter, because you could have saved him the cost of a sparring partner.”

Cloying Limit. In Fort William, Ont., eight Wisconsin anglers were fined $800 and had $400 worth of fishing tackle confiscated after bringing in 162 pickerel (legal limit: 48), explained: “We were tired of the bologna diet back home.”

Crag to Crag. In Wauwatosa, Wis., Mrs. Joan Buge, 50, was fined $35 for negligent operation of a car and $15 for disorderly conduct after she drove away from an accident scene, fled from the police station as she was being booked, was fished out of a drugstore phone booth two blocks away, leaped out of a squad car on the way to the county jail when it stopped at a railroad crossing, lay down on the tracks until three patrolmen got her back in the car, clung to the side of the car at the jail, had to be carried bodily inside by six officers.

You Can’t Take It With You. In Milwaukee, 54-year-old Walter Estes broke into a bar, leaving the rear window open for a getaway, took $864 from the storeroom, paused for a nip, was found next morning fast asleep on the barroom floor.