Recently, the following colloquy took place between the secretary in our San Antonio, Texas bureau and an anonymous telephoner. Said our girl, answering the phone : Garfield ni-yon, three-seven-one.

Well.....?

Garfield ni-yon, three-seven-one.

Well. . . ? (spoken this time with some exasperation).

This is TIME Incorporated.

Well! Then what time is it?

This is the TIME Magazine office. You want the telephone company's Time Service Bureau.

Oh, TIME Magazine! I thought . . . well, I didn't know you had an office down here. Say, you don't happen to know what time it is?

Not wanting anybody to think we wouldn't give the time of day, our girl complied. Her gesture, a familiar one to the personnel of TIME'S 13 domestic bureaus, is indicative of the scores of extracurricular activities they perform in addition to getting and verifying the news for TIME.

A typical work week for a TIME bureau head--beyond satisfying TIME'S editorial queries--would be likely to include visits from such assorted personages as i) a small businessman seeking publicity for a new type of plumbing joint he had invented, 2) a Government investigator inquiring into the political complexion of the Kansas City Star, 3) a writer looking for special material for his novel, 4) a paste salesman wanting desk space and a telephone, 5) the owner of a coal mine in Alberta on the lookout for unemployed coal miners; telephone calls from all sorts of people asking specific information (e.g., "what's this new country club in town people have been asking about?"), an invitation from a local civic organization to participate in one of its projects, the usual run of publicity agents plugging their clients, people who dropped in to express their views on the political situation, and those who were lonely and just wanted someone to talk to.

There are other aspects of a bureau chief's job &; some noisy, some subdued.

During the recent campaign, a candidate for high public office swarmed into our Los Angeles bureau with his retinue of public relations advisers, delivered his favorite platform oration to the TIME staff, swarmed out again. He was defeated at the polls. In Denver, an old man from " hobo row" brought in a faded, crumpled news paper cut of his boy in uniform. He wanted to know if we could run the photograph and do a story about his son's receiving the bronze star. Our man explained that the photograph defied reproduction. At length, the old man went away, satisfied that TIME, at any rate, knew all about his boy.

These are some of the occupational hazards of our trade, and we expect them. The head of our Boston office, however, seems to have more than his share of them. Recently, in the course of a week's work, he submitted to a sampling of twelve-year-old cheese, tasted a "health" beverage (turnip juice, elderberries and soybeans) brought in by an elderly artist, promised to try a new kind of bread made from orange peelings by a Russian inventor. Says he: "There is a distinct gastronomic hazard in this work. But I know of no other job in which I can catch a twenty-pound striped bass off Gay Head and listen to a first performance of a Copland symphony by Koussevitzky, both in the line of duty, in the same week --and get paid for it."

# One such, which TIME has just accepted, is to co-sponsor the forthcoming 21st annual Institute of Cleveland's well-known Council on World Affairs, Report From the World, on Jan. 9, 10, 11.

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