Town Cast Adrift in Sea of Zeros

Prescott Valley, Ariz., bottomed out last week, when officials learned that the town’s computerized account records had been erased, leaving them with no idea how much money had been spent or how much was left to spend. Mayor Phil Beeson told the Town Council that each account showed a zero balance. “The thing that scared me so badly is that we have no valid means of knowing where we are,” said Lyn Newton, assistant town clerk, who discovered the problem as she began closing out the books for the town of 2,700 people. The records can be reconstructed, she said, but it will take time and money, and the problem came at an awkward time. “We’ve lost our town manager, assistant town manager and town clerk in the past month,” she said.

--If you’re bored with Valentine’s Day flowers and chocolates, George Patey, vice president of a Canadian import company, may have the perfect gift idea for next year: a brick from the bullet-riddled wall at the site of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. He is selling a 7 1/2-by-11-foot section of the Chicago garage wall where seven members of George (Bugs) Moran’s gang were lined up and shot on Feb. 14, 1929, on orders of Al Capone. The garage was demolished in 1967. “It’s been in a nightclub, it’s been in a small museum,” Patey said, and although he has had “a library full of plans for it,” his past efforts to do something with the section of wall have not worked out. The bricks are now in cardboard boxes in a warehouse.

--For the first time since her marriage in 1981, the name of Britain’s Princess Diana is not on the World’s Best Dressed List. “Her mannequin attitude and her patriotic desire to parade British fashion have diluted her impact as an example of personal leadership in contemporary dress,” the list committee explained. Her brother-in-law, Prince Edward, was named for the first time, joining his third cousin, King Juan Carlos of Spain.

--Woe--as in Lake Wobegon--for those hooked on Minnesota Public Radio’s “A Prairie Home Companion.” Host Garrison Keillor said he will make his last broadcast on June 13. The program of music and storytelling made its national broadcast debut in 1980, and now reaches as many as 4 million listeners each Saturday. Keillor, 44, author of the best-selling “Lake Wobegon Days,” said he wants to return to writing full time and live in his wife’s native Denmark. In late 1985, Keillor married Ulla Skaerved, whom he had met years earlier when she was a foreign exchange student at his high school. The radio program is expected to be continued with re-broadcasts until fall.