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Show THE CORNER 'PLUG STORE ARE WE TO HAVE "horse automats" auto-mats" and corner "plug-stores"? "plug-stores"? Mayor O'Dwyer of New York says the police and taxpayers are left in the stretch in the contest with bookies and that the only answer an-swer to the American gambling mania is the state operated "Hunch-enette" "Hunch-enette" onto which a man may walk and make a bet openly. His position is that you can't take away a man's determination determina-tion to lose money on wrong information, and that the state might as well take its cut, to the relief of taxpayers. Civic morals and high standards of character are all right, hizzon- er seems to believe, but they break too slowly and seem never in shape for distance events. - Bookies outnumber the police. Before a cop gets one of 'em to the station house the customers have located another through a platoon system. A raid merely gives a horse player a hunch on some skinner named "The Pinch-er" Pinch-er" or "Rockpile." Judges, prosecutors, police, politicians, city officials, businessmen, busi-nessmen, professors and people peo-ple in all walks of life play the ponies all over the land in tremendous tre-mendous numbers. As a cop tosses a horse player into the pokey he is apt to snarl, "Ya bum, it took me so long to get you here I'm an hour behind in my handicapping." Right or wrong, horse betting is close to a national pastime. It is the mayor's contention we should face facts. And concede that they always win easily and unextended. This column feels that millions bet on horses because they love to be furtive. Once they walk into a "deucelette" and make a bet with no trouble, they may decide something some-thing is making it so easy there must be a catch in it. Shudda Haddim, the Egyptian plunger, says, "I got more bookmakers around me than relatives. They get on my nerves. But I dunno about open betting parlors openly arrived ar-rived at. If they set 'em up they should put a tree inside each one so a horse player can sneak behind it to make a bet and feel natural. "And the state has gotta train the help to develope a larcenous xpression and talk out the side af their mugs. It won't be no fun tor me risking my dough with some government clerk with an honest !ace. Habit is habit. "Also, if the state goes ahead with the idea, they should put in easy chairs, sofas, soft drinks, jandwiches and video broadcasts of speeches by high turf officials tellin' how they hate gambling and Dnly wanna improve the breed. Didja see what happened the day the cops drove the bookies across the river? A skinner named 'Jersey 'Jer-sey Bounce' won at Tropical in telephone numbers! And I let it go!" CAN YOU REMEMBER? Away back when a new automobile auto-mobile model never came out before be-fore you had finished a demonstration demonstra-tion in the old one? "Will swop canned goods, smoked meats and fish, preserves, pre-serves, etc., for buttons, pressed glass, pins, postcards, bath towels, sachet bags, two warm sleeping gowns and pair of eiderdown bed jackets. J404" Yankee Magazine. That's a pretty rigid change in diet, if you ask us. THE REAL NEWS NEWSREEL Rodgers and Hammerstein say there is nothing wrong with the theater and if we had their hits we would be even more positive . . . Fortitude of the Year: Grace George going on with ''The Velvet Glove" a few hours after the funeral of her husband, Bill Brady .... Porter service is so disgracefully bad at Grand Central that it's a black eye to the city . ... It is common for train with thousands of passengers to arrive and not be met by one redcap! red-cap! . , , A man 102 years old in Gotham says he is the original Jesse fames and has witnesses to prove it , . . Aw, take your place in line with the rest of us, mister! . . . Cole Brothers' Broth-ers' circus has been sold. "The foreign policy of ths United States is determined not merely by what the state department, depart-ment, the President or even the congress says, but reflects the sum total of the activities, thoughts and speech of the American people." -Dean Acheson. Wanna bet? Miami puts on a super air show every winter. But even this doesn't make many folks take their eyes off the beaches. |