Half Black Geese
Sirs:
Relative your article TIME, June 7 on the word "jalopy" and Webster R. Kent's comments (TIME, June 21), I think you are both in error. Approximately ten years ago while in a Los Angeles café with the late Herbert Somborn, ex-husband of Gloria Swanson, approximately eight mulatto dancing girls appeared. Mr. Somborn exclaimed: "What beautiful jalopies!" Pressing him for information, he stated that a jalopy was anything half black and that the word originated in a certain part of Africa, where plurals are unknown, and a jalopy is a African half black geese.
WEBSTER R. VAUGHAN
Darien, Conn.
Shark Policy
Sirs:
I enjoyed your article concerning the book by Shark Expert Colonel Hugh D. Wise [TIME, May 24], and was interested to learn that, on the end of a line, a shark has slightly less pulling power than a man swimming.
However, I have always imagined a contest with a shark as not so much a tug of war, as a free-for-all catch-as-catch-can, with no holds barred. And while we humans may have the ability to outpull a shark, the soft, creamy foods we eat have resulted in our being somewhat less than a match for him, dentally.
As one who has twice had the absorbing experience (once on the Pacific and once on the Atlantic) of standing on the beach and seeing that certain big black fin cut the water out where, but a few minutes before, I myself had been swimming, I'd like very much to know the preferred procedure when the third-time-that-charms comes along. I have heard all about how you subdue such tough customers as lions, alligators, rattlesnakes and such—you pull their jaws apart till they snap, or holding them by the tail, you crack them like a whip and their head flies off. But what to do when suddenly confronted by a shark, or barracuda ? Should one set up a tremendous splashing and threshing about, and thus attempt to frighten him off, or should one lie log-still, in the hope that he will merely sniff and go on about his business? One of such opposite courses must be considerably healthier than the other. Seriously, TIME, which is it?
PRESTON JUSTICE
New York City
Says Sharksman Wise in Tigers of the Sea: "Do sharks attack and kill men? . . . It is my opinion that a shark, except when surprised, attacked or greatly excited, rarely attacks a man whom he does not believe to be dead or helpless. . . . The discussion of all this with experienced fishermen in Nassau led naturally to the old question of what a man should do if he found himself in the water with sharks nearby. All of us agreed that he should kick, splash, yell, and raise all possible commotion but none of us would wish to be held responsible for giving such advice. Frankly, I should be willing to let the shark have the swimming hole, and I would raise no question of riparian privilege."—ED.
Candidate O'Conor
Sirs:
In the June 7 issue of TIME under Religion, you state that Al Smith was "the only Roman Catholic ever nominated for President by a major party."
Charles O'Conor was nominated in 1872 by the "Bourbon" Democrats who could not stomach Horace Greeley and his well-remembered anti-slavery editorials. I am not sure O'Conor was a Roman Catholic but his name sounds as if he were. . . .