The wacko file – Page 10

A jerk and his siren are soon parted

May 24, 1927
Los Angeles

Whoo-Whoo! Get outta the road, here comes a cop, or an ambulance. Jeez, usually they drive better than that. This guy doesn’t give an inch. Muscling his way south through heavy Vermont Avenue traffic after midnight in his Essex, he pushes through the Third, Sixth and Seventh intersections with only some shattered nerves and shouted curses.

By this point he’s picked up a tail, Detective Lieutenant Vanaken riding with Auto Club man Harry Raymond, who wonder what the deuce this yutz thinks he’s doing, and if this could be the same siren-happy individual who’s been reported around town these past three weeks. And then at Wilshire, the inevitable sickening crash of metal on metal, leaving A.J. Hanker and cabbie Oscar Ruiz, thankfully uninjured, sitting in their wrecked cars as Vanaken forces the automotive bully to the curb a block south.

Inside, Dr. R.B. King, 25, X-ray technician out Alhambra way, who denies causing the accident, though he admits he used his siren while not on an official call. Well, since he’s a doctor, they book King on charges of failing to stop and render aid at an accident scene, and hold him in the City Jail. Meanwhile, we trust, police mechanics are cutting that siren off the Essex, and none to carefully, either.

Frankie the Fire Goat Superstar

Frankie the Fire Goat is on Myspace now, and he would love to make friends with you.

Frankie is feeling awfully proud, since he was on the Channel 7 news live tonight (with his all-showgirl fan club, the fabulous Ashettes) from the Griffith Park community meeting discussing the future of the park post-fire. He very much hopes that future will involve he and his herd munching lots of dry brush so it doesn’t get a chance to catch on fire. He got to meet Councilmen Eric Garcetti and Tom LaBonge and encouraged them both to seriously consider looking into creating a managed goat grazing plan for Griffith Park and the rest of L.A.’s wild spaces. If you agree, please sign Frankie’s petition and then contact them yourself and ask that they set up a meeting soon to discuss the role goats can play in protecting our parks.

Here are some photos of Frankie and his pals. And yet more photos, these ones by David Markland!

He’s really a lovely goat, and his is a good cause. It was a real treat to spend the afternoon with him and see how people, especially kids, responded to his gentle ways and seemingly bottomless hunger. Thanks to Sarah and Hugh from Nanny & Billy’s Vegetative Management for taking Frankie off the Getty chomping crew for this public appearance, the lovely Ashettes La Cholita and Paula Baby, the informed and passionate Judy Cairns from Peck Park Goats, Elsa Ramon from Channel 7 for giving so much time to this story, and all the nice folks who came over to meet Frankie and learn more about goats as fire fighters.

We want goats!

Will the Real Charles Lindbergh Please Stand Up?

Lindbergh Reaches Paris

May 21, 1927
Le Bourget Field, France

You have may have heard songstress Sophie Tucker, the last of the red hot mammas, belting out “Fifty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong”.

Maybe 50 million Frenchmen can’t be wrong, but in smaller numbers they are capable of making humiliating blunders.

In the midst of the frenzy surrounding Capt. Charles A. Lindbergh’s successful landing today at Le Bourget Field outside of Paris, a horde of ecstatic French revelers hoisted a young American man to their shoulders. Believing that the man who had fallen and been trampled on was the famed transatlantic aviator, they triumphantly bore him to the American Ambassador to France, Myron Herrick, chanting “C’est lui!” (It is he!) Lindbergh Sketch

Held aloft by the cheering mob, the frightened man repeatedly screamed “Let me go! I am not Lindbergh!” But his entreaties fell upon ears fluent only in French. Squirming and shouting, he was carried for quite a distance and finally up a flight of stairs in the Administration Building, where he was to be welcomed by a delegation of dignitaries.

Ambassador Herrick took one look at the man’s disheveled business suit, wilted collar and torn necktie and immediately realized the crowd’s error. Members of the crowd could be heard muttering “mon dieu” and “merde” as news of their embarrassing faux pas made its way to the outer perimeters of the group. The throng of people then unceremoniously dumped the counterfeit Lindbergh at the Ambassador’s feet, and dashed off in search of the real flying ace.

Meanwhile, the genuine and more nattily attired Capt. Lindbergh had been rescued from the mob by several French pilots. The pilots had taken Lindbergh to a waiting automobile and were well on their way to Paris as multitudes of French citizens sought “Lucky Lindy” in vain.

History has recorded neither the name nor the fate of the man who was mistaken for Lindbergh.

Virginia Tech’s Got Nothing on 1927

May 18, 1927
Bath Township, Michigan

Maddened by a property tax increase for school construction on which he blamed his financial problems, Bath Township School Board member Andrew Kehoe plotted for months to exact his revenge against the very tykes whose need for an education had precipitated the mess. (Nathan, dear Nathan, much as you rail against the LAUSD and their anti-preservationist mania for pulling down whole city blocks, we hope it never comes to this for you.)

Over some months, while in his capacity as handyman, Kehoe stashed a huge cache of explosives inside the local elementary school. On his farm, he experimented with timers and bombs. And then finally, the great day came. This day. Kehoe beat his wife to death (you know, to spare her the shame, and so forth), tied his animals into their stalls, and set fire to his mortgaged farm. He had previously filled the back seat of his car with all the metal objects he could find, topping it off with a seasoning of dynamite. As all local fire crews raced to deal with this decoy fire, off Kehoe toddled, towards the school that he knew was about to blow.

The massive explosion that racked the Bath Township elementary school around 9:45 that morning caused the entire north wing of the building to collapse, and felt like an earthquake throughout the community. Dozens of children lay dead beneath the debris, while others moaned and shrieked. Parents and firemen came running to attempt rescue. But Kehoe wasn’t finished yet.

He arrived at the site of the disaster, looked upon his work for a moment, and then noticed School Superintendent Emory Huyck nearby. Kehoe crooked his finger, and as Huyck walked toward the car, Kehoe took a rifle and sent a shot into the center of the explosives in the back seat. The car exploded in a flurry of shrapnel, instantly killing Kehoe, Hyuck and several others, and further wounding many of the already-injured people on the scene.

Kehoe left one cryptic message at his farm: a stenciled wooden sign reading "CRIMINALS ARE MADE, NOT BORN."

The final death toll was 45. At Virginia Tech last month, 32. Something to ponder, the next time you hear the TV talking heads proclaiming Cho’s act "the worst school massacre in American history," as many did last month.

For more info, see the Bath School Disaster Wikipedia entry.

A Salute to Cafeterias, or, Only bring your teeth if you want to

The Southern California Restaurant Historical Society is holding its fourth event, a "Salute to Cafeterias!" at the historic Clifton’s Cafeteria (648 S. Broadway) in Downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, May 26 at 10AM. There is no charge for the event and dining at Clifton’s has always been "Pay What you Wish, Dine Free Unless Delighted."

Special guests are D.J. Waldie (Author: Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir) on postwar dining in the prototypical suburb of Lakewood, Charles Perry (LA Times Food Writer and president, Culinary Historians of Southern California) on the origin of the species: the first cafeterias in Los Angeles, Chris Nichols (Los Angeles magazine editor and author of "The
Leisure Architecture of Wayne McAllister") on the architect McAllister and his midcentury restaurants.; ALSO a chance to meet special guest Robert Clinton, third generation owner of this grand and glorious restaurant.

Have an early breakfast and then meet us in Pasadena for the Pasadena Confidential Crime Bus tour, check in at 12:30!

Green Gold

May 10, 1927
Santa Ana

Then as now, avocados are expensive and desirable treats, and a produce man will find his business flourishing when his expenses are limited to gasoline for midnight raids on Orange County orchards and bullets for his gun.

But the men of the Avocado Grower’s Association breathe easier tonight after the arrest of Louis Chiuma at his produce stand at 2301 West First Street. Chiuma and his associates are believed to be among the gangs of alligator pear snatchers who have absconded with $50,000 worth of the fruit so far this year. Recently, two men raided the Lindauer Ranch in La Habra and dropped their sacks to engage the night watchman in a gunfight. No one was hit, and the guard reported their truck license to County Sheriffs, which led them to Chiuma.

Back in the suspect’s rooms, sheriffs found a stash of dynamite. But what they couldn’t find was a snitch: the neighborhood clammed up quick, with some souls heard muttering about the Black Hand. That’s right: the Avocado Mafia, and don’t let me hear you tattling, or there’ll be no guacamole on your enchilada tonight or ever!

Delicious Nuts

May 5, 1927
Around the Globe

Los Angeles, world renowned for its disproportionate share of eccentrics, was reminded in the press to-day that she is not alone when it comes to the care and feeding of such.

xray
House of Brunswick-era London was of course known for feverish devotees of Joanna Southcott, domestic servant turned prophetess, who claimed supernatural powers and dictated prophecy in rhyme. (Southcottians numbered over 100,000 at one time but practically disappeared overnight in 1890.) On Southcott’s death in 1814 she left a mysterious box to Rebecca Pengarth, sole companion, who promised it would never be opened except in a national crisis and in the presence of twenty-four bishops. (The episcopate were pressed to open the thing during the Crimean War, and again during the Great War, but they demurred.) Southcott claimed to be “the mother of the new Messiah,” and you wouldn’t want to screw that up, so don’t worry, the National Laboratory of Psychical Research didn’t open it; they had it X-rayed. Noted psychic investigator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle declined an invitation. The box, after an application of the ol’ Röntgen, showed it to contain a skull, scissors, a horse pistol, a beaded bag, rings, coins, pins, some other whatnot, and what appears to be a roll of manuscript. Could that hold the secret of messianic return?

Well, no. When finally opened, the parchment turned out to be a lottery ticket. (And there was in fact no skull—everybody knows that when you cobble together a Mystery Box, you include a skull.) Southcott descended into House of Windsor-era obscurity, save for the attentions poured upon her by the Panacea Society.

comet Speaking of the Great War, it was announced today in Washington by by Dr. F. Homer Curtis, founder of the Order of Christian Mystics, that blame for the World War was to be placed solely on gaseous trails left in the earth’s atmosphere by Halley’s comet in 1910. It seems the gas made humanity nervous and suspicious; and, he noted, if there’s a World War in 1929, you can blame the Pons-Winnecke comet.

Of course, PW passed by again in ’33 and ’39, and no one suffered from that, did they?

How Men Turn To Crime

May 4, 1927
Los Angeles

Facing a sixty day sentence for bootlegging before Municipal Judge Tunney, Euell Thomasson appealed to the court’s mercy in light of his rather unusual personal history.

He had, Thomasson swore, been gainfully employed by a creamery company which sent a troupe of live, chained bears around town in its wagons as an advertising gimmick. Naturally, being bears, they were inclined to get cranky on the road, and one day one lunged at Thomasson and took a healthy bite out of his thumb.

This left him unable to work, and his employers refused to pay any compensation. So he began selling alcohol, a trade which apparently calls for but one working thumb.

It is a judge’s job to weigh the facts and mitigating circumstances in cases complex and peculiar. Judge Tunney determined the value of a bear-bitten thumb to be ten days, and sentenced the prisoner to fifty days in stir.

No Babies Wanted

pdmheadline April 29, 1927
Hollywood

There’s nothin’ a kid likes more than a writ of habeus corpus!

Darling Priscilla Dean Moran is being sought by Sheriff’s deputies to-day, after being kidnapped and spirited away by "new owners" John and Myrtle Ragland to some cottage in a Hollywood canyon. Mrs. Margaret Becker of Long Beach has stated that she is the aunt and deserves custody, while an Ella Schaber of Tulsa has sent a message to the judge asking for possession.

And why is this sundry so all-fire interested in Priscilla? Because the eight year-old lass is a juvenile star, and the small waif with large paycheck has been actively engaged in film work for some time, her last picture selling for 100k (1,180,180 USD2005).

The judge eventually ruled that Ragland and Schaber were trying to buy the child, and so she was, for better or worse, awarded to petitioner-for-the-writ Aunt Margaret. Read all about it here.

Wither Sim Cross?

April 27, 1927
Los Angeles

Sim Cross is alive, ALIVE! The Los Angeles man, resident of 4195 Third Avenue, was believed a suicide by pals after a full suit of clothes but the underpants were found on the beach at Redondo on April 19. Mugs were raised, his good and bad points debated, and perhaps the pals even parcelled out his nicest ties among them. But on the 21st there came a telegram, signed Sim and sent from San Francisco, announcing that reports of his demise were not to be believed.

In time, he returned home, bearing a singularly peculiar tale. The last thing he remembered, see, he was fighting a riptide. And then, inky darkness. He came to 48 hours later in an SF hotel room, with bruised feet and no idea how he got there. In the room, clothes and a suitcase he’d never seen before. He dressed, and stepped into the street, where two men accosted him. It was thanks to them, they said, that Sim was in this spot. And now all they needed was for him to take someone’s place in a hospital for a few more days and…

Here Sim drew the curtain over one of the most perfect descriptions of cliche detective’s peril as we’ve ever read. He claims that he simply demured and came home.

Was it all fantasy? Or did once there dwell strangely maleable hoodlums, who would conk a guy while he swam and spirit him away to play a part in a bandage opera, then let him go when he said he wasn’t in the mood? We’ll never know, for after this one extraordinary incident, Sim Cross vanished from the record, but never from our hearts.