12,000 Skips

In Chicago, Irving K. Pond, one-time President of the American Institute of Architects, celebrated his 70th birthday last week with able handsprings and headsprings.* On hearing this news, Chester Lavere, 57, another Chicagoan, seized a rope, demonstrated his own athletic age by skipping it at a rate of 1 2/3 skips per second for two hours, a grand total of 12,000 skips. Skipper Lavere was puffing and heaving when he stopped. Later he explained his agility: "I eat raw meat, everything raw. Eating raw stuff was the only thing that enabled me to do this. . . . From now on, there is an open challenge to any old duffer who thinks he can beat me."

Greenbergs

In 1915 Mrs. Minnie Greenberg of Brooklyn "had trouble" with Mr. Greenberg. She sent their small son Oscar to board with Mr. and Mrs. Max Kashdan, keeping her daughter Mollie at home. Mr. Greenberg died. Mrs. Greenberg became a Mrs. Chaizel and sent for her son Oscar. But the Kashdan family, attached to Oscar whom they had renamed Max, moved 16 times to elude the mother, keep the son.

Not until two years ago, when he was 15, did they tell Oscar Greenberg who he was. He insisted on going to live with his mother. At home he found Mollie Greenberg but as she grew into a ripe young Jewish woman of 15, he could not think of her as his sister. Two months ago they eloped, married. Last week they were apprehended in their secret home. The judge held them in $500 bail for incest.

Said Oscar Greenberg: "I didn't believe I was marrying my sister. And anyhow, I love her, sir."

Said Mollie Greenberg: "What could we do, we loved each other so?"

Johnsons

In Pittsburgh, a divorce court withheld decision last week in the case of Gladys Johnson, who protested that when Lewis J. Johnson, U. S. marine, came home in his uniform and asked her to elope with him to Youngstown, Ohio, she had done so without recognizing Mr. Johnson as her father's brother.

Ecstasy

At Nashville, Tenn., one Ella Welch, Negress, ecstatic with her conception of Scriptures, began a lone promenade over the Cumberland River last week. She did not have bridge, boat or stepping stones; sank. Deputy sheriffs dragged the river for her body.

*A spring performed by lying on the back and then jumping to the feet, the weight of the body coming at first upon the head and shoulders.