Fun_People Archive
7 May
WhiteBoardness - 5/7/97

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Wed,  7 May 97 23:39:06 -0700
To: Fun_People
Subject: WhiteBoardness - 5/7/97

Excerpted-from: WhiteBoard News for Wednesday, May 07, 1997

Red Lion, Pennsylvania:

Other couples at the prom may have dazzled, but Elizabeth Frey was
positively glittering in her tin-plated steel dress.

While classmates were out buying expensive gowns, the 17-year-old junior at
Red Lion Area High School whipped up the five-pound dress in shop class for
last Saturday night's prom.

"My mom said I looked like a disco ball," Frey said. "It was actually more
comfortable than I thought it would be. I tried to use a pretty light gauge
so it wouldn't get too heavy."

The bodice included sheet-metal plates riveted onto thick black canvas, with
a zipper and elastic in strategic places "so I could breathe," Frey said.
The skirt was made of small, metal squares chained together to create a
flowing effect. The straps were metal rings.

"I carried a pair of pliers in my pocketbook just in case one of the jump
links came loose, so I could fix it right there," said Frey, who has worked
with tools since she was a toddler.

School officials hesitated when they heard Frey wanted to wear her shop
project to the biggest gig of the year.

"The prom coordinator wanted to see it before I wore it because it was
different. But when she saw it, she really liked it," Frey said.

"It brought a sense of fun to the prom," Principal David Vodila said. "It
says a lot about Elizabeth's creativity."

Yet if she had it to do over again, she might make one change: "I might make
the chains longer, because the way I had it designed it was a little bit
hard to sit down."
==========

Farmington, Connecticut:

Bill Morse's hole-in-one had fellow golfers in stitches.

Teeing off on the first hole Saturday at the Country Club, Morse drove his
ball through a large spruce tree about 50 yards away. The ball proceeded to
bounce off rocks near a cart path, reverse direction, and land on the left
front of the 18th green before rolling about 30 feet into the cup.

"It was a once-in-a-century shot and the funniest thing I've ever seen on
a golf course," Morse said. "When the ball started rolling, it looked like
a perfect pitch shot.  Everyone began chanting, `Go in, go in."'

When the ball disappeared into the hole, Morse raised his arms in triumph,
then fell down in laughter along with everyone else.

A former club champion, Morse had a legitimate hole-in-one two years ago at
- of all places - the 205-yard 18th hole at Farmington.
==========

Corpus Christi, Texas:

A woman's plea for help scrawled in red lipstick on a restroom wall helped
police rescue her and two children after they were allegedly abducted by
her estranged husband.

Edid Naranjo Leary's ordeal began Monday night in Richmond, near Houston.

She told police her husband accused her of having an affair and forced her
and the boys, ages 3 and 9, into a truck.  Leary, 31, said her husband began
talking about killing himself and "taking her with him." They had recently
separated.

She wrote messages in bathrooms everywhere she could get her husband to
stop, police said, including a Dairy Queen and a convenience store.

By Tuesday, the family was in Corpus Christi, where Ms.  Leary wrote her
name and the words, "Please help me," on the bathroom wall of a Wal-Mart.

A customer alerted an assistant manager, who called police.  The family was
rescued and the 32-year-old man, whose name was not released because he had
not been charged, was jailed.

"It was a freaky deal," said Wal-Mart manager Sam Longoria.
==========

Bensalem, Pennsylvania:

At first, the officers thought the wildly quacking mallard had a death wish
because it kept jumping in front of a moving police car. It turns out she
knew exactly who to call.

After the patrol car pulled over, the mama mallard led the officers to a
storm drain where nine baby ducks were trapped.

"I had never seen anything like it," said Officer Christopher McMullin, a
five-year veteran of the suburban Philadelphia force. "It was going
berserk."

The duck confronted McMullin's cruiser Sunday on a quiet access road near
the Bensalem Police Department. The officer tried to drive around the bird,
but it kept walking around in circles to block the vehicle.

So McMullin got out of the car.

"I hear this cheeping of baby ducks over to my left," McMullin recalled.
"And now I know why this duck's going crazy."

With the mother duck quacking in the background, McMullin and two other
officers pried off the storm grate to reunite the family. Said Officer
Kenneth Dowd: "Mama took them back to the pond and probably yelled at them
for wandering off."

© 1997 Peter Langston