Americana

P: In power-short Portland, Ore., utility officials observed a sharp drop in the use of electricity every working day at 4:57 p.m. Their deduction: office workers were snapping off lights, skipping out on the boss three minutes before closing time.

P: Deputy Sheriff Pat Bliss, of Seattle, read that King Abdullah of Transjordan was a chess fiend, promptly challenged the king to a match by mail. Last week, after 21 moves each, Bliss thought he had "the king over a barrel now." CJ In St. Louis, Jean Klein, 23, was charged with careless driving and knocking over a fire hydrant. But Associate City Counsel Roy A. Fish said he just couldn't prosecute. He lacked witnesses, and besides, "She is much too beautiful" (see cut).

P: In Los Angeles, Claude Marsan, 39, a Frenchman, put on a courtroom demonstration with his red-haired partner, Barbara Weir, 24, of his how-to-woo act, which he had been performing in local bars. He warmed up by playing Let Me Call You Sweetheart on a musical saw, 2 1/2 hours later had worked himself out of print. The verdict of the jury (which had nine women on it): guilty of presenting an indecent show.

P: Refugees brought out a postscript to the big western snowstorm. When the Union Pacific's City of St. Louis bogged down in a snowdrift just inside the border of dry Kansas, the conductor obligingly backed the train six miles to put the club car inside wet Colorado.

P: In Manhattan, Radio Station WMCA dropped plans for spot announcements for an anti-tuberculosis program in which announcers would dramatize warnings by coughing. This, ruled the American Federation of Radio Artists, would constitute acting, which requires extra payment to the announcer of from $9 to $15.30.

P: In Gaffney, S.C., William Alexander, 25, a mechanic, got mad at Raymond Parker, 25, a millworker, and thought of an old-fashioned solution. He wrote Parker: "I will wait where the road forks on top of the mountain . . . We will both draw and shoot for our lives . . ." Alexander never got within range; the sheriff got him first. Charge: violating South Carolina's 68-year-old antidueling law.

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