Modern-day fables never die; they live on a kernel of truth to amuse another day

Another wave of contemporary fables seems to be circulating in Los Angeles.

These stories are never told by the protagonist--the person to whom they happened. They are told, usually, by a close relative--an uncle, an aunt, a sister-in-law. It is this close relationship that gives them their patina of authenticity.

Would one’s niece or brother-in-law fib?

An old-timer that keeps turning up every few years is the one about the man who drives a concrete mixer and suspects his wife of infidelity. One day he swings by his house in his concrete mixer and sees a new car parked in front. He thinks it is the car of his wife’s lover. He opens the windows and fills it full of concrete.

This story sometimes has a twist. Much to his dismay, the jealous husband finds out that his wife had bought the car for him as a surprise, and the salesman had just delivered it.

Sometimes, when it is told in the Northeast, the husband drives a fuel oil truck.

Currently, I am hearing the one about a young woman who encounters Paul Newman in an ice cream parlor. She has gone into the parlor to get an ice cream cone. She stands in line. Paul Newman comes in and stands behind her. She is too flustered to speak. She gets her cone and moves toward the door. Then she discovers that she does not have her cone. She goes back to the counter.

“Where is my ice cream cone?” she asks.

Paul Newman answers: “You put it in your purse.”

As the Times reported last month, this same story has also been told about Robert Redford, in Santa Fe, N.M. He denied it.

It is possible, I suppose, that something like it happened somewhere. A witness tells the story and it travels, each raconteur changing the protagonist to some relative to give it more credibility, and changing the celebrity to Redford or Newman to give it more oomph.

One thing I do know is that Paul Newman has that devastating effect on women. Once Chuck Panama out at 20th Century Fox took me and my French daughter-in-law and her sister to Newman’s dressing room on the lot. Newman came out in a white terry-cloth robe. He was absolutely beautiful: that wavy hair, that sculptured face, those shocking blue eyes. My daughter-in-law and her sister were struck dumb. I’m sure that if one of them had had an ice cream cone she’d have put it in her purse.

However, I don’t believe the story. For one thing, I doubt that Paul Newman turns up in ice cream parlors. He has too much voltage for that. Celebrities have little freedom. Frank Sinatra does not eat at Burger King.

Daniel A. Brown of the Department of Religious Studies, Cal State Fullerton, tells me one he first heard years ago, and has been hearing again. He calls it “The Heroic Gas Station Attendant.”

In this one a woman pulls into a gas station late at night. An attendant comes out to fill her tank. When she tries to pay, the attendant questions her credit card. Finally he tells her she will have to come inside and phone someone who can verify her identity. Once she is inside the station, the attendant tells her a man is crouched in the back seat of her car with an ax. They call the police, and the man is taken into custody.

I saw that same story one afternoon on TV as part of a three-episode movie.

Is there any truth in any of these stories? Perhaps.

In their book on such American fables, “There Are Alligators in Our Sewers” (Delacorte), Paul Dickson and Joseph C. Goulden observe that “were it possible for a sociologist or cultural anthropologist to trace each to its origin, assuredly a kernel of original truth might be found at the site.”

The title of their book is taken from the fable that the sewers of New York City (or any other big city) are inhabited by giant alligators which have grown from the baby alligators that people have brought home from Florida as pets, tired of, and flushed down their toilets.

They also tell the one about the man whose car is stalled on a freeway and he flags down a woman driver who agrees to give him a push. He tells her, “You have to get up to 35 or 40 miles an hour.” She nods. He gets in his car and sees her backing up in his rear-view mirror. Then, to his horror, he sees her bearing down on his rear--at 35 miles per hour.

Pure mythology.

There is also the one about the man who returns to his car in a shopping center parking lot and finds this note: “The people who saw this happen and who are now watching me think that I am writing my name and address and that of my insurance company on this note. I’m not.”

There may be a touch of truth in the one about the alligators. A former New York commissioner of sewers once said that in 1935 workers sighted two-foot-long alligators in the sewers. With poison and .22 rifles, it took two years to kill them off.

It is possible that somewhere, sometime, a jealous husband who drove a concrete mixer came home and found a car in front of his house, and . . . well, you know.

Ronald Reagan, as President, once walked into a drug store and. . . .

Or was that Harry Truman?