Forty Years Ago
What was the “rap sheet” for Forest Park in late September, 1965? A letter from Robert Marin, Chairman of the Youth Commission here, was read to the village council. The gist was that Marim recommended a full-time youth officer to combat an increasing number of juvenile offences. This dovetailed with the problem of local youngsters having access to “goof pills” and marijuana distributed by Chicago pushers. (The recommendation later resulted in the appointment of a succession of juvenile officers).
A “funny” piece of business included a report by Commissioner Vernon Reich that a license to peddle food door-to-door was refused. The itinerant merchant became belligerent at the police station when arrested for hawking his wares anyway. Incensed, he began swinging at nearby officers with lunchmeat logs and sausage links. Holy flying frankfurters!
From the Oct. 1965 issues of the Forest Park Review.
Thirty Years Ago
The wacky world of words. Two weeks ago, some non-English majors created hitherto unknown spellings and phrases to satisfy insurance claims on such conditions as yellow jonders, very coarse veins and falls teeth. This week, Bob Haeger supplies us with misnomers from Canadian Security magazine. The claimants were asked to summarize accident details on a rather cramped form:
“Coming home, I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don’t have … The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him … I collided with a stationary truck coming the other way … I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law and headed over the embankment … The indirect cause of the accident was a little guy in a small car with a big mouth … The pedestrian had no idea which way to run, so I ran over him … I saw a slow-moving sad-faced old gentleman as he bounced off the roof of my car … A truck backed up through my windshield into my wife’s face [How’s the truck?]. A telephone pole was approaching and I was attempting to swerve out of its way.”
From the Sept. 13, 1975 issue of the Forest Park Review.
Twenty Years Ago
Lyn Anderson, in her Forest Park Notes column, told about the day she was adopted. Like most of us, she was an adult who grew up with her natural parents, yet adopted she was”by a small tiger-striped Tom who scaled her fence and inserted himself into her small, domestic organization, AKA family. It was Lyn’s first association with a cat, her first taking in of a stray, and the first time she was chosen by a pet. She acknowledged that with a cat, this seemed to be the way it worked.
Her husband told her these animals associate with humans at their convenience and for their benefit. Unlike a dog, she said, you can’t be sure they’ll return once let out. A dog will acknowledge, even fawn over, its master, but this combination of curiosity, independence and ability to sleep”all wrapped in one fur package”will not. His kind will not deign to be taught a trick, nor would it even for half a second consider begging. When he came over the fence, said Lyn, he somehow communicated a need for supper while remaining aloof. No wonder they were worshipped in ancient Egypt as gods.
From the Sept. 1985 issues of the Forest Park Review.
Ten Years Ago
In keeping with the current baseball craze known as the World Series, there appeared a Review article on a book titled “The Hall of Shame.” Rather than dedicated to the author’s mother, it was dedicated to the very worse performances ever to occur in the annals of the sport.
Item: The Cleveland Spiders (Who?) of 1899,won 20 games and lost 134, finishing 84 games out of first.
Item: White Sox outfielder Smead Jolley was responsible for one of the most pitiable fielding performances. Perhaps lulled by a hangover, his head was hanging down when the catchable ball bounced behind him. Startled into wakefulness he chased the ball only to have it carom off the wall and past him”again. When he caught up with the ball he heaved it wide of, and far from, the cut-off man. Three errors on a single play (misplay)!
Item: You could look this one up. Brooklyn pitcher Harry Heitman faced five batters in his only major league appearance. Somewhere between giving up two singles and two triples, he managed to get a batter out, then he was gone”forever…leaving behind an earned run average of 108.00. Extended, that’s an average of 108 runs given up per nine innings pitched.
Who Remembers? The Norman Luboff Choir … Vic Damone … Don McNeill and his Breakfast Club … Eugene Ormandy … Loudon Wainwright III … Dacron … entropy.
From the Sept./Oct. 1995 issues of the Forest Park Review.
