1979 Bum Steer Awards

January 1979

(Page 2 of 2)

THREE-ALARM TOAST
McDonald’s recalled 180,000 containers of grape jelly that its Dallas supplier had made with hot pepper sauce.

WE AIN’T TAKING NO MORE TESTS
After learning that 535 Dallas first-year teachers were out performed by high school students on a mental ability test, Houston teachers refused to take similar exams.

WARREN BEATTY WAS BETTER ANYWAY
Natalie Wood told a Dallas reporter that she turned down the lead in Bonnie and Clyde because “I didn’t think it would be good for my mental equilibrium to spend that much time in Texas.”

DROP THAT ROCK OR I’LL SWEEP
A teenage clerk foiled a robbery at a San Antonio convenience store by using a broomstick to dissuade a would-be robber armed with a rock.

BUT NOT EVEN ROTTEN EGGS CURE SOCIAL SCIENTISTS
A Texas A&I social scientist said there is documented evidence that raw eggs are a cure for the evil eye.

THE WIFE IS ALWAYS THE LAST TO KNOW
A 41-year-old man robbed a Dallas bank and was filmed in the process by the bank’s automatic camera system. When his wife saw the film on television, she turned him in.

I DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT JUNK BUT I KNOW WHAT I LIKE
Two Dallas city maintenance workers welded together some scrap metal and placed it among the abstract sculptures on display at the new city hall. It remained there for a month before the prank was discovered, meanwhile receiving favorable comments from John Mondale.

WAIT TILL NEXT YEAR
Houston set a new record for murders, surpassing on October 13 the 1977 record of 352.

WHY DIDN’T WE THINK OF THAT?
After a highly publicized contest to select a new name for Reunion Arena attracted more than 4000 entries, the Dallas City Council settled on the winner—Reunion Arena.

GRANDMA, WHAT BIG EYES YOU HAVE
An 82-year-old San Antonio woman pleaded guilty to a charge of possession of a pound of marijuana.

ALL CARS BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR 33 ½ THIEVES, PECULIAR WALK
Thieves stole four suitcases from a Houston-area salesman’s car. Their haul: 67 shoes—all for the left foot.

MR. NICE GUY
Cullen Davis.

YOU MEAN 64 CONTESTANTS
A Dolly Parton look-alike contest at Gilley’s honky-tonk in Pasadena attracted 32 contestants.

IF YOU’D JUST GOTTEN HERE A MINUTE SOONER
After Baptist lay minister Hans Mullikin of Marshall crawled 1600 miles to the gate of the White House, he was told that President Carter was too busy to see him.

JOAN MONDALE LOVED IT
Both Dallas newspapers printed photographs of paintings by modern artist Frank Stella upside down, and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram printed one reversed.

FOR A GOOD TIME CALL BADGE #707
A Waco policeman was suspended for writing obscene graffiti in the police station men’s room.

THEY FORGOT TO CUT THE ANCHOVIES
Radio station KXOL of Fort Worth made the world’s largest pizza, but the local health department wouldn’t allow the four-ton creation to be eaten.

WE’RE DOING A GREAT JOB HERE AT THE TEXAS STATE HISTORICAL ASSOCATION
The Texas State Historical Association awarded a $500 prize for the most important book on Texas published during 1977 to the authors of the supplement to the Handbook of Texas—written by the Texas State Historical Association.

WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT A FOOTBALL WITH ALL THOSE X’S ON IT?
As auctioneer for an Austin Woman’s Club fund raiser, former UT athletic director Darrell Royal started the bidding at $50 on a football autographed by the Texas A&M football team. He had to buy it himself when no else would bid.

BUT THEY SURE FOOLED HUNTERS
Charley Rosheger of Beaumont began manufacturing rubber duck feet for hunters to attach to their decoys because, he said, footless decoys do not fool ducks.

YEAH, LADY, THAT’S RIGHT, I DIDN’T TELL YOU NOT TO RUN INTO THE BUILDING, BUT . . .
In Garland, a 58-year-old woman practicing for her driving test crashed into the Department of Public Safety testing center. In Sherman, a 72-year-old woman smashed into the testing center with the DPS testing officer still in the car.

DON’T ORDER THE SAUSAGE
Listed under “Kennels” in the 1977-78 San Antonio Yellow Pages is “Texas Best Bar-B-Q.”

AFTER A SIX-MONTH NATIONWIDE SEARCH
Although Everett DeLong had a long criminal history, had been on probation, had lost his license to practice medicine, and had once been judged criminally insane, Travis County Sheriff Raymond Frank named him head medical officer of the county jail.

PUT UP OR SHUT UP, YOU DIRTY COMMIES
A state disaster-emergency official announced that the Texas city in maximum danger of being annihilated in a nuclear war with the Soviet Union was Wichita Falls.

SO WHAT? WE’VE GOT LOTS OF OTHER BOOKS
The University of Texas lost several valuable Rembrandt prints and a complete manuscript by Copernicus.

WHY? BECAUSE IT’S THERE
A Houston police helicopter made a crash landing on top of a moving automobile.

FOR OREGANO THEY KEEP YOU A YEAR
Otis Winfree, Jr., unsuccessfully sued Harris County Sheriff Jack Heard for $300,000, claiming that he was held in jail for nine months after dismissal of charges for possession of marijuana that turned out to be granulated parsley.

THROW IN THE MINERAL RIGHTS OR IT’S NO DEAL
For $4.95, a Corpus Christi firm offered a framable deed to a small piece of land that was Farrah Fawcett-Majors’ early childhood home.

RACEHORSE HAYNES WAS BUSY
James Calvin Jones of Dallas, charged with threatening to kill his common-law wife, acted as his own attorney. He spurned an offer of three years probation, argued the case before a jury, and was sentenced to five years in the state penitentiary.

THE LORD WORKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS
More than 8000 people made pilgrimages to the home of a New Mexico woman who saw a facial image of Jesus on a tortilla.

THE THREE INELIGIBLES CAN TAKE STUDY HALL
The Midland School Board agreed to allow sex education classes for the first time, but only for retarded students.

NOW FOR A PROGRESS REPORT FROM THE WAR ON DRUGS
Harris County narcotics officers arrested a man who sold them seventeen pounds of heroin, only to discover it was a common antihistamine. In Oklahoma, three Texans were busted for selling undercover officers eighteen kilos of alfalfa. And in Denton, a DPS informant stole almost $10,000 that officers intended to use for drug purchase.

TAKE THE EXTRA-CRISPY OR I’LL BLOW YOUR HEAD OFF
A Houston robber who had locked up the employees of a fried chicken stand tried to avoid suspicion by waiting on some customers who came in, but the fingerprints he left on the tongs led to his arrest and conviction.

THEY WENT BLIND THE FIRST WEEK
The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare sent fifteen chimpanzees to a UT laboratory near Bastrop to start a chimpanzee breeding project. All fifteen were males.

THANKS A LOT
Immediately after Potter County commissioners gave a raise to their highest-paid hourly employee, construction worker L. R. “Buster” Moncrief, they announced they would have to lay him off because they didn’t have enough money to pay him for the entire year.

BUT OFFICER, IT’S ONLY TAPIOCA
Billy Powell of New Summerfield in Cherokee County was indicted on charges (later dismissed) of smuggling into the U.S. a substantial quantity of bull semen.

EVERYONE KNOWS THAT GETTING SHORTED ONLY A DOLLAR IS A SIGN OF GREAT HONOR IN LEBANON
After waiting an hour and fifteen minutes to be served at a Fort Worth Lebanese restaurant and then getting shorted a dollar in their change, four diners decided not to leave a tip, whereupon the waiter followed them outside, yelled at them in Arabic, and assaulted one of the men.

NEXT TIME TRY HANDING OUT THE MONEY AT THE COCKTAIL PARTY
A Pakistani businessman went on a spending spree in élan, a Dallas disco, buying champagne for the house and handing out more than $2 million in checks. He later stopped payment on the checks, confessing that the giveaway was a ploy to publicize his message that the free world is in danger. “I went through the conventional channels,” he said. “I dressed up and went to the right cocktail parties with governmental officials . . . but no one would listen.”

BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD
The City of Austin spent $54,000 for Austin’s first car pool lane. It was one block long and led to an immediate increase in the percentage of single-occupant cars using the route.

IS THAT WHAT EX-CON STANDS FOR?
Believing that a robbery suspect had swallowed two diamonds valued at $25,000, Houston police fed him laxatives for four days.

HE’S WANTED ON A HIT-AND-ROLL CHARGE
A man in a wheelchair served as lookout during the robbery of a small Houston grocery. The robber made his getaway pushing his accomplice down the street.

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