Evangelist’s Benefactor Giveth, Many Seek to Taketh

Give a little and you’ll get a lot--of letters that is, as the millionaire who gave $1.3 million to TV evangelist Oral Roberts is quickly discovering. Letters seeking charitable donations have been pouring in by the hundreds to the Longwood, Fla., office of Jerry Collins since the greyhound race track owner heeded Roberts’ plea for donations to help him avert a fatal meeting with God. The requests have ranged from the heart-rending to the absurd. One was from a woman who needs the cash to run for vice president. A letter from Accra, Ghana, in West Africa confused the philanthropist with the evangelist. “We have the hope that our Lord will allow you to live longer,” the letter said. “I, therefore, appeal to you there kindly to assist me by buying me a farm tractor and a truck.”

--No one had thought about the law much in the last 20 years, but a New Mexico sheriff concerned about “sinking” morality is determined to enforce a state statute outlawing cohabitation by unmarried couples. Some children “don’t even know who their daddies are,” said Catron County Sheriff Vernon Mullins of his decision to resurrect the 1953 law. Mullins declined to elaborate on how he will track down the perpetrators. That would be “divulging tricks of the trade,” he said. Dist. Atty. Eldon Douglas said he had not heard of the law’s being enforced in 20 years.

--It’s getting harder and harder to keep them on the farm, the directors of an agricultural fair held annually in Hemet, Calif., have found, forcing them to cancel their traditional Farmer’s Daughter beauty contest because of a lack of contestants. Girls found the contest, in which they wore polka-dot blouses and cutoff jeans, sexist, said Marilyn Sabo, the fair’s business administrator. Neither were the girls interested any longer in being judged on how they drive tractors and milk goats. “Times are changing,” Sabo said. “They just aren’t into that kind of thing anymore.”

--The aluminum tray that contained one of the first Swanson frozen TV dinners will be enshrined in the Smithsonian Institution as a permanent reminder of how “20th-Century Americans really lived.” The aluminum model, which has since been dropped in favor of a plastic tray that can be heated in a microwave oven, debuted in 1954. “Just like the shoehorn or butter churn, these items represent popular culture,” said Dr. Terry Sharrer, a curator at the National Museum of American History. “This metal tray is a piece of Americana.”