Americana

MANNERS & MORALS

P: When Harry Chapin Smith, 84, died last fall and was buried in Potter's Field, most of his Brooklyn neighbors assumed that he had been what he appeared to be: a toothless, poverty-stricken derelict, who lived in a one-room hovel and sold odds & ends of junk picked up on nighttime scavenging rounds. Last week the true identity of Harry Smith came to light. The old derelict was a wealthy Harvard man, long respected by his brokers for his canny investments. Total of his estate's assets: about $400,000 in cash, bonds and blue-chip stocks.

P: On Connecticut's Merritt Parkway State Police caught up with a new wrinkle in reckless driving: a factory hand shaving with an electric razor while speeding to work.

P:Five-year-old Bobby Lemmon of San Antonio, Texas watched a TV horse opera with growing excitement, then ran to get his dad's .22 rifle, came back to blaze away at the screen. Standing over the family's shattered TV set, he calmly explained: "Shucks, the good guy needed some help."

P:Fifteen-year-old Jerry Sikon of Macomb County, Mich, watched a TV horror mystery as he cleaned his shotgun. Four of his brothers & sisters were also looking on. His father, Deputy Sheriff John Sikon, a former preacher, objected to the program. His mother said it wasn't harmful. Words between the parents led to blows. After the deputy sheriff struck the wife with a paint roller, Jerry slipped a shell into his shotgun and fired at his father. "Don't blame the boy. I was wrong," said the father just before he died.

P: After World War II, Orton T. Campbell came back from the Air Force to his old civil service job at the Government Printing Office in Washington. But he grumbled loudly against his superiors, was fired for "circulating slanderous and defamatory statements" against them. Campbell carried the issue to the courts. Last week the Circuit Court of Appeals, reversing a lower court ruling, found that Campbell was properly discharged. He can still appeal to the Supreme Court, thereby add substantially to the $500,000 which, it is estimated, the Government has had to spend in trying to separate him from a $4,400-a-year job.

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