Miscellany, May 19, 1947

A Day to Remember. In Pittsburgh, St. Cyril’s parish celebrated the final payment on a mortgage with a cheery party; the document was burned—and so was a tidy little portion of the church.

Entree. In Norman, Okla., University of Oklahoma Botany Professor Lawrence M. Rohrbaugh had a suggestion for finicky fruit eaters: throw away the apple and eat the worm; it is more nourishing.

Caches. In Chillicothe, Mo., a nervous second-hand dealer looked up the car he’d sold six days before, opened the trunk, pulled out $2,000, explained to the new owner: “That was my bank—I forgot.” Near Chicago, Ralph Dean wiggled his big toe while taking a bus ride, felt far too comfortable, frantically remembered the four $20 bills he was saving; cops got his money back from the cobbler who had put new heels on Dean’s shoes.

Sound Reasoning. In Buffalo, the City Court denied Landlady Anna Kaitz the right to evict Hyman N. Barden because his snoring sounds like “a locomotive pulling freight cars up a grade.”

Old Faithful. In Cape Town, South Africa, a farmer turned his 15-year-old car in on a shiny new model, wrecked it the next day in a collision with the old auto and its new driver.

Solomon Plus. In Daytona Beach, Fla., Judge J. C. Beard decided that two claimants had equal rights to a bicycle, had it sawed in half.

Help! Police! In Chicago, Sergeant Edward O’Malley asked fellow policemen, to help look for his stolen automobile, explained that it ought to be easy to spot: it still carried expired 1946 license plates.

Legitimate Depression. In Guatemala, the newspaper El Imparcial recorded what it called some “depressing” statistics: “In the maternity wards of the hospitals throughout the Republic there was in the year 1946 a total of 2,327 births; of these, 2,219 belonged to bachelor mothers.”

Preoccupation. In Bath, England, Joane Rittner, caught driving without a license, wrote to the court to explain that she neglected to renew her old one, “owing to the following duties: nursing an invalid son and a daughter, cooking, cleaning, washing, shopping, queuing, and also grappling with ration books, children’s emergency cards, priority milk cards, bread units, laundry, chimney sweeps, window cleaners, all preliminary arrangements prior to moving to a new house, moving to new house, and all necessary preparations for the birth of my fourth child next month.”