Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 75 years ago

A detective was amazed to see a man walking down Trent Avenue carrying a load that only Superman could manage.

He was lugging 30 feet of heavy logging chain, a big broadax, a chisel, a sledgehammer and a scoop shovel. None of these items belonged to him.

Turned out the man was also carrying another kind of load. The officer said the man was so drunk, he shouldn’t even have been walking.

“I’m frank to say, your honor, I do not know where I obtained all that equipment,” the suspect said in court. “It looks as if I was going to build a railroad singlehanded. I was so drunk I don’t even remember having it, and as drunk as I was, I wonder with the officer not only where I picked it up, but how I carried it.”

The judge showed mercy on the man, since he seemed to be sincerely telling the truth. The judge sentenced him to only 15 days in jail.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1804: The Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the Louisiana Territory as well as the Pacific Northwest left camp near present-day Hartford, Ill. … 1942: Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait” was first performed by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. … 1962: The Anthony Burgess novel “A Clockwork Orange,” set in a dystopian future England, was first published by London publisher Heinemann. … 1998: Singer-actor Frank Sinatra died at a Los Angeles hospital at age 82.