Show bh lights ts by L L L STEVENSON johnny who is 43 inches tall celebrated his twenty seventh birthday recently he received many gifts because he has a large following one however was ol of special significance it consisted of a life contract to appear on the air programs of a large cigarette company the amount involved was not announced but it must have been considerable since johnny before the life contract had an income ample enough tor for him not only to sup support dort himself but to act as the principal support of his father mother brothers and sisters a family of 10 in all when he first went on the air he acted on occasions as call boy at park avenue and other parties where a smart page was held ad to be essential to the general scenery now his paging is done only before a microphone outside jobs are no longer necessary a 0 0 the part that johnny plays on the air is an easy one for him As a matter of fact he spent some time rehearsing tor for it for his rehearsals his pay consisted largely of tips As a page boy at the new yorker he was going through the lobbies shouting call for mr smith or something like that and an officer of a tobacco company happened to see and hear him he fitted right into the picture in the mind of the executive and was hired without any formalities whatsoever so now his picture appears on cigarette cartons and hes saving up to retire he has two hobbies hunting and ping pong despite the fact that news is a most perishable commodity not in infrequently it travels long and circuitous routes before it is published in mind is a dispatch wh which ich appeared in a new york borni morning ng paper it was written on the way down the yingtse river and was filed for transmission by cable at shanghai from shanghai it traveled to manila and from manila to san francisco from san francisco it came to new york to the syndicate whose correspondent filed it from new york it went to london where it appeared in the daily mail the london correspondent spon dent of the new york times picked it up and sent it to his pa paper per where it was published incidentally it was received in new york in the times building and from there sent to london that reminds me of frank sibley of boston years ago the steamer portsmouth went down off cape cod newspaper men were sent from boston to cover the wreck and above all to identity identify the vessel from wreckage that came ashore they picked up a good story since the portsmouth was an important steamer but while they were working such a blizzard came up that wires went down and roads were blocked bottled up apparently all the newspaper men could do was watt wait for a chance to get back to their offices sibley however knew that the american terminal ot of the french cable was at orleans a short distance away he made his way to the cable office and sent a story to paris with instructions that it be cabled back to boston thus his paper scored a notable scoop get a lot ot of fun out ot of reading the 1938 almanac tor for new yorkers the second edition of the metropolitan data prepared by the federal writers project of the works progress administration the publication is a mixture of past and present with a number ot of jingles and no end ot of information for instance it is a violation ot of the sanitary code to sleep in ones bathtub the first houses supposed to have been occupied by white men on manhattan were on the site of 41 broadway in 1654 it cost an indian 30 cents to be ferried from manhattan to long island while for all others the charge was only 15 cents 0 bell syndicate service |