Seasonal. In San Antonio, a sunburned Santa Claus refused to continue work in Joske's outdoor toyland until the store shaded his chuckwagon throne with an awning.

The Chase. In Iowa, investigation showed why an Anamosa-Clinton branch line freight train had been consistently running late: its crew had taken to stopping in the country to pot rabbits and quail.

Off Duty. In Columbia, S.C., a car driven by Boseman E. ("Joe") Collins, a professional housewrecker, veered off the road, clipped off the corner of a filling station, smashed the porch of one house, smashed to a stop against the porch of another.

The Breaking Point. In Salem, Mass., Mrs. Lorraine Feys sued for divorce on grounds that her husband threw knives and a flatiron at her, pushed her down a stairway, struck her across the chest with an ironing board, tried to toss her out of a window. In Waukegan, Ill., Mrs. Forrest W. Sweitzer, charging desertion, finally filed a divorce suit against her husband, who disappeared, she said, in the fall of 1908.

Undergraduate. In Albany, N.Y., the Franklin Credit School of Roanoke, Va. won a suit against Maurice J. Cleary, sometime student in its correspondence course in the operation of a collection agency, for failure to pay his tuition bill.

Even. In St. Joseph, Mo., when a 17-year-old customer returned to the Townsend and Wall department store to complain that a costly cigarette lighter he had bought was no good, the store retorted that neither was his check (for $124.22).

Big Moment. In Omaha, Judge Arthur C. Thomsen, pondering a traffic damage suit, told the jury, "A careful driver ought reasonably to anticipate some vehicles making viatic use of the road," then added, "I have been waiting two years to get a case where I could use the word 'viatic.' "

Sound Analysis. In Sausalito, Calif., Justice Walter Derr fined Artist Rodney Roth $50, ruled that the sound Mrs. Valerie Humphries had made at a party when Roth bit her bare midriff was "a yell of pain" rather than, as the painter had testified, "a cry of ecstasy."

Recipe. In El Paso, the County Attorney considered a loaf of bread concocted by Baker Dionicio Suarez, ruled that it "did then & there contain added deleterious ingredient, to wit, a razor blade, which then & there rendered such article of food injurious to health."

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