A Former Enemy Is Now a Friend

In 1945, James Johnson was a supply sergeant with the 4036th Quartermaster Truck Company. Kurt Mohr was a technical sergeant with the German army. Johnson was stationed in France, in Champagne country, when Mohr was taken captive by the advancing U.S. Army and sent behind the lines as a POW.

Today, Mohr and his wife, Inga, are visiting Los Angeles, their first trip to the United States. Their host is James Johnson.

“I went to bed (in France) one night,” Johnson says, “and when I got up, there he was. A group of prisoners was assigned to our unit to help out. Kurt was particularly helpful. When we finally pulled out, he asked for my address. I didn’t think that much about it until a year later, back in L.A., when I got a letter from Kurt.”

The correspondence lasted more than 40 years--”We sent him CARE packages, to get him started; Inga knitted clothes for our children”--and when Johnson retired from the postal service, he visited Mohr, a retired civil servant, in Wetzlar, West Germany. He visited again, and again and again. Finally, last month, the Mohrs returned the visit. “I’m showing him the town,” Johnson says, “and Palm Springs, and Vegas. We haven’t missed anything.”

“We’ve been friends all these years,” marvels Johnson, who has lived at the same Hollywood address for 70 years. “Enemy? No, not even in the war years. War’s just a business. The governments have things all worked out. They did what they had to do; we did what we had to do. People are people; friends are friends.”

A Fortune Cookie With a Message for the ‘80s

They call it “that truly unique gift idea,” and for once they’re not exaggerating. Would you believe “Fortune Condoms”?

“We were eating at a Chinese restaurant one night,” says Fred Martin, one of three Los Angeles doctor friends who cooked up the idea. “We were agonizing over AIDS: about getting a handle on it, about educating the public, about safe sex and how its kind of a turn-off, something ‘I did when I was in the service’ or ‘when I was a teen-ager.’ .

“When they brought the dessert out, Lars (Hansen, another partner), out of the blue, said, ‘Fortune condoms!’ I said, ‘You’re out of your mind. How can we get a condom inside a baked cookie?’

“Our third partner, Tim Peterson, said, ‘Why not put ‘em in a takeout container, package them separately and add a fun little message, nothing obscene but maybe a cute double-entendre?’ ”

The product now sells in this state and 46 others. “What it does,” Martin says, “is inject a little humor into what’s often a kind of tense, almost clinical situation.

“We’re giving a portion of our profits to AIDS research, so what we have here, I hope, is a nice blend of sex, health, fun and compassion.”

Harvey’s Found Hobbled, Humble

If Harvey could talk, the tales he’d tell! Of midnight heists and early morning chases through the streets of West Covina; who knows, maybe even of topiary abuse.

Harvey’s back, though, no questions asked. Nor could he answer if he wanted to, Harvey being made out of moss and ivy and such.

Harvey, the creation of O’Farrior Topiary, is 7 feet tall and something of a Pasadena landmark. Often clad in a white tux, he has been “official greeter” for the annual L.A. Garden Show in Arcadia, “guest of honor” at an L.A. Zoo plant show, sinecure of a hundred other events. Last November, he was on loan to a fund-raising party in West Covina, when, overnight, he “just disappeared.”

“We came for him in the morning,” Tishia O’Farrior says, “but he’d been stolen from a tent overnight, along with some big rented ficus trees and a couch. The committee was responsible--he’s worth $2,500--but they never could find him. Then last month a doctor who was at the fund-raiser was telling the story to a young patient. The boy, from Pomona, said, ‘I know that rabbit. He’s right down the street on a neighbor’s lawn.’ A committee group went to the house and reclaimed him. They didn’t tell me anything, except that they didn’t want to press charges. Interesting. It has the flavor, though, of a student prank. . . .”

Harvey’s ear was broken; his arm was disconnected; he needed a new coat of moss. But he’s fine now, back at O’Farrior, where a party was held Saturday in his honor. “You can’t help being pleased just by looking at him,” says O’Farrior, by way of rationalizing the theft. “Whoever sees him wants to keep him.”