Americana

MANNERS & MORALS

P: New York City police picked up the youngest dope addict they had ever found, an eight-year-old Bronx boy, who confessed to smoking marijuana cigarettes. His story led police to a dozen other child addicts (heroin as well as marijuana). In the lower Bronx, the dope users are classed by age as "seniors" (16-18 years), "juniors" (13-15), and "midgets" (11-12). They buy from peddlers who refuse to sell to anyone older than 18 lest he turn out to be a detective. P: Sweaters have been bursting into flame all over the country. The phenomenon began about a month ago in Los Angeles when an auto driver's sweater took fire as he lit a cigarette. By last week a score of similar cases had been reported as far east as New England; there were no deaths but numerous burns. The garments, made of highly combustible brushed rayon, were hawked by peddlers at prices as low as $1.50 each.

P: The ballad of Frankie & her man, who done her wrong, was called by Carl Sandburg the U.S.'s "classical gutter song." There are upward of 300 versions of Frankie and Johnnie, and no one knows just when & where it began. Frankie Baker, a young tart in St. Louis' Negro district in 1899, was sure she inspired the lament. When her man (Albert Britt) two-timed her, Frankie tongue-lashed him; when he pulled a knife on her, she shot him dead. Tried for murder, she was acquitted because she killed in self-defense. People on the streets began singing the ballad of Frankie at her, and they kept singing it as she moved westward. Mae West sang it in the Paramount film, She Done Him Wrong; then RKO did a picture called Frankie & Johnnie. Frankie Baker complained that everybody but her was making money out of her song. Her travels ended in Portland, Ore., where for the past few years she lived on relief in a ramshackle frame house. Neighborhood kids sang her song outside her window. Last week, an embittered 75, Frankie died. P: Theola Barton is a 15-year-old Californian who likes to go to school in pin curls. Last March the principal of her school in Antioch sent her home to take out the pins. Theola's parents rebelled, said that Theola would not go back to classes until she could do her hair as she pleased. Last week Judge Yates Hamm fined the Bartons $10 apiece for failing to send a minor to school. Snapped Ma Barton: "We're appointing you the legal guardian of our five youngest children to raise, to feed, to educate, to clothe and to care for according to your standards." Then the Bartons stalked off, leaving five wailing youngsters in court. The startled judge gave them 50-c- apiece as a soother, then turned them over to the county juvenile home. P: In the wooded hills near Shreveport, La., a puma was on the prowl, terrorizing the city's 125,000 residents. Heavily armed hunters and hound dogs were trying to track the beast down.

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