Raze Capone House? A Criminal Idea, Chicagoan Says

--The late Mayor Richard J. Daley didn’t care to keep around reminders of Chicago’s infamous 1920s gangsters, obscuring the site of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and demolishing the Metropole Hotel from which Al Capone ruled from 1925 to 1928. But a city official wants to make at least one Capone hangout untouchable, proposing that Capone’s longtime South Side home be nominated for the National Register of Historic Places. “Al Capone is Chicago’s most famous citizen,” said Tim Samuelson, program specialist for the Commission on Chicago Landmarks. Capone bought the two-family house in 1923 and lived there with his widowed mother, Theresa, until 1931, when he was sentenced to prison for federal income tax evasion. Monroe Anderson, press secretary to Mayor Eugene Sawyer, was uncertain whether the mayor would give his approval, adding: “The mayor has expressed some alarm that, worldwide, Al Capone’s identification with Chicago has hampered people coming to realize what a great city this is.”

--Home, sweet home for the young Johnny Carson was a Nebraska town named Norfolk, to which the late-night entertainer returned Sunday to pledge his allegiance and dedicate a regional cancer center in honor of his parents. “I’m honored to be from the Midwest,” Carson said at the dedication of the Carson Regional Radiation Center at Lutheran Community Hospital, for which he donated $650,000. “If you’re lucky enough in this life to accumulate enough funds to live better than you have any right to, then you have a moral obligation to pay back to the community or to the country or to the place that brought you up,” Carson said. Carson’s father, utility executive H.L. (Kit) Carson, died in 1964, and his mother, Ruth, died in 1985.

--Seeing spots has taken on a whole new meaning down on the farm. First it was the dappled cow in Maine whose side bore a splotch that looked just like Mickey Mouse, earning the bemused creature a cross-country trip to Disneyland. Now an Angleton, Tex., rancher says he has a calf bearing the profile of Abraham Lincoln across its ribs. Tom Garrett, who touts the calf as “100% Republican,” has offered the beast to any GOP candidate wanting to beef up a campaign.