The Pittsburgh Press from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 17

nmvAwr mm MARCH 1114 i 13 14 15 14 IT it a rt The Pittsburgh Press rTTirnrTWTf I I i a f-gJ 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18JWL20 21 22 23 24 Hush, There! WASHINGTON For patriots, who want to do some secret guarding of secret stuff for their 'Uncle Sam, I've got a complicated situation. Bear with me, guards: The General Services Administration (GSA) now has mountains of bulk raw rub una. im a 4 i I 10 13 14 15 IT II II 31 23 3A 34 35 31 3T 31 MX SECTION TWO MONDAY, MARCH 26, 1956 PAGE 17 hi ber, special kinds of cotton in thousands of bales, and pyrethrum (bug juice) scattered around the country in 278 secret warehouses. How a warehouse can be secret is another matter we need not go into here. These materials are part of the stockpile for war; they all were imported and they'd immediately become scarce if shooting started.

These warehouses are By Fred Othman this: Don't call us; we'll call you. Even as you read this the GSA has its secret agents touring the country, interviewing police chiefs and sheriffs in 378 secret towns where the secret stockpiles are. They're asking the cops to recommend citizens who might be interested in spending their nights, during emergencies, guarding big, black piles of stuff against those who might want to apply a match. Some of these lists already have been written. Some of those who have been recommended have been interviewed.

Those chosen will be given security checks. Then they'll get two afternoons a month of instruction in firearms and how to handle saboteurs and they'll be ready for guard duty. Ho Diamonds or Jewels The GSA man said, of course, they'd not be asked to guard the fancy stuff, like diamonds and jeweled watch bearings. He said these were under care of the military, or of the GSA itself and were perfectly safe. I said what about all the copper that was sneaked out of a military warehouse in New Jersey last year, under the very eyes of the soldiers who were supposed to be guarding it? Didn't the military watchers maybe need somebody to watch them while they watched? My man said they did not.

He said thin copper was whacked off in small pieces by workmen in the warehouse and carried out In their lunch pails. He said this was pilferage and there'd always be a certain amount of that. He also said the FBI had caught the copper snatchers and they were before a grand jury now. Secretly. So that does it, volunteers.

You never know when your Government'U call you by phone to guard a secret warehouse full of secret bug killer. That is, if you live in the secret town where this cache happens to be. guarded well enough as things stand now, but Baron Shacklette, in charge of guarding secret merchandise in secret places, figured he'd need better protection in case of emergency. So he decided to appeal to 5000 Americans to guard for free the black aisles between the rubber piles, on a when, as, and if basis. When word of this leaked out, patriotic ones from all over offered their services.

Just tell us where is the secret warehouse with the secret stuff and we'll guard it against saboteurs, said these would-be helpers. A Secret-Secret Oiemmo This put Mr. Shacklette on the well-known spot. How can you tell a citizen the address of a secret storage room and still keep it secret? The General Services Administration said it would be Just as well pleased if nobody, including mft wrote anything about this devious situation. I said all I wanted, ma'am, was the facts.

So here they are and they boll down to Woman in Action by Robert c. Rwrk I 4f li tm ini. miiiui 1 11 mini 1 ii 111 1 11 11 1 1 WAU, New Guinea Doris Booth doesn't look like a woman who in 1924 walked here from Salamaua on the New Guinea coast on a seven-day hike with cannibals for company. She does not look. like a pioneer, or the Breoti-takinj sight and bower of beaut were terms used to describe the original Duquesne Gardens.

owner of a gold mine, or a professional nurse, or a member of the Order of the British Empire. But she is all of these things, a rosy cheeked, smooth-skinned woman who looks no more than in her late 40s. She came in as a nurse and I expect for romantic reasons as well lust after The Garden has been condemned to die. Date of execution in uncertain, but plans were announced recently to tear down the ancient sports arena and build new apartments on the site, Work on the long-needed Municipal Auditorium in the Hill redevelopment program will start in the fall This first of a series tells the highlights of the 57-year-old concerted carbarn that began its career as Uuquesne Hardens. lW How Car Barn Turned Into Sports Palace By REGIS M.

WELSH "This- old home once rang with laughter This old home heard many shouts Now its golden days are numbered As City planners gaie about Ain'i gonna need this house no longer Ain't gonna need this house no more Ain't got time to fix the shingles Ain't got time to fin the floor When the wreckers demolition ball hits The Gardens, it will be the worst mismatch in the history of this grand old sports arena. The time-ravaged walls and the leaky roof should crumble on the first good blow. Thus, another milestone in Pittsburgh's march the curse. "Well, next morning, he was just about gone. But when I said I had talked with my ancestors, he brightened up.

I told him that my ancestors were very powerful, and had eaten the ancestors of the man who cursed him. He perked up still more. "Then I said that as a sign from my ancestors, smoke would come from a dish with no fuel in it, and he would be well. I mixed up some glycerine and permanganate of potash, which naturally caused a smoke. He got well immediately.

Vsts Missionary "After he recovered, he went to the mission and told the missionary that he wasn't going to church any more. The missionary asked him why, because the man was a solid convert. "The man replied, 'Me fella no stop along church, all finish close up. Big fella masta 'im walk along sky (God) 'lm got nothing on "It was just a touch embarrassing," Mrs. Booth said.

"I had no intention of competing with the Almighty." On another occasion, Mrs. Booth nursed a high war chief of the local cannibals back to health, and the tribe was highly impressed. To show their gratitude, they sent her the best present they could imagine as suitable. They sent her a smoked human foot. "They were great days, the old gold-rush days," she Mid.

"Everybody stopped everything and rushed over here to look for gold. There was a ship In Salamaua, full of told fever, and even the captain Jumped ship, leaving her high and dry." Mrs. Booth wears an ornate gold brooch of a miner's pick, pan and other sluicing gear. It is very good gold, and Mrs. Booth ought to know.

It came out of her own mine on the Bulolo River. the big strike of gold at Edie Creek, where the Naml and Karango Rivers merge with the Bulolo. She walked every foot, at a time when each yard of bush contained a cannibal. Parenthetically, bearers who came in with the miners used to disappear methodically, and the explanation was that they had become frightened and run away. One miner got suspicious one day, and found a group of local men had done in a straggler, and it later developed that aH the supposed deserters had been given the same treatment.

Jht Curttd Mrs. Booth learned an enormous number of things about the natives in tending the sick among them. She recalls that one man reported he had been cursed, and would aurtty die. "He was dying, all right," she says. "So I decided that black magic was the only shot to cure him.

I told him that he had been crushed by an old man in another village I described the old man, who could have been any old man and that I would consult with my ancestors this night about how to remove 01 progress will be reached. And the entertainment center 'Snapshots' Here By Gilbert Love Name It! It Had It! It as a "veritable bower of beauty" and "perfect in detail." It was the most ornate thing of its time. There was a $12,000 fountain in the spacious lobby, a palm garden and rich, thick carpeting and crystal chandeliers glistening high In the ceiling. Forty arc lights and 4000 incandescent lights gleamed row on row along the roof girders. The sumptuous amphitheater, panelled in natural yellow pine and with comfortable upholstered chairs, faced a white and gold stage at the Neville Street end of the block-long building.

The men's restroom, adorned with plush red drapes, was the last word in plumbing. The ladies' room, mirrored and primpy with Brussels carpets and polished mahogany furniture, lacked only smoking facilities, taboo for women in those days. There were 2300 pairs of skates and eight club suites for the hockey teams. The suites, containing lockets, showers and white marble bath rooms, led directly to the ice level. Two 150 horsepower compressors, driven by electric motors, provided circulation.

Another Payoff At the opening, Mr. Magee got so enthused that he forgot all about how much of his money Mr. McSwigan had spent to make the carbarn a "nice place for nice people to go to see nice things." He died on March 8, 1901, satis-fled that he had made another good investment. The Garden proved an Immediate success with skating sessions three times daily at 25 and 35 rents. Hockey was inaugurated the second night, on a twice weekly schedule.

Trick and fancy skaters were brought In as special attractions. Ice skating became so popular that it wasn't until the third year 1001 that the arena branched out into other types of entertainment. And even to this day, the ice sport has been the nucleus around which all the other activities revolved and thrived. NEXT The birth or pro hockey. "Snapshots" around town-Mrs.

WilJiam Boyd, of Wilkinsburg, who is Mrs. Pennsylvania of 1956, idly listening as her six year-old daughter answers the tele, phone and hcarinrr the child serinns'v in. forming the caller that "Mother is wearing a wig" and trying to explain to the caller, who happens to be a real estate salesman, that daughter is referring to her new chignon, which is a knot of hair acquired by those who want to change to a fashionable new man came up with a venturesome idea. Why not transform It into a sports palace? Andrew Stephen McSwigan was the young man with the idea. A former newspaperman, he was "press agent" for one of the owners of the traction (trolley) company abandoning tha old carbarn.

Mojee Bought Ideo It was a relatively simple matter to sell the idea to his boss, Christopher Lyman Magee. who had become rich and influential from the nick-les his street cars collected and other interests. Mr. Magee served in the State Senate and was an associate of contractor Sen. William Flinn in traction companies which became a part of the present Pittsburgh Railways system.

Only a short while before, Mr. Magee had given his palatial Forbes Street home, as a memorial to his wife, to found the hospital that still bears her mme. Now, this idea of providing the City with an amusement center appealed to him on several counts. Two of his street car lines Fifth and Craig would pass the door. And in those preauto days everyone rode street cars.

Furthermore, young McSwigan already had established a name for himself in the amusement business and knew a good thing. Under his deft promotion, four parks all on the Magee-Flinn carlines were booming. They were: Calhoun, noted for its annual Orphans Picnic; Oak wood, with its merry-go-round, favorite spot' for West End and Crafton residents; Southern, where staid Hilltop Germans gathered to sip a "quarter" of beer; and Kennywood, the eventually will shift from Oakland to the new Municipal Auditorium soon to be built Downtown. To sentimentalists and 1 there are a few left dev tructlon of the Craiir street arena will ever what may well be the last-remaining link with the City's colorful, frenzied and sometimes fantastic past. With The Garden goes the last vestige of the glamor of Pittsburgh's "Gay Nineties" The days when Father was a "dude" in his derby hat, hiph button shoes, choking (maybe celluloid) collar and peg-top trousers.

Mother was stylish, too. with a "rat" in her hair and hat as big as a washtub festooned with feathers mincing along in her whale-bone corset and skirts that swept the sidewalks. It was "Oh You "Kid" and "23 Skidoo." They were just as fun-loving in those days as the rockandroll set of today. How Gardens Began That, boys and girls, was the setting when Duquesne Garden as it was known originally emerged at the turn of the century. And here's how it happened: Electric trolleys began replacing the horse cars, reaching out into the growing sub-urbs of Homewood, Craffon, McKees Rocks and Carrick.

This change in travel bewildered the old timers. They shook their heads and mumbled "we're going too fast, nothing good can come from these inventions of the devil." But, as the horses and cars were removed from the block-long carbarn on Craic. near Fifth, an imaginatne joung stop the response from a classified ad he had in the Sunday paper. Says he answered the phone 132 times up to 8 o'clock Sunday night, when he left home. A police car traveling very slowly along a residential street, with the two officers in it grinning broadly.

Two neighborhood dogs on the sidewalks, crouched and waiting until the cruiser is abreast of them, then lunging at it in mock ferocity. The policeman laughing as they drive away. A young man stooping on a crowded Liberty Avenue sidewalk to tie a shoestring for an elderly woman. "How nice!" remarks a passer by. "He's taking good care of his mother." But the tying completed, the young man tips his hat and hurries on.

Officials at West Penn Hospital reading a letter in childish printing, and being mystified about why it was sent "Dear Hospital, I prayinmy prayers that allofyou will get well very soon, though I amonly 7 years old, I want to pray for you. Mary Lynn Bishop." Milton Weintraub, Pittsburgh insurance agency manager, distributing marbles with metal bands engraved with the words of the Golden Rule the idea being that a man carries one in his pocket and, when he reaches into that pocket for change, remembers to "Do unto others ANDREW S- McSWIGAN Sports palace dream came true. Duquesne Garden named for Magee's biggest street car operation, the Duquesne Traction Co. opened its doors on Jan. 2.1, 1899.

It was delayed a week by a slight hitch in getting the hang of freezing the ice by the new brine system. This delay, however, only served to whet the public's appetite. Some 10,000 of the City's gayest whooped it up at the opening of the "world's largest skating surface." The Garden's 26,000 square feet of ice exceeded by 8000 the famed Paris rink the largest up to that time. Thousands put on skates. The ice was crowded until the gong rang and Gunther and famous Band had blown themselves out of wind.

Thus, began the swirl of entertainment that, in time, ranged to almost every field hockey, opera, bowling, boxing, six-day-bike races, basketball, marathon dancing. yep, Cardzn Had It! You name it and chances are the Garden had it. The arena itself was a breath-takine sight. The Pittsburgh Press described OWISTOrHER L. MAGEE Another good investinent.

playground of steelworkers from the Homestead and Duquesne mills. Of all of these, only Kennvwood remains today and it is operated by Andy's son, A. Brady McSwigan. In giving the go-ahead for building the arena, Mr. Magee's only admonition to McSwigan was: "Andrew, It will have to be a place where nice people can go to see nice things in a nice way." The Duquesne Garden Co.

was set up and the old carbarn purchased from the Consolidated Traction Co. for $200,000. Another quarter mil-lien dollars was spent converting it into an ice skating arena. New Gome Hociey Promoter McSwigan had watched the elite drive their rigs and broughams to "The Casino," an amusement center nearby in Panther Holiow at the entrance to Schenley Park. There, the young blades in comic-opera attire cut "figure eights" and other capers on something brand new artificial ice.

And they played a new game called hockey, Imported just a few years earlier from Canada, Much impressed by the crowds that thronged to the Casino, until it burned down Dec. 17. 1896, McSwigan decided this was the sport to launch his grand new arena. Many men wearing a small round cap, which makes spme look like Buster Kulikak (a character, and I do mean character, in the Captain Easy comic strip.) Phyllis Hardy going about her business as traffic manager of Radio Station WILY and half listening to one of the station's news programs hearing the name "Leslie Carlisle" and the phrase "appointed postmaster at Verona" exclaiming "Why that's my brother!" Man calling this office to ask how he can A Good Deed NEW YORK Good deeds in today's naughty world are not exactly a dime a dozen. And neither is a dramatis personae, dedicated to a good deed, that turns out to be a name-dropper's dream.

It includes such per By Inez Robb SIDE GLANCES By Galbraith OFF THE RECORD By Ed Reed sons as a French jockey named Paul Francolon, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Raymond Wegscheider, a French sergeant wounded in Korea; enchanting Actress Leonora Corbett; the Angel of Dienbienphu, Mile. Genevieve de Galard-Terraube; Mrs. Albert D. Lasker and Tr. Howard A.

Rusk, chief factotum of the Institute of (XI 1 aE J5T -fkil Rehabilitation of the New York University- In an Instant, the jockey had been turned into a helpless and hopeless invalid in a ghastly track accident and the strong young sergeant had come down from Heartbreak Ridge a paraplegic. The two apathetic men were carried into the institute when the friends of one and the comrades-in-arms of the other raised funds to send them to the world-famous New York institute for treatment. Both, trained to use muscles and skills they never knew they had, jubilantly left the Institute under their own power. Miss Corbett, electrified by the stories, went out to preach the gospel. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, fired by the same enthusiasm, took over.

The Angel of Dienbienphu, here to study rehabilitation methods, prayed that ohter French wounded could share the sergeant's treatment. Mrs. Lasker and Dr. Rusk, having started it all, pitched in. 5200,000 Is Gool Now the Duke and Duchess, aided by Miss Corbett, have set themselves to raise 80 million francs ($200,000) to start and equip a rehabilitation center in Paris.

Thereafter, it will be self-supporting. They are asking money only from Frenchmen who are in the chips and from Americans and other nationals who have homes in France or live there a substantial portion of each year. A young French doctor, Jacques Hinder-mayer, a victim of polio and highly regarded by Dr. Rusk, already has agreed to head the French institute. And the Angel can be expected to give a hand.

Sketches Bv BEN BURROUGHS 'Fehind Locked Dors' Perplexing things are happening from golden dawn to dawn none of us ever really know exactly what goes on our eyes are fooled so many times by what they chance to see life is a phantom masquerade camouflaged by gloe opinions based on sight alone are misleading at best we never know about the birds until we probe their nest hearsay is also second hand and very seldom true we must unlock the doors of life to find a hidden clue where laughter rings, heartaches might dwell how can we really tell the stage of life has many parts where mystery can dwell so it is and always will be life amazes and deplores when secret things are taken from their place behind locked doors. (Copjrltht 10M. Oneml Fwturn Bellevue Medical Center. This mixed grill of personages headed by the Duke and Duchess, currently is centering its efforts on the organization and support of a similar rehabilitation center for France. A suitable site already is being scouted in Paris.

It Is just possible that neither the French jockey nor the sergeant quite realize that they are the inspiration for a rehabilitation center for their countrymen because, accidentally and at a party, Miss Corbett heard how both had been rescued from living death and restored to active life by the Institute of Rehabilitation. Dr. Rusk Tefi Story Dr. Rusk, one- of the world's foremost authorities on rehabilitation, and Mrs, Lasker, who with her husband established the Lasker Foundation for medical research, pumped Miss Corbett full of the transformation of the two young Frenchmen. yZtzu mp 1M4 N(A lm "Be sure to rave about the suit I helped your dad buy for Eoster he doesn't like it because the shoulders aren't padded!" 'Not so close to the driveway we've got nine bucks in this thing..