December 2001

THEY’RE SERIOUS ABOUT SWEETS IN ALBUQUERQUE

Someone in Albuquerque, N.M., stole a trailer full of Tootsie Rolls – $50,000 worth – only to abandon it across town. It must have been more than he could chew. In another incident, an Albuquerque police helicopter landed in a vacant lot next to a Krispy Kreme for a late-night doughnut break.

The police officer and his civilian pilot bought a dozen, then took off. Witnesses were startled, and the officer got into trouble. “I don’t know whose brain child it was,” police spokesman Brian McCutcheon said, “but it’s an ugly child.”

A Krispy Kreme employee just shrugged. “Cops got to eat, too,” he said.


GREAT, MORE CRANK CALLS

Like old automobiles, old telephones had to be cranked by hand. Now, the crank phone could return to a truck cab near you. A new accessory for Motorola and other cell phones, FreeCharge, enables the user to recharge the battery with a crank. Each 45 seconds of cranking provides several minutes of talk time, several hours of standby time. The target customers are heavy cell-phone users such as truckers.


OINK, OINK, SAID THE FROG

A $51 million Iowa bypass will be delayed because of a snorting frog.

No, the frog isn’t so huge it blocks bulldozers. It’s only 4 inches long – if it’s there at all. But just in case the endangered crawfish frog, not seen in Iowa for 60 years, might live along the highway’s path near Fairfield, scientists are going to search for it this spring. Because the road permit can’t be issued until the frog report is in, the bypass, originally to be completed in 2004, probably won’t be ready until 2006.

The crawfish frog, which snorts like a pig, is known to exist in Kansas, Illinois and Oklahoma. If the frogs are found in Iowa, too, the new highway may require tunnels or wire barriers to keep them out of traffic.


HOW’S THE WEATHER UP THERE?

“This guy drove up in his truck, got out, walked around and watched. I yelled down, ‘We’re hiring today,’ and he just got back in his truck and drove off.”

– Jack Bue of Hatfield, Wis., who has fun with truckers while he paints water towers for a living, to the Sidney Sun-Telegraph in Nebraska


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