Americana

P: In a softball game between two inmate teams at Massachusetts' Plymouth county jail, the ball was belted over the wall. Unwilling to hold up the game, good-natured Guard Robert Woodward opened the gate so that a trusty could retrieve it, whereupon four prisoners knocked him down and escaped.

P: Leather sandals for children, with a ball of bubble gum fitted into the uppers, were offered for sale in Washington, D.C.

P: A mechanical crib called "Night Nurse" was demonstrated in Manhattan by Dr. Sydney Norton Baruch, consulting engineer for the Air Force. Designed to help busy mothers, the motorized creche also will croon lullabies from a recording of the kind mother sings.

P: Nettled by the ancient wheeze that plumbers always forget their tools, D. A. Bell, president of the Associated Plumbing Contractors of Colorado, snorted at a Denver convention of the group: "Sheer malarkey. No plumber can carry with him all the tools he needs. A minimum of 3,000 tools and repair parts are required."

P: On behalf of the National Highway Users Conference, Mrs. Emily Post, doyenne of U.S. manners, wrote a 46-page treatise called "Motor Manners." Sample mannerisms: "... A gentleman will no more cheat a red light or a stop sign than he would cheat in a game of cards. A courteous lady will not 'scold' others raucously with her automobile horn any more than she would act like a 'fishwife' at a party."

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